A reader writes:
So I am driving the kids around this weekend, busting my hott 107.5 tunes and all of a sudden .... I hear: " This is the Premier of Bermuda, Dr. Ewart Brown, and you are listening to Hott 107.5"Unbelievable ... don't they have singers who can do that for them?
This highlights the fundamental problem with the media bias attack by the PLP: unlike the UBP, they actually DO own and operate media outlets.
Hott, their unapologetically official propaganda outlet, is owned by a PLP MP, is run by a recently rewarded partisan and now Senator, with content that is constantly pushing a political agenda, both overtly and subtly.
Then there's PLP Senator Walton Brown's press release spinning Bermuda Network News, which is almost certainly a placeholder for a more robust PLP news outlet.
And we can't forget that Dr. Brown promised a PLP newspaper during the election campaign while proposing in the 2008 Throne Speech a Press Council to 'regulate' the independent media (will Hott be subjected to it, or blogs, or is it only for trained journalists?).
The spin is - as usual - quite shrewd: they're combating bias with alternative media. The truth is the opposite, they're creating State Media, both indirectly and directly (CITV).
As a Guyanese blog writes on the topic:
The main problem with state owned media has always been that if they fall under the control of the party in power, even indirectly, that can lead to a contamination of the news process. That is not only unfortunate in itself but it can also lead to a politicisation of other privately owned media in response.
I'd suggest people get familiar with that term, because there is literally a war being waged against the media (specifically The Royal Gazette and The Mid Ocean News) that we're only in the very early stages of.
Posted by Christian S. Dunleavy