Recently in Media Category

It is par for the course that the outgoing Premier is creating legislation for a media council to address complaints about the media while he and his colleagues are subject to absolutely no oversight body to address complaints about their behaviour (including blatant abuse of the broadcast regulations during the 2007 election campaign which the PLP appointed broadcast commission refused to address).

Just this past week we've seen filibustering and refusals to answer Parliamentary Questions not to mention the outgoing Premier himself threatening physical violence against an Opposition member in parliament several years ago.

So a media council is a priority but mention Parliamentary modernisation or standards of conduct for MPs and you're greeted with silence. In conjunction with a media council shoudl be a Parliamentary oversight body as any credible modern democracy hass.

Take the Premier's statement on the media council and insert the political and he sounds quite reasonable for a change:

"This bill was developed to create an independent ethics council which will promote fairness, accuracy, accountability and integrity in the content and presentation of political behaviour.

"This is an unprecedented step for Bermuda and as such, its aims are to establish standards of conduct for elected officials and a mechanism for dealing with complaints of breach of any of those standards; to respect political expression ; and to provide a forum through which elected officials will interact with the community."

Dr. Brown said the community had "suffered too long from the devastating impact of unaccountable elected officials".

Add two new members to the media conspiracy against the PLP. This time it's gone global, with New York's (liberal) Village Voice, Post, Gothamist and Cityfile gaining new member status for reporting on Mayor Bloomberg's offer of the NYPD to help Bermuda.

Over to the PLP for your daily laugh as Vexed points out:

While the media may prefer to focus on manufactured "controversies," the PLP Government will continue to focus like a laser beam on combating the crime crisis.

Like a laser beam? And the controversy is in the US not Bermuda.

The PLP like to lecture the local press about being careful what they print because news travels overseas thanks to Al Gore inventing George Bush's Internets; but of course it was they who ran out to crow about the outgoing Premier's 'friend' Mr. Bloomberg offering support for Bermuda out of his concern 'as a Bermuda resident'.

I'm sure Mr. Bloomberg and other friends of Bermuda will think twice after Minister Burch and the outgoing Premier thanked him for his offer by racing to the press to rehab some credibility on the back of the Premier's billionaire 'friend' by teeing him up for a beating in the NY press, who already love to slap him around for his Bermuda affiliation.

Next time I'm sure the phone call will end with a 'I know you want to boast that I'm your friend, but please be discreet. Our press actually are tough on us. Unlike yours."

I'd be more likely to pay attention to the Works and Engineering Minister's so-called 'refuting' of a media report regarding the new Court building, if said Minister didn't ask us to seriously believe that said building was substantially complete.

It isn't.

Not even close by any normal non-political reality suspending definition.

All of these photos were taken today, 30th December 2009, one month after the structure was declared 99% complete (click the thumbnails for the full size photos).

The corner of Court and Church Streets, coincidentally the highest trafficked viewing spot, looks complete, with walls and roof painted, windows installed etc.. Clearly that one corner was given priority to give the perception of progress from Church St..

The rest of the building? Not so much. Huge sections unplastered, unsealed, bare beams, pipes exposed, no windows.

And we did a roof wetting on this? Bermudians don't bring out the rum until the exterior of the building is actually complete.

On Friday, Mr. Burgess said that the steel structure, reinforcing, external and internal walls and roofing on the building is 99 percent complete.

And that is before we're supposed to believe that completion excluded the complete interior fit out which will take 18 months. Survey contractors on whether normal clients let them get away with that.

If you're going to outright invent facts such as '99% complete", which any rational observer can independently verify as nonsense with a simple drive-by, you can't expect your 800 word 'refutation' on other issues to be accepted as credible, whether true or not.

Earlier today the PLP website quietly deleted the whole section of their post from Thursday where they engaged in a ridiculous and factually devoid attack on a number of people and organisations, including myself.

Presumably someone with some political sense, common sense, but most importantly a legal background, advised them of the potential perils of leaving that post up there.

What remains is what they should have had the political sense to write in the first place. There was no upside to the desperate and manufactured cheap shots at people unaffiliated with the BDA.

Magnanimity would have played so much better than a post that displayed a complete lack of class and suggested they felt threatened.

Most importantly this incident encompassed so much of what is wrong with the whole political environment in Bermuda. It highlights why the debate about free speech, freedom of the press and responsible journalism, as discussed at the HRC forum the other night demands further examination.

I should also say that I was extremely disappointed that Bermuda Broadcasting appears to have been the only news entity which lacked the professional to report that statement on air in its entirety, verbatim.

The Gazette ignored it, as did VSB as far as I'm aware. The Sun ignored the offending sections and reported the appropriate part, all displaying their journalistic credentials, professionalism and common sense.

Bermuda Broadcasting ran it with no fact-checking, no consideration of the unfounded character attacks and no consideration to the individuals subjected to the character attacks.

At best it was lazy, at worst it was unprofessional. It certainly wasn't journalism.

What it was is a shining example of what I referred to a few posts ago as what happens when the press fall victim to one party's relentless attacks on the press as biased, "working the refs" in a political system. They "madly try to split the difference" in a misplaced attempt to show balance.

Balance, fairness and objectivity is not simply repeating whatever both sides say, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how disconnected from reality it is. It doesn't matter if you attribute it as a direct quote. That doesn't give you a free pass to report utter libelous nonsense or play off complete fiction as a credible argument.

As someone emailed me today they said:

Like you say, play the refs. It's not necessary to be "balanced" when one side is crazy.

It's even worse that the PLP website posts these attacks anonymously and the press reports on them. The press should quite simply ignore anything that comes from a political party without a name attached to it.

Someone has to be accountable for what they said. And no, the parallel to an anonymous letter to the editor is not applicable. This is a political party that is issuing official statements anonymously, specifically so they can attack people without recourse.

We heard so much at the forum about responsible journalism, the power they wield and the dangers of ruining reputations. In fact that was Wendell Hollis's whole angle attacking the Gazette and defending the PLP and Dr. Brown at the forum other night.

Wendell is completely silent on the absolutely libelous nonsense and character attacks that appear routinely on the PLP website, the party he currently is affiliated with and campaigned for.

I have been the target of these attacks on multiple occasions. Members of my family have been targeted by these anonymous character assassinations along the lines of last night's attack. Even worse in one instance.

Bermuda can do so much better than this.

Interesting forum tonight at the BUEI by the Human Rights Commission on the Free Press and Responsible Journalism.

Pretty high turnout, around 100 people at its peak and it went until about 8:45 with a long interaction between the panel and the audience.

Rick Richardson moderated well and prevented it deteriorating, which it looked poised to do early on. He was having none of that.

There was a lot of venting, some explanations but not much pandering which was refreshing. The hard news to come out of it was that the Human Rights Commission sought and received a legal opinion from the UN and a constitutional lawyer (as I recall) that the Premier's directive to reduce contact with the Gazette was unconstitutional and against the UN's declaration on freedom of the press.

Otherwise there was a pretty good interaction.

I must admit that the continual comparison of the Premier's war on the Royal Gazette with that of Fox News and the Obama administration in the US makes me chuckle, although Gazette editor Bill Zuill teed it up.

The more appropriate comparison would be the Bush administrations strategic fight with the New York Times, which involved screaming liberal bias while getting very compliant pro-Iraq war coverage.

The whole idea was quite simply to work the refs, which the New York Times as the paper of record is.

That's what is going on with Dr. Brown's ramping up of his adversarial approach to the Royal Gazette, our only daily and the paper of record. He's working the refs.

As I said at the end of the meeting, picking the fight with the Gazette is not a principled argument but a political tactic to play the underdog, even though he is the Premier of the Government, the most powerful institution on the island with a large PR apparatus.

Now, on the idea that the RG is the equivalent of Fox News which I wanted to address but it was late and the meeting was wrapping up.

The appropriate analogy is of course Fox News and Hott 107.5.

Fox News is strongly aligned with the Republican party, to the point of being caught circulating Republican talking points to their on-air talent. Their prime time lineup is heavy on conservative opinion and has blurred the line between news and opinion. Staged conflict between Fox News and the Democrats and other 'liberal media' energises the Republican base and increases ratings.

Hott 107.5 is owned by a PLP Cabinet Minister, run by an appointed PLP Senator, and receives substantial Government support through advertising. Their drive-time lineup is news embedded in opinion, delivered by that same Government Senator. If you want a politically biased media outlet that's it.

If that isn't enough to convince you, then consider this: Dick Cheney will only be interviewed on Fox News by their conservative hosts, while Dr. Brown's long-time exclusive interviewer was radio host Thaao Dill, his Senate appointee on, yes, you got it, Hott 107.5, the radio station owned by a PLP Cabinet Minister.

I'm off to the forum by the Human Rights Commission on the media at the BUEI.

Here's an applicable quote from an interview in the Economist with Dan Froomkin, former columnist/blogger for the Washington Post, on the challenge journalists face in the US which applies in Bermuda as well today:

DIA: Do you think the media should strive for objectivity in its reporting?

Mr Froomkin: No. Journalists should strive for accuracy, and fairness. Objectivity is impossible, and is too often confused with balance. And the problem with balance is that we are not living in a balanced time. For instance, is it patently obvious that at this point in our history, the leading luminaries on one side of the American political spectrum are considerably less tethered to reality than those on the other side. Madly trying to split the difference, as so many of my mainstream-media colleagues feel impelled to do, does a disservice to the concept of the truth.

The Premier's phrase of 'evil deeds' reminds me of George Bush and his Axis of Evil debacle.

We know how that turned out.

By the way, when the Premier speaks of independent media as 'one down, one to go' he glosses over the truth, which is that it's actually 3 or 4 down, 90 or so to go...J-O-B-S that would be.

His little vendettas affect real people in real ways. To borrow one of his favourite phrases, it's time for an 'adult' conversation on this topic.

I love polls, but enough already. It's impossible to make sense of any of this when you have the parties, the papers and others releasing polls at random intervals which are then put against other polls.

All we've got at this point is noise. (Hint to the press, a chart with trends (same pollster please) would help rather than a 2,500 word treatise).

It doesn't takes a pollster to tell you that support for the UBP is evaporating, and it doesn't carry much weight when you have a party selectively releasing details from a pollster with no history of polling in Bermuda.

A great case study in situational ethics today, wrapped up in this tortured logic from the Premier:

Premier Ewart Brown called the comments a "strange development".

"Normally, one would expect such a story to come from a certified journalist at the conference. The fact that Mr. Simons authored the story renders it at least suspect. I suggest that you get a quote from the Chinese Ambassador.

"You may recall that we hosted Chinese businessmen some weeks ago. Not one of them raised the issue or said that the Chinese government had a problem. Please note that if the Chinese Government wishes to communicate to the Bermuda Government, it should be done through the UK Government."

A couple obvious issues here:

1) One would expect a story to come from a certified journalist rather than being 'authored' by a politician?

What exactly is the role of a press secretary and Department of Communication if it isn't to 'author' stories to pass on to 'certified journalists. What Cole Simons did is what the Premier does every day when he issues a statement about his meeting with some US politician.

2) The Chinese Government should communicate through the UK Government?

Low hanging fruit here. Dr. Brown is now taking the position that the UK is responsible for external affairs, when he pretended that the Uighur issue was an immigration issue.

Dr. Brown didn't apply the same standards when he communicated with the US government, explicitly withholding material information from the UK Government.

That's situation ethics for you if you've ever seen it.

Now, let's hope though that Cole isn't naive enough to accept this statement from the Chinese Ambassador:

Madame Ying said the Chinese Government would be happy to have the Uighurs in Bermuda returned to China if they have committed no crimes...

A dispassionate look at media ownership in Bermuda.

1) Bermuda Press Holdings (The Royal Gazette / The Mid Ocean News)
- Publicly traded on the BSX. Anyone can buy shares.

2) Media House Limited (The Bermuda Sun)
- Publicly traded on the BSX. Anyone can buy shares.

3) Defontes Broadcasting (VSB, Mix 106 etc.)
- Privately owned by Kenny Defontes.

4) Bermuda Broadcasting Corporation (ZBM, Power95 etc.)
- Privately owned. Controlled by Fernance Perry.

5) Interisland Communications (Hott 107.5FM)
- Owned by PLP MP Glenn Blakeney. Program Director PLP Senator Thaao Dill.

6) Bermuda Network News
- Owned by PLP Senator Walton Brown.

7) CITV
- Controlled and run by the PLP Government

8) VistaMar (potential new daily startup)
- Registered by PLP Senator Walton Brown, board constituted of PLP insiders/benefactors and friends and family of the Premier.

Those are the facts. Where's the potential for bias?

For those of you following the US elections you'll have observed Republican Presidential candidate John McCain's tactical shift to attack the press over media bias and running blatantly untrue campaign ads.

Today his campaign held a conference call to attack the press - which Mr. McCain formerly called 'his base' - for exposing the rampant lies underlying his ads and past few weeks of his campaign, which prompted this statement from Time's Joe Klein:

...it should be remembered that Steve Schmidt is doing this for two (nefarious) reasons:

1. he's hoping to work the refs: if he complains enough about press bias, we mainstream sorts will cower, cringe and try to seek false equivalences between the two campaigns.

2. the more time we spend covering this nonsense, the less we'll spend on the real issues in this campaign.

Feel familiar?

The PLP's media bias refrain is an effort to work the refs; a tactic to make the media "cower, cringe and seek false equivalencies".

Bermuda's media are tame and outgunned by a massive taxpayer funded disinformation apparatus which has exploded under the PLP.

Well, we're 10 days into September, which means we're 10 days into the life of attempt number 2 by PLP Senator Walton Brown at his "Bermuda Network News" website.

So far it's not a pretty picture.

September 1, the promised relaunch date, came and went with nothing. Then, late that day or on the 2nd a 'system undergoing maintenance message, site will return shortly' kind of message was displayed for 3 or 4 days.

Then, on the 4th or 5th day, it appeared.

So what's happenened since then? Nothing. 5 days and not an update.

But let's look at what is there, seeing as PLP Chairman David Burt who hides behind the 'PLP' username over at plp.bm likes to write about media bias.

1) All content appears to be generated by PLP Senator and cousin of the Premier Walton Brown himself. There are a few opinion pieces by him under the Opinion/Editorial section to which he is named as the author.

The 2 opinion pieces are on politics and race, yet nowhere is Mr. Brown's affiliation as a sitting Government Senator declared.

2) Then there's the opinion pieces dressed up as objective news in the News section published with no reporter in the byline but 'BNN Staff', particularly the Restaurant and African Accountants story.

Both are stories which lack even the most rudimentary compliance with good journalistic practice, and lack any sourcing for the provocative claims they make but are full of unsupported assertions. The latter was described to me by several people in the field as 'categorically false' and that no-one approached the accounting firms for comment contrary to the claims to that effect.

'BNN Staff' is almost certainly a pseudonym for 'Walton Brown'.

No reputable and respectable news organisation, other than the Economist which is unique in this respect, publishes stories anonymously and certainly not with a generic byline (a la PLP Chairman David Burt with his 'PLP' website pseudonym - understandably used because he doesn't want his name associated with the pack of lies and distortions he peddles on a daily basis over there.)

The absence of a byline rarely occurs in papers, but usually suggests that the editor wrote the piece. However a byline like 'BNN staff', when there is no sign that they actually have any is misleading and unethical.

3) The story entitled 'Restaurants taking tips from staff' presents a horrendous undeclared conflict of interest for Walton Brown who has financial interests in a restaurant group which owns the restaurants that are advertising on the site: Silk, Opus and Frescos.

4) The remainder of the advertising is equally as conflicted, with the head of the Government's medical business advertising with a banner at the top and the bottom, along with Walton Brown's own polling agency Research Innovations at the bottom left and a Government ad (of which he is a member) from the Ministry of Health promoting exercise.

So let's review the advertising, one ad from the Government he is a member of, one from his restaurant group, one from his cousin and the head of the Government and one from another of his companies.

Not quite a ringing endorsement and sustainable business model.

5) Nowhere is the ownership of the site declared, nor are there any phone numbers listed on the contact page or a staff directory for anyone to get a live human to address any concerns.

6) The Premier has a 'journal' which looks like a speech churning free Government PR section on a site his private businesses and Government is advertising on.

What a mess. It's not even a good attempt at a second rate news site. It's just embarrassingly amateurish and incredibly biased.

Vexed recently had a good post on alternative media in Bermuda.

Bermuda doesn't need alternative media for the sake of alternative media, or overtly politically aligned and run operations to provide some dueling talking heads model of journalism.

We need ethical competent media staffed by trained journalists not political operatives.

BNN definitely isn't it. I won't be adding it to my links and other than this post I won't be promoting such an irresponsible operation.

In no particular order (well not quite true, the first few really made me laugh), here are some of the suggestions so far:

1) The Daily Brown Stuff and/or The Daily Brown Sheet
2) The Daily Planetation
3) The Loyal Gazette
4) The Doctored Dispatch
5) The Bermuda Discorder
6) "It's Walton Brown. How can it not be 'The Independent'?"
7) The Bermuda Independents
8) Pravda
9) PLP Times (Premier's Loyal Press)
10) The Brown Independent
11) The Bermuda Expensive Free Press
12) The Independence Times
13) The Crony Chronicle
14) The New Opium
15) Newspeak

Two early entries in the Name that Paper Contest that made me chuckle:

1) The Daily Brown Stuff
2) The Loyal Gazette

I'm taking entries for names for Dr. Brown's new paper staffed by his family and political patrons; yet another not so subtle attempt to pass propaganda off as objective reporting.

The PLP Times has a nice ring to it.

Send em in and I'll publish the best.

I guess that the State-supported newspaper promised in the run-up to the election is still a go, with a job ad on p. 48 (scan here) of the Royal Gazette today with VistaMar Ltd. for a General Manager.

Maybe I should apply?

Meanwhile, PLP Senator Walton Brown's press release-churning-with-little-to-no-original-reporting (and definitely no accurate reporting) Bermuda Network News is announcing that they'll be re-launching on Sept. 1st, after a failed first effort that resulted in the sole employee suing the Senator for unpaid wages.

What was it Vexed was saying recently? Oh yeah:

But here’s my word of advice: the PLP is well funded and its core group of puppeteers are driven. Don’t think that by peeling off the UBP into a happy and well-intentioned group of independents that you’ll win favour with the electorate. It’s not likely to happen.

In case you hadn't put it together, the PLP have decided to restart election antics, aka The Silly Season (party website hysteria, restarting the UBP and 8,000 new Bermudians lie, two defensive op-eds (here and here) in The Great Satan The Royal Gazette in two days, rolling out Julian Hall in the Mid Ocean News); all in an effort to repel the elitism label (psst, it isn't the UBP and the "UBP friendly media" giving you that label, it's labour and your own MPs).

Presumably the Premier is taking a page from his foreign consulting friends and reusing his work from the 2007 election campaign with the window for a party leadership challenge approaching.

I'm not sure who the audience is here, presumably party delegates and reporters looking to fill column inches with internal party battle stories during the long dog days of a Parliament-less summer.

Somehow I don't see the "Oh my God the UBP are out to get you" meme being as successful. The Opposition are apparently in an extended session of navel gazing while the PLP fire Bermudians by the dozen for those more capable American consultants.

I was going to dissect the media strategy, which is so painfully contrived that it can literally be turned on overnight, going from zero to 200 MPH in 24 hours, but a reader decided to demonstrate it graphically for us (click on the image for a full size link):

Today's RG interview with the signature quote of "I'm no coward" has that whole Nixonian "I'm not a crook" feel to it.

It's pretty clear that Dr. Brown knows he has lost control of the message, because he gave his first interview in a long time to The Royal Gazette, which he's been trying to starve of both funds and content.

A reader observes:

Dr. Brown often claims that the mainstream media in Bermuda is hostile to him. But according to the court reports, a passerby f***ed him off in front of a press conference and not one single local news report mentioned it ... that is until the Premier's personal security detail tracked the guy down a week later and took him to court!

Reminds me of that Katrina press conference with Dick Cheney where a passerby sent his regards:

At least Cheney just laughed it off; here they arrested him.

Sacred (Brown) Cows.

Remember that story that brought Bermuda Network News back to life (briefly...it's gone quiet again...sort of like one of those horror movie last gasps after you think someone's expired) about a supposed bid for Spanish Point Boat Club by the MEF group for a cool $45M?

Well...poof...it's now vanished into thin air.

Gone. As is it never existed.

That's what I'd call a stealth retraction.

MEF have asked me to advise the following with respects to the Bermuda Network News article on an offer for Spanish Point Boat Club:

For the record, there is no truth in any bid for Spanish Point by MEF for any price.

And there you have it. From the horse's mouth.

Some SPBC members certainly thought an offer was out there.

Remember that $45M offer for Spanish Point Boat Club as 'reported' by Bermuda Network News that I raised an eyebrow over?

Well, I did some intensive investigative journalism to get to the bottom of it (let's say it wasn't hard), and the answer is....the offer from MEF was $4.5M not $45M as I suspected, just like 5,000 people didn't attend a PLP pre-election rally.

What is it with these decimal places?

Anyway, sounds like the offer has been on the table for some time and hasn't gone anywhere. The club has 450-500 members, which would equate to about $10,000 each, which isn't enough to really spark much interest from what I've told.

Anyway, there you go. Debunking that BNN original reporting wasn't hard. Moving right along....

Well I really seem to have jump started Bermuda Network News, with them producing some original reporting today, that the MEF Group has put a bid of $45 million in for the Spanish Point Boat Club, and rewriting a couple of old press releases.

A cynical reader of mine suggested the following:

To prove you wrong, he called Dale and got a scoop about MEF wanting to buy Spanish Italian Point Boat Club. It's a real media outlet, see!

Well, maybe, but $45M is a big number. A really big number.

I suspect they're missing a decimal place in there somewhere or I'm in the wrong business. $4.5M sounds more like it to me for an opening bid.

Let's do a little math.

SPBC is a nice piece of waterfront property, and I can see why MEF would be interested, but it's not more than 2 acres I don't think, so it's hard to see how it gets valued at $45M.

Last I heard an acre in Bermuda is worth about $2M, more for waterfront, so that would be a rather hefty premium.

I know they mark up their wine, but you can't mark it up enough to make those numbers work.

As someone said to me today, Southlands didn't even sell for $45M.

But this is the same site that reported that 5,000 people attended a PLP pre-election rally (that would be about 1 in 8 registered voters) before lowering that number somewhat.

Well that was fast.

A reader writes:

You goaded BNN back to life ....

Well, maybe not life, but there's a pulse, with the first press release being posted in a month...less than 24 hours after I declared it dead.

Not sure who posted that. Presumably owner and Senator Walton Brown himself, I understand the sole reporter left weeks ago.

PS Beachlime pointed out BNN's death 3 weeks ago. Being the generous guy I am I wanted to wait a little longer.

If Dr. Brown's story is that he wants to direct the Government's advertising dollars to electronic media, then his pool just got a little smaller; Dr. Brown's cousin, PLP Senator and PLP pollster Walton Brown's Bermuda Network News is all but dead.

It hasn't been updated in over a month, with the last article being published on April 11. At its most active it was not a news site despite its name. There was little original reporting and it relied almost exclusively on churning press releases into 'articles' (a PR officers dream).

Bermuda Network News did benefit from some insider Government ad dollars, with Dr. Brown's Mets ticket giveaway running an ad on his cousin's website after it ceased to be active (the ad stopped running about 10 days to 2 weeks ago I think).

As an aside, without having much access to stats, I think it's safe to say that the most visited electronic medium for locals is The Royal Gazette's website.

I'm yet to see any Government ads there, which puts another lie to the 'more efficent use of ad dollar' story and reinforces what everyone knows but Government can't admit: it's about shutting down non-compliant media.

I'm also a little surprised that The Great Satan The Royal Gazette never made a public proposal to Government to shift their subscriptions and advertising online (as bad as their website is) to take advantage of what must be Bermuda's most visited website and expose the flaws in the concocted rationale (Bermuda.com could be the most visited Bermuda website, but it's aimed at an external audience.)

Vexed (which you should be reading) has picked up a letter from the Inter American Press Association to the Premier calling for greater press freedom after the removal of government advertising and subscriptions as a retaliatory measure for media independence.

This is a huge embarrassment for Bermuda and hurts our reputation internationally. As Vexed points out, this is a PR nightmare.

Bermuda is bigger than the PLP's grudges.

The International Freedom of Expression Exchange and Caribbean Net News have also picked up the story.

The IAPA release can be found here and the letter is below:

April 15, 2008

H.E. The Prime Minister of Bermuda
Dr. Ewart Brown

Honorable Dr. Brown,

On behalf of more than 1,300 print publications belonging to our organization we are writing to express to you our deepest concern at the complaints made about your government with regard to the use of government advertising as a means to reward or punish the news media, a matter that we deplore as being contrary to freedom of the press, as enshrined in the Declaration of Chapultepec and in the Organization of American States? Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression.

The IAPA understands that every government has a duty to use the resources of its citizens in the most efficient way, although we would request in such actions transparency and the employment of purely technical criteria, so that there may be no doubt that the media were being rewarded or punished by reason of their editorial policies.

Following the public announcements made by your government there has been no indication of the kind of methodology used in the placement of official advertising. In view of this, and of the fact that discrimination in the placement of that advertising severely restricts freedom of the press, we would respectfully ask you to review the action taken by your government against The Royal Gazette and other media in your country.

With the hope that freedom of the press will be observed, we remain,

Your sincerely,

Earl Maucker
President

Gonzalo Marroquín
Chairman, Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information

With the escalating assault by the Government on the free press and independent media, I thought the following quote - delivered by comedian Stephen Colbert in his brilliant roasting of the Bush Administration and the press who covers it - could do with a re-airing.

It's as applicable to our own local Bush Administration/Rove political impersonators as it is to the Bush Administration itself:

"Here's how it works. The president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home ... Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction!"

This isn't just about The Royal Gazette. It's about independent media and a Government that resents scrutiny and dissent.

Other media, a la Tony McWilliam at the Bermuda Sun with his head in the sand statement (come on Tony, you know it's more than just a battle against the Gazette), surely know that they're next; they've opted to do nothing but bide their time. (Yours will come. Better to get in front of it.)

Apathy and short-sighted short-term survival tactics will be the death of Bermuda.

Just getting back into the groove, but in the meantime, may I suggest some required reading:

Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media

Attack the Messenger is an objective look at the loss of public trust in the news media-and the resulting threat to American democracy. Biased, sloppy, and sometimes deceitful reporting is partly to blame, but this book primarily examines how politicians declared war on the media's role as an honest broker of information-and won. Craig Crawford takes readers who crave truth in news through the power struggle between the government and mainstream media, as well as directs them on how to avoid political propaganda and find the most reliable news sources.

While the UBP's Wayne Furbert and Darius Tucker may have started the latest piling on against the press, Derrick Burgess needs to grow up. (And at least Darius had enough integrity to back up his complaints by showing up to greet the cricket team himself - that's more than can be said for the other holier than thou media whiners.)

Are our Ministers such thin-skinned babies that every time someone hurts their feelings they need to ask to see your passport and threaten deportation?

Or engage in economic retribution and vilification if the press doesn't simply transcribe their press releases? Trying to punish them financially, as Senator David Burch has suggested by canceling subscriptions and revoking advertising.

Is this really what Bermuda has come to?

Have we all become so concerned only with our own narrow self-interest, so intimidated by second rate big-fish-small-pond aspiring power players that we won't stand up to defend a newspaper sports editor's right to free speech without the threat of deportation by an immigration gestapo, or an investor's ability to not have Government take their business by force in an overt act of unadulterated cronyism and random political and social payback and scapegoating.

I fear the answer is increasingly yes.

Our apathy is mind-boggling...and getting worse. Apathy and cynicism about the political process is exactly what unscrupulous self-interested politicians and their cronies count on. They feed this cynicism with the process as a whole so that they can engage in political and economic muggings in direct view as we're witnessing on a regular basis.

So when some media outlets think they can endear themselves to the political leadership by playing into the idea that their competitors are biased but they're not, or business owners sit mute while Government drives out ownership of a business they don't approve of, one wonders when they'll realize that they're next.

When will our politicians grow up? And when will the public wake up?

A reader writes on the media's continuing acceptance of chronically distorted and cherry picked tourism numbers at face value:

I have to laugh at the media for reprinting Dr Brown's claims of record tourism numbers - he's actually using 2001 (as in the year of September 11) as his comparison point. And as Vexed Bermoothes points out, he's stuffed the numbers with a very high proportion of cruise arrivals.

When will they learn?

Someone at Bermuda Broadcasting deserves to be put in the stocks for running the 20/20 cricket over Lost.

Following up on my comment about the war that is being waged against the media by the Government, a reader sent on a link to put some colour around the Guyanese President's tactics to silence independent media, specifically the Stabroek News:

President Bharrat Jagdeo's government has since November, 2006 withdrawn all state advertising from the Stabroek News in a clear attempt to punish the newspaper for its editorial independence and stance on various issues.

I expect we'll be seeing these kind of tactics shortly.

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.

The Royal Gazette's webmaster has asked me to post the following info on the Denial of Service attacks against their website over the past few days:

"If anyone has information about the people who are attacking The Royal Gazette, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@royalgazette.bm. All information will be held strictly confidential."

Very interesting that The Royal Gazette's repeated web outages of the past few days appear to be a coordinated Denial of Service web attack.

Very interesting.

There are many lessons for Bermuda in what is going on in the US media, where the Republicans have long ago mastered the technique of using the mainstream media to spread misinformation and outright lies.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has been holding Time (and other press outlets') feet to the fire over some poor reporting. The back and forth has made for some compelling reading, but also illustrates how Dr. Brown's PLP have adopted the tactics of the Republican party to great success in Bermuda; they demonise the media as biased while relying on them to spread lies:

"This is without question one of the most significant problems in how our establishment media functions. They refuse to subject claims -- particularly claims from the GOP power structure and the right-wing noise machine which they fear -- to any critical scrutiny.

For various reasons, they simply will not investigate such claims and, when warranted, identify such claims as false. The most they are willing to do is simply write down each side's claims and treat them equally, even when one side is blatantly lying. GOP operatives know that this is how the press functions and thus know that they can easily get away with spewing lies, and can even recruit the media into helpfully spreading them (using the predominant "he-said/she-said" template). That's the same process that led us into Iraq, kept us there for so long, protected endless presidential lawbreaking and enabled all sorts of fact-free smears...

...It isn't actually that complicated. When a government official or candidate makes a factually false statement, the role of the reporter is not merely to pass it on, nor is it simply to note that "some" dispute the false statement. The role of the reporter is to state the actual facts, which means stating clearly when someone lies or otherwise makes a false statement.

It's staggering that this most elementary principle of journalism is not merely violated by so many of our establishment journalists, but is explicitly rejected by them. That's the principal reason why our political discourse is so infected with outright falsehoods. The media has largely abdicated their primary responsibility of stating basic facts."

I'm going to do something inherently dangerous when it comes to the topic of media bias, I'm going to add logic to the discussion.

Well, I'm not going to add it, I've uploaded a podcast on a recent Harvard study on media bias as critiqued by "LSAT: Logic in Everyday Life" from the Princeton Review. A reader pointed me to the LSAT podcast a few weeks ago; it's a good listen and applies logic to real world issues (as the title implies).

You can listen to the podcast on media bias either by clicking from my player below or clicking this link:

Money quotes:

"If you're going to look at a study that quantifies the number of positive stories versus negative stories, as this study does, and you're going to claim that it demonstrates bias, you're are assuming that there is absolute parity between the two parties with positive and negative things happening to or coming from them. And how can that be quantified?

Is it appropriate to assume that Republican and Democratic candidates absolutely deserve the right to the exact same amount of coverage either way, with the exact same tone, no matter what happens?"

and

To be honest, it's difficult for me to imagine a study that could definitively prove it one way or the other. You'd have to go beyond the number of stories, you'd have to look at stories that were ignored, or squashed or given the back page.

In any case, objectivity means sticking to the truth. It does not mean assuming that every fact has a Republican side or a Democratic side.

The final paragraph sums it up, and applies equally to Bermuda as the US.

Now, back to the hysteria and conspiracy rants.

The Bermuda Sun today has an article up about both parties use of YouTube in their campaigns. (Click here for the UBP's channel and the PLP's channel.)

It is interesting that both parties are using YouTube, but the Sun missed the real upside of YouTube and the internet in general: there are no broadcasting restrictions on web video/audio content whereas advertising through the traditional media is limited through Bermuda's Broadcasting Regulations (more on those regulations to come in another post).

I've always thought that Bermuda's Broadcasting Regulations were a little bone-headed. During election periods (post election writ) the parties are restricted in time for political broadcasts/advertisements on TV and radio while non-election periods are unrestricted. That seems backwards in that election time is precisely when people are going to pay attention and the most information (and mis-information) is communicated (although one upside is that it forces the campaigns to be strategic and not just blanket the airwaves with repetitive ads).

Those very same TV/radio ads posted on YouTube or a party website can get unlimited play, and if they're good enough, which presumably the UBP's soon to be released humourous one (see Sun story) is intended to be, will go viral and have a bigger impact than a straight TV ad - young or not.

Will YouTube 'turn the election' as the Bermuda Sun asks? I doubt it. Yes seats are tight, but the best feature of Bermuda is that constituents expect to see their candidates, and it's actually feasible to do so. Retail politics is still paramount.

YouTube/the web is a no brainer of an avenue to pursue - there's no downside. It's a new distribution channel that politicians and parties worldwide are using to get their message out, and ultimately I think the benefits are more than just reaching a certain demographic; there's convenience (5 minutes of effort to upload an ad) as well as having reach.

As more people get their news from the new media versus old media the web will obviously play a major role.

I haven't commented on the whole stem cell clinic issue that so rightly concerns so many Bermudians, and the outside looking in, but I've been meaning to; although not really from the angle that has received the coverage thus far - but the case study of private conflicts of public officials that it provides.

But on Friday the Mid Ocean News ran an apology to Stemedica for two quotes that were included in their stories on the establishment of a stem cell clinic in Bermuda by Dr. Brown.

When I first read those stories in the Mid Ocean, and saw the two quotes that it was a 'sham' and looked like a 'money laundering expedition' I thought 'Oh, that could be a problem', particularly because those two quotes didn't appear at the centre of the very concerning issues that this whole initiative raises:

1) Stem cell science is still in its infancy and experimentation on humans is controversial.
2) Bermuda is not a jurisdiction currently suited for this kind of healthcare business, from either a regulatory (there are none - which some think is the attraction) or an economic perspective (there is no infrastructure in place, nor a suitable labour pool).
3) Public officials practicing, but in particular expanding related private interests, in areas in which they are overseeing public policy is a concern.

Those issues and parts of the coverage aren't at all impacted by the apology.

Stemedica issued a press release yesterday on the apology, which has headed off legal action, but a release which I think tries to hook the Gazette into the apology in a way that isn't correct: by saying they received 'apologies from Bermudians Newspapers', emphasis on the plural 'apologies' and 'papers'.

Today, Stemedica Cell Technologies (“Stemedica”) received unequivocal apologies from Bermudian publications the Mid-Ocean News and The Royal Gazette online regarding unsubstantiated and pejorative remarks those publications had made about the company.

Not quite. There was one apology carried in two places. The Mid Ocean clearly apologised for the quotes at dispute, but The Royal Gazette ran their own series of articles on this which were not a part of the apology. They carried the Mid Ocean's apology in a box labeled 'Advertisement' from the Mid Ocean News.

The Bermuda Sun also published a series of stories on this that have not been challenged.

For that reason I think the 'Bermudian newspapers' quote is mischievous. The threat of a libel suit didn't apply to the Gazette's articles nor the Sun's, only two quotes in a Mid Ocean article.

I imagine that because the Mid Ocean News' website is a subsection of The Royal Gazette's website, Stemedica demanded the apology be carried there as well, and is now attempting to portray the Mid Ocean's apology as applicable to the Gazette's articles, when it is not.

One thing that I think people don't really understand (and some will never accept) is that The Royal Gazette and The Mid Ocean News are two different newspapers, run by different editorial staff with separate reporters. Yes, they're owned by the same holding company, but they operate independently of each other and don't cooperate on stories.

The big advantage that the Mid Ocean has is that they publish once a week, so they have more time to dig deeper into stories than the press outlets who have daily deadlines to meet can and so end up with the big scoops like the leaked Police files.

Bermuda is experiencing a renaissance in defamation law it seems, and in this case it's clear the apology was warranted. But serious concerns remain.

From my perspective, the UBP's Louise Jackson hit the angle that has been largely ignored thus far by the main stream media, which is that in addition to medical ethical and regulatory concerns, there are serious ones around public ethics.

We should be very concerned when the Premier, who is clearly the behind the scenes driver of health care policy as well as his other portfolios - as seen in today's coverage of the secret hospital meetings, is actively pursuing private interests in the field. In addition to closing the Medical Clinic which competed with his private one, he is now bringing a highly controversial and experimental medical clinic to an island which has neither the regulations (which he has total control over) or infrastructure for this.

That is an area which I'd like to see the press highlight, as much as the concerns over medical ethics and regulatory issues.

Today's publishing of PLP candidate Walton Brown's poll in the Royal Gazette is a pretty egregious error in judgment. I don't really care about what it says, but it should be obvious that for a national newspaper to carry a poll conducted by a candidate of any party is inappropriate.

What's even more inappropriate is a poll, conducted by a party candidate, being published on the Bermuda Network 'News' site owned by that very same candidate, without the mandated disclosure of ownership interest. The article identified Walton Brown as a candidate for the PLP, but not that he owns the news site as well (although almost all of its content is simply verbatim Government press releases/statements), which gave a very generous headline of "PLP on course for victory - poll".

Not declaring the ownership conflict is a baaaaadddddd omission, particularly on top of all the other conflicts.

This is the same news site that announced that 5,000 people attended a PLP rally, before whittling it down to 1,000.

The strategy of candidates/parties releasing random polls to the press to combat negative press and public sentiment is becoming common in the US, but this is all tactical not informational. It's the old idea that people want to vote for a winner, so let's look like the winner. If you're actually interested in how things are moving, a poll like this (taken before the calling of the election, the Privy Council and injunction defeats and Banquet rant) are really not useful or even 'news'; they're just timed PR pieces to present a skewed picture.

No paper should lend an internal poll, even worse - one conducted by a candidate - the type of credibility that they will, couched headline or not.

The Gazette, suffering from some serious abused spouse syndrome lately in the midst of the all out "media bias" assault ("but do you love me?"), complied.

I prefer my polls from external unbiased sources, and if I was running a party I wouldn't be using one of my candidates to do my polling, he's too embedded in things to give a truly independent interpretation.

It reminds me of that line about lawyers:

"He who acts for himself has a fool for a client and an ass for a lawyer."

From the public's perspective, there's simply no context around random, one off poll releases. The poll shows a snapshot at a certain point in time. But what was it before? Are they going up or down? Maybe they've got a 9 point lead, but maybe 2 months ago it was 20%.

We don't know. Which is why the Gazette allowed themselves to be played. I don't think they knew the questions asked, just the numbers presented to them. Releasing the poll was designed to manage public sentiment not inform, evidenced by the fact that he refused to release some parts.

Cherry picked numbers are just that.

It's not always easy for a reporter to judge the motives of insiders during election campaigns, but when internal polls are being carefully placed in the media this early, you know one side had a bad first week.

Clearly, the PLP have decided that a central talking point of their campaign is that the Royal Gazette is an arm of the UBP. I've written about this a number of times, both in detail and in passing.

Today, the PLP posted a statement on their website entitled "Royal Gazette Acknowledges UBP Bias".

Here's what they claimed:

The Royal Gazette has stopped hiding their UBP bias. In an editorial in today's paper they claimed that the UBP has "a lot of good ideas." They acknowledged that the unabashedly pro-UBP editorial was "evidence that this newspaper is biased towards the United Bermuda Party."

Note, that they did not include a link to the actual editorial which included the 'quote' in bold.

Why? Well here's the first half of the sentence which they omitted:

"With the very real risk that Premier Ewart Brown will add this editorial to his dossier of evidence that this newspaper is biased towards the United Bermuda Party, it must be said that at first glance the Opposition's "mini-platform" contains a lot of good ideas

This isn't the first time they've used fragments of sentences to misrepresent someone. It's a regular practice. As a reader who emailed me about this said:

Is it just me, or are pieces of sentences being taken and used to create what they want?

It's frightening that people will read this and not bother to actually look up the article and read it.

Surely, if the PLP had a real case about media bias they wouldn't have to fabricate these statements with out of context partial quotes; lies which are disproven so easily.

Maybe that's why they post these dishonest attacks under a generic "Submitted by the PLP" rather than attribute them to someone who would immediately lose credibility.

Dishonesty is not the foundation of an election campaign. It's time for truth in political discourse.

This is shameful.

Judge Kawaley today rejected (Gazette coverage) / (Bermuda Sun coverage) Dr. Brown's request for injunction in respects of his libel suit.

Full verdict is available here.

Key quote:

12.Granting the application, in my judgment, would have created the strong impression that the judicial arm of the Government had been co-opted by the executive branch of Government to effectively censor teh press. There was no or no adequate explanation for the delay in making the application for injunction relief, the BHC dossier could have been sought from the Commissioner of Police sooner, and the pending reasons of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the Commissioner of Police case would not materially impact on the disposition of the Plaintiff's substantive application. More importantly still, the case for interim injunction relief seemed extremely weak. It was difficult to see, bearing in mind that three courts had held that publication of further material from the BHC dossier was in the public interest (without prejudice to any damages claims), how an adjournment would assist the Plaintiff to obtain the interim relief he was seeking.

and

25. As I indicated in the course of the hearing, there may be cases where established principles must give way to new precedents. But the present application, brought (albeit in his private capacity), by a Premier who has just called a General Election is a manifestly inappropriate case in which to break free of all established precedent and grant revolutionary forms of press-stifling injunctive relief. Such a course would raise legitimate questions about the independence of the courts.

That means that barring appeal, the press have no restrictions on them...other than the usual responsibility to report fairly and accurately and not libel.

I've spent the morning in court over the attempt by Dr. Brown to obtain an injunction against parts of the media, being the Gazette, the Mid Ocean and myself, with respects to the leaked files through a libel complaint.

A ruling will come at 2:30.

I don't have a lot of time right now but there were some pretty interesting exchanges:

The first request by the Premier was to adjourn the case for 8 weeks and continue a temporary gag order during that time. Hmmm, 8 weeks you say.

The court (Judge Kawaley) made it clear early on that it would not be party to a 'circus'.

The main contention of Charles Richardson on behalf of Dr. Brown was about a (ir)responsible media and the need for restraint against them.

At one point, as a 'halfway house', he requested that Dr. Brown be shown anything that the press was to publish prior to its publication so that he could make comment (or presumably file an injunction to prevent publication again). So, the Executive branch requested that the judicial branch grant them the authority to essentially have some editorial control over a free press.

Eventually, the arguments turned political and seemed to be designed for the public not the law, with Mr. Richardson arguing that the timing of the publications were designed to 'steal the general election' from his client (psst...he doesn't own the Government) and even the court had to point out that Dr. Brown himself had control over the timing of the calling of an election.

There was a fair amount of back and forth which was both interesting and entertaining.

The judgment will come in at 2:30.

Bear in mind that the court expressed concern that this process had already played itself out to a large extent in similar 'parallel proceedings', and that the Court of Appeals just happens to be sitting again this week, which Mr. Richardson hinted in court he would look to again if this ruling was adverse.

Check the Gazette, Sun and radio news for details.

Quite a few reporters were there.

With the latest attempt to gag the media, I thought it worth reposting the comments by one of my legal beagles immediately after the libel suit was filed back in July, who predicted exactly what has unfolded over the past couple 4 weeks:

Looking at the RG article this morning, which says that the previous writ was discontinued, it would appear to be just a ploy to shut you up: as they hadn't yet served the writ, they could discontinue it without costs and refile with extra defendants, as it's easier than applying to amend the writ to add defendants. Again, I don't expect anything to come of this. What will happen is that they will apply for an injunction against all of you shortly before the Privy Council delivers its judgment, thereby delaying further dissemination of the BHC even longer. There's no way they'd actually try to sue you all for libel. The BHC documents would have to be put into evidence, which would then allow them to be published verbatim by the press on the basis of qualified privilege.

He called it.

I can't say much or I'll be abused by my lawyer and he'll bill me for it in 6 minute increments, but it should be clear that this isn't about libel or the law really. It's about tactics to achieve a political objective by gagging the media so the Premier can conduct his election campaign.

As reported today on VSB news, Dr. Brown filed for a gag order (an interim injunction) against the media (technically the one in the Privy Council case is filed by the Commissioner of Police I think). This time the targets are The Royal Gazette, The Mid Ocean News and myself in conjunction with his libel suit against us over the leaked police files.

I've been instructed by my lawyer to not say much out of respect for the court, as I'm obviously a party to this (and too much of a wise-ass apparently), but I imagine the Gazette will have a story on it tomorrow which should lay things out.

Evidently Bermuda is cuckoo for Coco Puffs, as the Cleveland Leader declares that:

Bermuda Blames Obesity Problems on Coco Pops

I'd never noticed the run on Coco Puffs at Lindos.

So, in response to my last post on what the "CI" in CITV stands for, general consensus appears to be "Community Information TV". Seems to make sense.

Now, on to a selection of the wise-ass responses:

Communist Invasion
Clowns International
Control (and) Indoctrination
Crock of Idiots
Collective Individualism - one cancels out the other, therefore it means nothing.

and

If you weren't being serious, it's a nefarious plot of the Cayman Islands (or is it the Channel Islands?) to take over Bermuda through propaganda. Or perhaps:

Counter (to your) Intelligence TV
Crisis of Identity TV
Control of Information TV
Cabinet's Indiscretions TV

and

CITV (short for Children's ITV or Children's Independent Television) is the brand name used for the majority of children's television output on ITV's ...

and

I love the comment from the Premier on the CITV website "it was created for you", just like the Soviet Union created TASS for it's people.

CI = Completely Irrelevant ?

and

Criminal Investigation TV

Does anyone know what the "CI" in CITV stands for?

I don't.

Evidently there's a shortage of real news, which resulted in today's installment of silly headlines (and story):

Wilkinson defects to PLP

Lots of fun stuff in this very short 'story'.

Firstly, is it a defection if someone quit one party 17 years ago to join another 17 years later?

Secondly, the reason for joining is rather weak:

"I have always supported the Government in power."

Or, said another way, I go where the power and money is. Good riddance if that's the case.

Thirdly, if he "always supported the Government in power", how does that reconcile with leaving the UBP 17 years ago, while they were still in power?

Fourthly, isn't this the same guy who was disgraced after being caught illegally exporting Bermuda currency when head of the Bermuda Monetary Authority? If that's the quality of defection that gets front page listing on a party's website, I'd be re-examining my recruitment strategy.

Whatever. Now, on to real news, like the Premier not being bothered to comment on stories on the international press that his policies, actions and scandals are threatening our sole economic pillar.

Dennis Pitcher gets it right.

Congratulations to the Royal Gazette's Matthew Taylor, on his career change, as noted in the byline in today's story (on yet another un-tendered contract):

Correia contract 'stinks' — UBP"

by Matthew Taylor – Chef Reporter

The contract might stink, but Chef Matthew says it just needs a little seasoning, then it'll taste like chicken.

Just a follow up - seeing as I seem to be on a media theme lately - to last night's comment about the misnomer that is the pro-UBP media in Bermuda.

One of the things that should be clear to people is that the PLP strategically want an adversarial relationship with the press - or at least the perception of one. They want people to believe that the Gazette, and the media in general, write a disproportionate number of negative stories about them, although I suspect that an examination of stories would show that not to be the case. This tactic is employed so that they can still position themselves as fighting the system, when they are the system today.

The UBP on the other hand tend to take a more collaborative lower key approach with their dissatisfaction with the press (and there's lots of that) - but that's the party's personality. They're not as adversarial, driven more by building consensus - they have to.

Part of the media's job is to hold Government's and politicians accountable and act as the public watchdog, which is why the relationship between the press and politicians will always involved some healthy tension.

The problem with the independent media in Bermuda is not so much bias, but a lack of resources and experience; resources which are being drawn away (intentionally) by a rapidly increasing Government PR machine. This serves multiple purposes, including weakening the media in general, neutralising the best reporters, and the blurring of policy and politics by a massive taxpayer funded public relations apparatus.

Government's Department of Communications is staffed by a large number of former (Royal Gazette) reporters, the Premier's Press Secretary is a former Senior Gazette reporter, they've got the party's former Press Officer doing the rounds through Government departments as a communications consultant, and they're working on a Government TV station.

The independent media face a tough task here because it's a small place to generate daily content across multiple news organisations, and they're understaffed and underpaid, and the advertising market is quite limited. As news was traditionally (but not so much today in North America) treated by corporations as a loss leader, I'm sure that's true in Bermuda's media world. In particular they lack Bermudian resources, who have been lured away by higher Government and private sector salaries.

I must admit to being pleased to see that ZBM's Gary Moreno has returned to ZBM. I hear it was a combination of ZBM having to pay him what he wanted and also an inability to stomach his role at the Department of Communications. It was mostly about compensation from what I understand.

I struggle to see how journalists who love what they do and have 'getting the story' in their blood can enjoy writing press releases and spinning news for politicians (and let's not pretend that the Department of Communications hasn't crossed the line into spin). Evidently Mr. Moreno didn't and returned to his journalistic roots. Kudos to him.

Personally I'm not interested in news organisations who are aligned with either party. Some people say, "well the UBP can have their paper and the PLP can have their paper, tv station, or radio station or whatever". But that's not a good approach.

Objectivity isn't putting two partisan talking heads against each other. I enjoy reading Opinion and analysis - probably more than most - but it belongs on the Op-Ed pages, not in articles. I'd much rather have a press which wasn't so timid and let themselves be used as free media with press conferences and photo-ops, while having the tough and important questions kicked to the side knowing that there will be little follow-up (Zane Desilva's candidate announcement that barely touched on his involvement in the BHC investigation for example).

Whatever historical media bias existed in Bermuda is largely gone, but that there are those who have a vested interest in perpetuating that perception while benefiting from favourable coverage themselves.

I get concerned when I see the independent media being put under pressure by a Government who can exert a lot of influence over them in hiring away their staff with an unlimited budget and delaying/rejecting work permits etc..

The conversation about the media in Bermuda is far more complex than those who have a vested interest in pretending it's simply anti-PLP and pro-UBP.

One of the most entertaining, and simultaneously repulsive, thing about many politicians is their conscious decision to shape perception in the face of reality. Some are quite good at it.

Case in point, this bit from an article in today's Gazette:

"I saw the story in the Royal Gazette and let me tell you it is very rare I see a story in the Royal Gazette that makes me happy," joked the Premier, as he explained to Ms Bean why he wanted to visit her new business.

This is a very common theme from the Premier and the PLP, that the media is hopelessly biased against them and only write negative stories. It's the same nonsense that the Republicans, led by George Bush, peddle about the media in the US to avoid scrutiny and deflect criticism (Iraq war anyone?).

The idea is to present only glowingly positive stories as objective, and anything that questions them as biased (of course racially in Bermuda). The Republicans and the PLP have this shtick down quite well.

While the Republicans attack the New York Times, the PLP constantly - particularly in Parliament - talk about the Royal Gazette (and the Mid Ocean News, but more on them another time) as under the thumb of the UBP.

The Premier often calls the Gazette 'their [the UBP's] newspaper'.

But back to the quote (joke or not) about it being rare for the Premier to find an article he likes in the Gazette.

His party's website certainly doesn't have that problem.

They generate easily 2/3rds of their daily content from The Royal Gazette. Today they linked to two (including the one the with the swipe at the Gazette) on their front page. Yesterday they linked to three articles. On average it's probably two or three a day, lately it's been packed with Gazette stories.

Take a look at their 'Latest News' page. It's content is almost entirely quoted, summarised and linked Royal Gazette articles, with a few Bermuda Sun ones sprinkled in - 214 in just four and a half months (since April).

Rare to find a story he likes, huh. Such hypocrisy.

Politicians around the world complain about the press, that's an occupational hazard and nothing new. But this is different in its intensity and the orchestrated and persistent nature of the campaign.

This media bias theme is designed to perpetuate a perception despite reality, intimidate the media into treating them with kid gloves while trying to discredit negative stories and amplify positive ones.

The Gazette in particular has been extremely busy lately trying to prove themselves to the PLP in the stories they write, lawsuit over the leaked corruption investigation files notwithstanding.

The Bermuda Sun generally is very deferential in their coverage of the PLP.

Hott 107.5 is clearly the PLP's radio station, they don't even pretend not to be.

(The Mid Ocean on the other hand just doesn't care about criticism. They've got a few things wrong, and apologised, but an awful lot right - not to mention their pro-PLP columnists. And let's not forget that they were brutal to the UBP in the late 90's over independence and McDonalds.)

But it's the Gazette in particular takes the brunt of the anti-PLP criticism - mostly because it largely sets the news agenda, but also because of history.

Regardless, it's not hard to prove that the Gazette isn't doing the UBP's bidding, they're actually working hard to prove that they don't have it out for the PLP and tiptoe around a number of issues they should really chase down aggressively.

Let's get real. If the Gazette was in any way owned, controlled or even influenced by the UBP, would a damaging (and incorrectly quoted) headline like "UBP doomed to lose next election" run as I talked about this morning?

Would their senior political reporter constantly use disgruntled former UBP-now-back-in-the-PLP Jamahl Simmons and PLP candidate and party pollster Walton Brown as his primary sources for commentary on the UBP?

Would the Gazette give Maxwell Burgess prominent placement to criticise his party?

Of course it wouldn't.

But that's all irrelevant in the politics of this. The daily drumbeat against the Gazette and the media in general by the PLP is a determined effort to shape perception and keep people believing that the media are biased; to keep people thinking that the PLP are the underdog, not the establishment party that they are with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, dozens of public relations officers, and thousands of civil servants at their disposal (versus the UBP who have, last time I checked one PR person and a couple of office staff).

But don't expect the criticism to stop. George Bush still wants people to believe that the US is winning the war in Iraq. At least the media over there have largely woken up to their responsibilites as the Fourth Estate. When will ours?

Newspaper headlines are important, because they are all that some people remember about an article and they set the tone for the reader before they read the first sentence.

So, the headline in yesterday's Bermuda Sun is both incorrect and irresponsible.

Is the "Average family home now $1.8m"? No. The article explicitly says so.

The "Average price of a home sold this year is $1.8M". Big difference. That's the average of transactions. To know what the average market value of a home is you'd have to do some sort of an appraisal on every property.

I know headlines are designed to grab a reader, the more sensational the better in a lot of cases, but this a) sets some sellers expectations to high, and b) further alienates those trying to get into an expensive market.

It's much like the headline recently where the Gazette said: "UBP is doomed to lose next election" - in quotes - from an interview with a former UBP party worker. First problem, he never said that. Those were the reporter's words, not Mr. Sullivan's. Since when does a paper quote its own reporters?

The other example was the Gazette's headline which read "Expert: Island is still a 'white supremacist society'".

What he said was:

"Is Bermuda a white-supremacist society? That's obviously a more complex question in a country with a black majority and a black-led government, the distribution of wealth remains racialised, however. And the attitudes of at least some white Bermudians reflect a commitment to white supremacy.

"As an outsider, I don't think my job is to answer that question but to raise questions that can help Bermudians understand their own society."

Mr. Jensen came close to saying what the headline said, but he didn't (although that is the sole reason he was hired...to get that headline.)

Headlines are important, perhaps more so, than the content of the article oftentimes. Many people don't pick up the nuances, they just take a superficial skim of the paper and take away little more than the headline and the first paragraph.

The papers (and this is more a fault of the editorial staff than the reporters who don't have much input into headlines) have a responsibility to be more accurate.

I'm flattered. Honoured. Encouraged. Amused.

As many of you have contacted me this morning about me being named in a writ filed by Dr. Brown, I figured I'd make a quick comment.

On Friday the Premier apparently took out a writ, specifics yet unknown, against myself, the Royal Gazette and Bill Zuill, The Mid Ocean News and Tim Hodgson. Nothing has been served yet, and he has up to 12 months to serve it or drop it.

I'm actually pretty amused that Dr. Brown is so worried about my little website that he wants to try and silence me.

The fact that he dropped the original writ filed strategically to coincide with the Court of Appeals hearing over the Chief Justice's gag order ruling shows that this is all just tactics, posturing and intimidation.

No-one is as yet aware of what the libel complaint is, and when I say no-one I'll include the Premier in that. I don't know what the presumed libel is, and I bet he doesn't either.

This is just the refinement of the strategy to anticipate the Privy Council rejecting the appeal and permitting the publication of the rest of the police documents and try and silence the potential outlets for it.

As one of my legal beagles speculates:

Looking at the RG article this morning, which says that the previous writ was discontinued, it would appear to be just a ploy to shut you up: as they hadn't yet served the writ, they could discontinue it without costs and refile with extra defendants, as it's easier than applying to amend the writ to add defendants. Again, I don't expect anything to come of this. What will happen is that they will apply for an injunction against all of you shortly before the Privy Council delivers its judgment, thereby delaying further dissemination of the BHC even longer. There's no way they'd actually try to sue you all for libel. The BHC documents would have to be put into evidence, which would then allow them to be published verbatim by the press on the basis of qualified privilege.

So thanks for the laugh Mr. Premier. And to my readers, thanks for the support.

A press conference without questions is a monologue.

When the reporters were instructed not to ask any questions at yesterday's press conference over the Faith Based Accounting, er I mean Tourism, they should have simply stood up and walked out en mass.

A reader writes on the 5,000 in attendance:

Worrying that a pollster should have such difficulty with basic numbers.

Newly announced PLP candidate Walton Brown's Bermuda Network News (light use of the term 'news'), had an article up this morning declaring "More than 5,000 attend PLP rally".

Really. 1 in 8 registered voters was there? I don't think so. Neither does The Royal Gazette or The Bermuda Sun who put the number in the hundreds approaching 1,000.

Now, where are we on that discussion of media bias? That puts BNN firmly in the out and out party propaganda category.

Two people I spoke to who were there put it at "400-500" or "500-600".

These attendance numbers are always imprecise, but 5,000? That's shameless. I guess someone told them that that number was too big of a lie, so it's been changed to "More than 1,100 attend PLP rally".

It reminds me of the rather mischievous headline that the UK was going to 'extend control over colonies' and that we'd lose power to govern because of this, when the truth was that this was a simple review of the territories.

No mention of the fact that the 'news' site is owned and run by one of the subjects of the article who was announced as a PLP candidate at the rally.

No shame.

Orwell would be proud.

Yeah, it's the media who are polarising people and setting things up like a boxing match, not a Party who titled their rally with a boxing reference: "The Main Event", and talk in the most extreme racial language as misdirection for providing answers.

“But we are seeing people ‘going into their corner’ like in a boxing match and we have to be careful that we are not creating the petrol in which this blaze will burn — whenever you go through an election period passions are at a fever-pitch.

Sigh. These claims are becoming more and more absurd, and more and more patently false by the day.

I read with bemusement Thaao Dill's interview in the Gazette which deviated into blogs, and more specifically my assertion that Bermuda's media is timid:

He’s a regular viewer of the Island’s blogs, and is frustrated by constant references — particularly from politics.bm’s Christian Dunleavy — to Bermuda’s “timid press”.

“People assume that the media here is softer than it should be, but I think that’s intellectually dishonest as a perception,” he argued.

“One: as a community Bermuda wants nothing more from its citizens than to be polite.

“The press speaking to people with a pickaxe and a shovel is not what Bermudians want. It completely goes against the ethos of people here.

“Two: the people that make these complaints are self-proclaimed pundits that wish they were reporters. They wish they had the opportunity to get in these situations but for whatever reason they’d rather just backseat drive an interview.

“I have asked questions that I know have annoyed the heck out of the Premier, (UBP chairman) Shawn Crockwell, Michael Dunkley. You can ask them, but you can’t force them to answer.

“Then they say the press are timid just because they haven’t answered. It’s wild, man.”

Intellectually dishonest. I'd call intellectually dishonest trying to suggest that a non-timid media is a rude one. Bermuda's media is timid. That's easily proven.

Exhibit A is the Bermuda Sun article on the PLP's candidate announcement of Zane Desilva without even so much as a mention (which is all that the Gazette managed) of the fact that he was the central cog in the wheel of the major allegations of corruption in the leaked police report, including alleged kickbacks and mixing of public and private project funds.

When someone with this cloud over their head wants to run for public office and be entrusted with the management of public funds, the press have a duty to do more than to ignore it or just say "He refused to comment".

The candidate roll-out press conference should have been an out and out grilling, politely of course, to try and get some of these questions answered. Like who were "EB" and "NB" on the business plan for a 5% cut for the asbestos removal to Cuba?

But back to the idea that I want them to rude. You can be aggressive respectfully, assertive and persistent in getting to the bottom of the story.

Also, I note the fact that he says that his favourite guest to interview is Senator Burch, easily the most impolite politician in Bermuda:

While diplomatically claiming nobody has been a bad guest, Mr. Dill declares Senator David Burch as his favourite interviewee. “I dig him man!” he said. “He just doesn’t care about anything other than his job. He doesn’t care if people don’t like him, or necessarily understand him. He just really wants to get things accomplished.”

But I thought that all Bermudians wanted was politeness? Whatever.

Finally, I think it's worth pointing out, as I did to Thaao in an email, that I have no interest in being a reporter and that I'm not doing schtick although I work hard to generate a few laughts.

Thaao may be playing a character, but I'm not. I don't make money from this, I have no corporate boss to tell me what to do, and no advertisers to please. I say what I say because it needs to be said, and our timid media is missing a huge swath of political coverage, may the chips fall where they may.

The issues I write about (accountability, racial tolerance, good governance, modernizing Parliament) are ones that are fundamental to a properly functioning democracy. I make no apologies for that, whether Thaao thinks it's sincere or not.

I guess it works for Senator Burch but not me.

Hey Glenn. You sure about this statement?

Around the world reporters stand up when heads of state, or in this case heads of government, enter a room. It's commonplace. No one has to demand it. It's expected. And the expectation is widespread.

Why then, does no-one stand at this press conference by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Governor Terminator?

And what about the Canadian Prime Minister who remarked to US President George Bush:

It was "something I never thought I'd see," observed the prime minister, "which is have the Canadian media stand when I entered the room."

I believe Glenn will find that this is a decidedly American phenomenon not a worldwide one.

And what was the point of that letter anyway?

Hat tip to MF for the links.

The Privy Council have indicated that if it wasn't for the Premier's lawyers - ahem, I mean the Commissioner of Police's lawyers - sandbagging the media by having an unannounced immediate hearing at the Privy Council once the Bermuda Court of Appeals rejected their appeal, that "it might have taken a good deal to persuade them that the Chief Justice erred in the exercise of his discretion, and that the Court of Appeal was wrong to dismiss the appeal."

Clearly the Government's lawyers are aware that their appeal faces almost certain rejection, which is why this was always really about buttoning up the press until after an election.

It also explains why I've been told that the Premier's taxpayer funded lawyers are already trying to delay the ultimate hearing of this before the Privy Council.

Taxpayer resources are now being used to protect conflicts of interest over the public interest.

Here's one for Glenn Jones, the Premier's press secretary, after his email gaffe which he tried to explain away as:

It was intended as an internal document but I accidentally sent it to some people in my address book and instead of trying to recall it I thought why not send it to everybody. In my view, it’s better out there in the public domain than in my desk drawer.

Or, as a reader pointed out, you can't recall yahoo email (and recall never works anyway), surely created a moment defined as below:

onosecond (ō-nō-sĕk'ənd)

1. (n.) The period of time one spends between pressing the send button and then realizing that they really shouldn’t have sent that e-mail message.

The legal correspondent reports in:

The Court of Appeals today gave the Government leave to apply to appeal to the Privy Council.

The Government then requested to stay the media injunction pending the Privy Council's decision to hear the case. The Court of Appeals rejected this request on the basis that they lacked the authority.

The Attorney General, who apparently has people in place working this in the UK before yesterday's ruling, then got the Privy Council to stay the media injunction.

The long and short of it is that the appeals process continues. No word yet on when the decision on whether to hear the appeal will be made, or any subsequent date for the actual appeal.

Isn't it telling that the only media outlets not named in the gag order injuction attempt and the threatened but unlikely to materialise libel suits are Hott 107.5 and Bermuda Network News (which displays a huge banner ad for Dr. Brown's clinic.

Although I don't listen to it I'm told that Hott has probably spent more time on this issue than any other media outlet, yet they aren't named in either legal action, while Bermuda Network News has generally skirted around the issue but doesn't get touched.

Meanwhile the Bermuda Sun and VSB, who never published or broadcast the original accusations get hooked into the legal action.

It's abundantly clear from the Premier's extensive interviews on Hott that he's only willing to address the scandal with affiliated media who won't ask the obvious questions and allow him to spin this thing into some Opposition led political media conspiracy.

I'm surprised the other media outlets haven't raised this obvious exclusion.

Well, the Premier today issued a strange press release that is essentially a declaration of war on the press.

Let's review the event that the Premier is trying to spin.

The Gazette evidently received a tip about a court case in the late 90's in California on which Dr. Brown and his wife were named as defendants.

So, doing as reporters do (just ask the Premier's press secretary and former Gazette reporter if he'd have followed that lead), they investigated and....didn't report on it, presumably because they found that the tip didn't have substance.

It happens all the time. That's called being a reporter.

In response, the Premier issues his own press release decrying the Gazette for NOT reporting a story. Damn them. Those responsible reporters!

What's really going on here is a preemptive strike, an attempt to get ahead of the bad news. Dr. Brown has been around long enough, and witnessed enough political scandals in the US I'm sure, to know that once serious allegations are finally aired that a deluge of bad news tends to follow, both because others now feel comfortable to come out of the woodwork to tell their stories, and because reporters feel that they now have the authorisation to dig a little harder than they otherwise would.

This was a pretty transparent attempt to try and frame any future bad news, of which more will almost certainly come, as some sort of unethical media assault, when it's nothing of the sort.

The truth is that Bermuda's press is quite tame and Bermuda's politicians (of any affiliation) aren't subjected to enough scrutiny.

Dr. Brown may be good at keeping a calm demeanor in the midst of a political crisis that is threatening his leadership despite the public denials (just read today's Bermuda Sun for a deluge of "he's got to go" stories), the reality is much more like that duck on a pond, gliding calmly on the surface but paddling furiously underneath.

Perhaps our Government should have attended the Conference on the Caribbean where some enlightened positions on the Freedom of the Press and scrutiny of public officials are being discussed:

"...in a democratic society public officials should not receive such special protection but rather be exposed to a higher degree of scrutiny so as to foster public debate and democratic oversight of their conduct," he said. "A more complex issue is how to handle forms of indirect pressure that are within the purview of the legitimate exercise of public responsibilities.

"Such as [when] under relatively equal conditions, all or most official news coverage is made available to media that support the government, or when legal government powers are used to silence the opposition media.

"What is at issue, is neither the letter of the law nor the right of the state to enforce it but rather the fact that, when this is done, a clear signal is being sent to the rest of the media causing self-censorship and fear."

Governments, he noted, also use the lack of access to public information as a mean of stifling freedom of expression. "No society can claim to be pluralist, tolerant, and rooted in justice and mutual respect if it fails to guarantee its citizens the right to elicit information regarding the work of public institutions, so that they can contribute to their improvement and thereby enhance the potential for democratic governance."

Now, where are we on Bermuda's Public Access to Information laws? Oh yeah. That initiative has gone AWOL while Government hires away as many independent journalists as they can to the Department of Communication and creates their own propaganda TV station, putting the PLP's former Public Relations Officer, and briefly the Premier's Press Secretary in a prominent content role.

Now, how does this happen?

The Gazette prints the "F" word but not the "S" word?

Oooooooooooooooppppppppppppppsssssssssss. Someone F'd up!

Thanks to reader JG for the tip.

[Aawww. Someone corrected it: "She said 'Give me that f***ing beer bitch."]

As promised earlier, here's the link to a recent Wall Street Journal (may need a subscription) editorial on the perils of libel suits, they've been known to bite back:

Pursuing a libel or slander suit has long been a dangerous enterprise. Oscar Wilde sued the father of his young lover Alfred Douglas for having referred to him as a "posing Somdomite" and wound up not only dropping his case but being tried, convicted and jailed for violating England's repressive laws banning homosexual conduct. Alger Hiss sued Wittaker Chambers for slander for accusing Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party with Chambers, and of illegally passing secret government documents to him for transmission to the Soviet Union. In the end, Hiss was jailed for perjury for having denied Chambers' claims before a grand jury.

More recently, British historian David Irving sued American scholar Deborah Lipstadt in England for having characterized him as a Holocaust denier and was ultimately so discredited in court that an English judge not only determined that he was indeed a Holocaust denier but an "antisemite" and "racist" as well.

I'm going to bed. So much for not posting today.

Gag order appeals hearing to resume tomorrow morning.

Bermuda Broadcasting Corporation workers have gone on strike and their stations (local produced (ie. not FM 89) are off the air.

Not sure of the specifics but I'm trying to find out.

Dr. Brown and Nelson Bascome today issued a libel suit against Bermuda's media over the unanswered allegations, described by the Chief Justice as "not gratuitous, in that there is some evidence to support them".

I'm interested in any legal interpretations of what this means, but the lawyer for the Bermuda Broadcasting Corporation seems to think that the timing of the suit suggests it was intended primarily as a method to keep in place the gag order rejected by the Chief Justice but sent to an immediate appeal process:

“It appears to be a ploy to hold up the proceedings today,” claimed Richard Horseman, who is representing the Bermuda Broadcasting Company.

After President Justice Zacca ruled that the appeal should begin despite the arguments of Ms Pearman and Mr. Richardson, Delroy Duncan, lawyer for the Commissioner and Attorney General, commenced legal arguments.

A widely read and very well respected industry publication - Global Reinsurance - today posted a breaking news story on the BHC scandal in the wake of the arrest of Bermuda's sole independent financial watchdog:

Bermuda’s auditor general Larry Dennis was arrested and detained overnight and police have executed a search warrant at his offices, reports Bermuda newspaper the Royal Gazette. He is the only watch dog for the voting public,and is protected by the constitution. The police are hoping to find out who stole the secret file about the investigation into alleged corruption at the BHC. The file apparently names several senior Bermuda government ministers, including premier Ewart Brown.

This is the latest in a series of political issues threatening the reinsurance paradise. New time limits on work permits, which could force out 10,000 guest workers, unpopular policies governing car ownership and concerns over freedom of speech have plagued the island over the past year.

This is not just a little localized scandal. This impacts on the very soul of our political and economic integrity and reputation.

Any legal beagles, or aspiring ones, can read the full judgment on the Government's attempt to issue a gag order against the media here (I apologise but several pages are scanned upside down, rotate the document, I didn't want to print and re-scan losing quality).

Money quote in conclusion:

33. On the other side of the balance there is the media's constitutional right to inform the public about serious allegations concerning important public figures. As the cases cited above illustrate, that is a weighty and powerful consideration. The allegations are not gratuitous, in that there is some evidence to support them, as set out in the material so far reported. Nor do the allegations concern the private personal life of those concerned. They touch upon their conduct in office. In those circumstances I think that that the public interest is genuinely engaged, and this is not a case of the public being officiously interested in matters which do not concern them. I think, therefore, that the balance comes down firmly against restraining the media's freedom expression. I consider that that is the case even at this interlocutory stage, it being hard to envisage what a full trial could add to the considerations already before the court.

Well said.

It is notable that the injuction is to prevent further information coming to light, because what has been published so far is "only a fraction of the contents".

My, my, my.

This just in. The gag order against the media has failed.

No word on if the Government will appeal.

Funny. No breaking news alert from the Bermuda Sun about the arrest and reported charging of a Government MP and former Cabinet Minister with what I understand to be Official Corruption and theft.

I get them all the time about pretty mundane stuff. Not this time.

And I love the story sourced with PLP insider's at the 'heart of the party' (ie. Dr. Brown loyalists) on how his shenanigans of the past week will have played well internally. Former Premier Alex Scott seems to disagree. I wonder how those corruption charges played?

Nothing over at Bermuda Network News either. But they do have a story that the PLP are going to complain to the Broadcasting Commission about the UBP's 3 minute broadcast. Much more important I know.

That banner ad from Dr. Brown's private clinic wouldn't have anything to do with it would it?

A reader writes:

This whole episode is surely taken from Yes Minister Volume 3 - The Bed of Nails? Leaks are from the top of Government and a Leak Enquiry never comes up with a culprit. It does however help in the pursuit of megalomaniac behavior.

As I wrote this morning, the press missed a whole week of chasing the right story by focusing on the phony constitutional crisis, which was clearly now just a smokescreen to buy a week for Dr. Brown to figure out how to shut this thing down.

And he thinks he has with the gag order issued against the local media. My understanding is that a hearing will take place on Wed/Thurs next week to rule on the enforceability of the gag order.

In the meantime the Mid Ocean and Royal Gazette and BBC have agreed not to publish or reprint the allegations against Dr. Brown, Nelson Bascome and the rest.

Big deal. Welcome to the world wide web, emphasis on world. Try and get an injunction against the internet.

So here we go. A reader sent in this email of all the questions that Dr. Brown and the rest of the implicated PLP MPs must answer, and so far have left conspicuously unanswered. It's quite simple really. Deny that the allegations have any substance and it could all just go away.

The cover up is always worse than the crime.

So without further ado, my reader lays it out:

All questions from the info at
Mid Ocean News: 'Police probe of abuses went as high as Cabinet', June 1, 2007
and
Mid Ocean News: 'Bruce was against this', 1 June, 2007

Questions for Premier Ewart Brown:

• Did you coerce BHC boss Raymonde Dill into buying your Flatts
property at a price you knew to be above market value?

• Did you fail to pay a $150,000 bill for renovation work carried out by BHC at your Flatts property before it was sold?

• Did you receive a $1,500 monthly consultancy fee from Zane DeSilva's company Island Construction Services without doing any consultancy work? Why did you allegedly ask for cheques to be made payable to you personally, rather than to Bermuda Healthcare Services, the company that was supposed to be doing the work?

• Did you agree to receive a 5% share of an estimated $1.65 million profit from a deal between the Government and Island Environmental Management to ship asbestos to Cuba?

• Did you have some of the cedar beams from the St. George's post office installed in your home?

• Did Zane DeSilva bury approximately $422,000 worth of costs incurred in the building of your house in a BHC housing project? If so, when did you become aware of this?

• Question for former Telecommunications Minister Renee Webb: did you have renovations done to your home that were paid for by the BHC?

• Did former Housing Minister Nelson Bascome order BHC boss Raymonde Dill to award BHC contracts to certain builders, including one who allegedly provided the Minister a Fairylands apartment free of charge? If so, when did you become aware of this?

• After the BHC investigation was wound up, the PLP Government
promised to strengthen Bermuda's anti-corruption legislation. When
will you be doing this?

I'm sure others will come up with more. Send them in and I'll post them.

Yep. They're running scared and have something to hide.

The Attorney General has taken an injuntion out against the media:

My Chambers will employ all legal means to stop the Mid Ocean News and any other publication from printing or speaking additional content from the stolen investigative documents.

A word of advice. The cover up is ALWAYS worse than the crime.

When will Bermuda's media wake up and cover the real story here?

The story isn't some manufactured constitutional crisis.

The REAL story is serious and supported allegations of clearly unethical and arguably unprosecuted criminal behaviour under Section 111 (Official Corruption) of the Criminal Code.

Which reporter is going to stick a tape recorder or a mic in front of Dr. Brown, Nelson Bascome et al and ask them to confirm or deny the allegations of kickbacks, consulting agreements, abuses of power and positon etc.?

Who is it going to be?

Several very, very important quotes in today's Gazette story on the threats to a free press and the consitutional brinkmanship courtesy of the Premier (emphasis mine):

He said members of the news team filmed the officers as they searched and that media outlets outside Bermuda, including in the States, were interested in the footage due to the potential constitutional crisis brewing between the Premier and Governor.

“We are going to get many inquiries if this matter doesn’t die down.”

Mr. Richardson said he viewed the raid as unacceptable and a threat to journalists and the principle of freedom of information.

“It (the raid) was very disturbing when we are trying to get to the bottom of a story. We don’t particularly invite a battle with the Police. We are not inviting that.”

A source within the Police described the pressure being put on the media as “unproductive and very dangerous”.

“It’s a very slippery slope,” said the insider. “In any balanced society there are checks and balances. There is only one body that can check the Police and that’s the courts, no one else. That’s what the media need to be looking at.”

The media can't lose sight of the core of this scandal: The allegations must be answered.

The police today executed (or attempted to) a search warrant today on the offices of Bermuda Broadcasting Company.

A friend and journalist makes a fair point on my rant about Bermuda's timid media:

thank God you're keeping on top of things...and pointing out the incredibly long list of lies, deceptions and other outrages!. I agree 100 per cent with everything you said about the timid newspapers, editorializing headlines etc..... except for this: "Bermuda's press corps is simply timid; there is simply no comparison between our press and that of other western democracies." From my experience, almost every small paper in every small community is timid, biased, shallow, full of unquestioned press releases etc. Bermuda's standards are far higher than most places of similar size. You're right, though, that our standards are terrible and ought to be 1000 per cent better!

Keep it up!

This, is an terribly irresponsible and prejudicial headline in Saturday's Royal Gazette:

"Premier turns the tables on Dunkley"

Whether the Premier managed to turn the tables on Michael Dunkley or not (and I'd argue he didn't for some obvious reasons), that headline has no place in a newspaper other than above an opinion column. That headline was incredibly irresponsible.

That kind of statement is something better suited for the editorial page, but certainly not a headline, and certainly not the lead story. In fact, if you read the story, the article itself gets it right, it's the headline that is the problem:

Dr. Ewart Brown attempted to turn the tables on the UBP by pointing to Mr. Dunkley’s control of Bermuda’s milk supply.

Attempted is the key word.

Then there's the appalling lack of follow-up on the obvious shortcomings of the Premier's desperate redirection from the un-tendered handing of a million dollar government contract to his cousin.

If the media continue to publicise the Premier's attacks while he avoids the requisite scrutiny that comes with it by declaring any legitimate question a Plantation Question, why should he ever respond to their questions.

The press should stop behaving like his public relations agency until he upholds his side of the bargain. But of course, the Royal Gazette is the UBP's newspaper. Right?

The ultimate irony of all this is of course that as I listened to Parliament on Friday on the Motion to Adjourn, when the Premier was trying to discredit the UBP's Grant Gibbons, he repeatedly referred to issues reported by "His (Grant Gibbons's) newspaper".

A headline like Saturday's is simply irreconcilable with the tired argument that the Royal Gazette is pro-UBP. I'm tired of saying it, but I'll say it again, contrast the Royal Gazette's aggressive coverage of the UBP's internal problems of a couple of disgruntled members (Jamahl Simmons and Gwyneth Rawlins) and the soft peddling of the current standoff between the Premier and his party's entire branch structure. There simply is no comparison.

Other than the Mid Ocean News, which has a history of aggressive reporting against either party (remember McDonald's in the late 90s and Independence under the UBP), Bermuda's press corps is simply timid; there is simply no comparison between our press and that of other western democracies.

The Royal Gazette and other media outlets have been bullied to such an extent that they tip-toe around the PLP, rather than fight back against the baseless attacks on their integrity.

How, for example, the mainstream press can ignore the Premier's conflict of interest in developing healthcare policy and closing a public clinic while he operates a private one, and his declaration of intent to open a private hospital in Bermuda, while developing the plan for the rebuilding of KEMH, is simply beyond me.

The conflicts of interest are astounding, and would simply not be tolerated in other countries.

Again, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you CANNOT have a public figure operating private interests while developing public policy in the same area.

And, if it isn't abundantly clear yet, the Health Minister is the public front for the Premier who is driving healthcare policy in Bermuda, and that is an appalling breach of public confidence.

Now, I know that as we enter election season this "UBP newspaper" meme is going to be trotted out repeatedly, but it fails the most simple tests of credibility...notwithstanding whatever historical biases the Royal Gazette might have had.

The fact is that if you look at the media machine that surrounds the PLP, courtesy of the taxpayers at Government Information Services, and also the Premier's personal Press Secretary, it's almost entirely staffed by former Royal Gazette reporters.

Evidently the bias isn't that much of concern when it comes to hiring away the Gazette's 'biased' reporting corp on a regular basis. And let's not forget that as the Government hires away as many Bermudian reporters as they can, that means that more reporters will be expats, which means that Government has a very strong measure of control over the local media and the independence of their coverage.

Now, onto the content of the Premier's misdirection on the Bermuda Emissions Control scandal:

The first problem is that there is simply no comparison between Government creating a monopoly through an un-tendered secretive process and a private company providing a product which any entrepreneur could (and does) compete with. And to state the obvious, the Marketplace recently began to offer milk sales - so the market is open - and from what I know of Dunkley's Dairy, they sell many non-milk beverages that compete with other distributors.

Secondly, the Premier states that Michael Dunkley's dairy business has "a competitive edge protected by UBP-inspired legislation". Shouldn't the Premier have been challenged to identify a) specifically what legislation that would be b) when was it passed; Dunkley's has been in business for around 100 years from what I can tell and the UBP is less than 40 years old.

And of course, as in any case when criticism hits close to home and can't be refuted on the facts, Dr. Plantation brings race into the mix:

"His former Opposition Leader was running the country’s finances when Ministers were permitted to hide their bounty under the guise of trusts. Perhaps these examples illustrate the racial double standard recent defectors of the UBP have warned us about. Well, I’m not fooled by this racial double standard and neither is the public."

Nice try. We've been down this road before when the Premier, during his racist dog tirade, accused Grant Gibbons of setting up a trust while Telecommunications Minister, and it was categorically denied by Dr. Gibbons. Dr. Brown not surprisingly never backed up his claims with specifics. But why should he in the face of such a timid press corps?

The Bermuda Sun editorialises as usual in their reporting today, this time on UBP leader Michael Dunkley:

[Dr. Brown's] nemesis, politically speaking, is dairy owner Michael Dunkley, an affluent man, who has attempted to downplay his privileged background by calling himself 'the milkman'.

Actually, I'll go out on a limb here and hazard a guess that "The Milkman" is probably because his family run Bermuda's dairy and their name is on the side of every milk carton in Bermuda.

And then there's the catch phrase of "The Milkman delivers". It designed to be memorable, not down play a reporter's prejudices.

There's privilege, and then there's hard work. Sometimes it's not easy to distinguish between the two, and sometimes one is used as a political device to cancel out the other.

I wouldn't call losing your father as a teenager and having to step into the family business by showing up at the dairy at 3AM privileged. I'd call that understanding the value of hard work and supporting your family. Two extremely appealing traits.

Let's leave the caricatures to the cartoonists and the opining to the editorial pages.

The Bermuda Sun is so shamelessly pandering to the PLP that it really has become embarrassing.

Today is the second time that they've put a real live UBP candidate announcement in the 'Island Briefs' section, while giving a big splashy article to someone in the PLP who has just 'thrown their hat into the ring'.

Compare the treatment of candidates:

For the PLP:

Huge Bermuda Sun splashes, with multi-day front page treatment for rumoured white candidates (gasp!) - aka FOEs (Friends of Ewart) - Zane De Silva and Jane Correia, a big article on Ianthia Wade maybe being selected, today an article on Walter Roban wanting to be a candidate, all written in this gushing "wow they have such a huge pool of candidates" tone. (Way to buy the PR spin).

And then there's the UBP:

The announcements of real-live-in-a-constituency-not-waiting-to-be-selected-candidates Austin Warner and now Donte Hunt get a couple of lines in the Island Briefs.

Yesterday's announced candidate Donte Hunt for example is running in a constituency that is a must win for the UBP - an area decided by 8 votes in 2003. You think it would warrant more than the 'Island Briefs'.

It's pretty sad really. It's one thing for a paper to have a philosophical bent on the political spectrum, it's another to act as a PR agency.

Hilarious Hector in the Gazette today.

My favourite is the bit about Gary Moreno's lead-off question to Michael Dunkley in the UBP's TV interview a week ago:

Hector tuned into watch the Milkman, or Michael Dunkley as he used to be known before he chose his own ludicrous nickname, deliver his first address to the nation from one of his own living rooms. While it may have been a bit more coherent than stumbling Wayne-speak, Hector was rather perplexed to see Milky fluff a question which seemed to have been thought up by an eight-year-old before being given to ZBM journo Gary Moreno to deliver. Mr. Moreno wanted to know why the UBP hadn’t followed through on its 2003 promise to build 100 low rent homes at Tudor Hill. “Good question” said the Milkman strangely, before failing to deliver a remotely good answer. Clearly emboldened Mr. Moreno came back on the same tack and it was left to Deputy Leader Pat Gordon-Pamplin to point out that it was in fact a rather silly question in that Oppositions aren’t allowed to run off and do their own projects unless they wanted to get into the business of squatting on Government property and diverting Government funds. However, given the Government’s inability to complete even one major house building project in nearly nine years of being in power, maybe the PLP are secretly hoping the Opposition resort to anarchy to help solve the housing crisis.

Michael was being far too nice. The real response to the question was not "Good question", but "That's the most idiotic question I've ever been asked."

But it didn't end there, with Mr. Moreno trying to play a little game of gotcha, spouting imprecise questions fed to him by Jamahl Simmons - the guy who can't move on after crashing out - about who voted for whom in the UBP's leadership vote and then following up the next day trying to suggest Dunkely was lying.

He wasn't. You just need to phrase your questions a little better, and not take everything Jamahl spews at face value.

From what I hear, Mr. Moreno's boss Rick Richardson has tired of Jamahl's act, calling in and tying him in knots yesterday on Cromwell Shakir's new weekly radio show on 1340 yesterday, where Jamahl was peddling his usual nonsense about why his branch got fed up with him.

KJAZ 98.1FM (said in a deep baritone please) has asked me to let you know that the topic on today's talk show with Civil Service chief Kenneth Dill is anything related to voter registration and Parliamentary procedures.

If you've got a question you'd like answered then Mr. Dill is the man, not "The Man", but the man today.

1PM - 2PM is the time slot on 98.1FM.

The Royal Gazette changed software providers for their website this weekend, which has had the impact of breaking every link on my blog back to the Gazette, which is most.

I'm not sure how to fix this right now, or if there even is a fix.

The main address remains www.theroyalgazette.com.

Here are links to the coverage of yesterday's micro-protest by the Bermuda Sun and the Royal Gazette. Other than the Gazette running a front page photo declaring my employer's name, I think the coverage reasonable.

I thank the Bermuda Sun (who I've been hard on lately) for obscuring my employer's name.

On a related note, while taking issue with the Gazette putting this guy on the front page, I guess I could have used some perspective. Evidently I was a little too close to the subject matter because a number of people have emailed me with the observation that this guy is so clueless that he can't see the irony in holding a sign with the term 'media whore' while media whoring.

While we're on the topic of media whores, I admit that I've probably introduced a new phrase into the local vernacular, but it's not a term I coined; it's been around for awhile in the US - and I admit I have a fond spot for it.

A media whore is essentially someone constantly mugging for the camera:

1. A person who has a psychological need to get into TV, Film, Radio or Print.

2. A person who becomes aroused almost sexually by seeing or hearing themselves or about themselves in the media.

Hence my use of the term; one which, at the risk of stating the obvious, is of course race neutral.

I find it absolutely appropriate in the context I used it (Dr. Brown pre-announcing the PGA Grand Slam event, and Dr. Brown sending out a press release about a funeral he would be speaking at).

Give me a break.

Two guys, both of shall we say questionable character, show up outside my job yesterday with stupid signs for an hour and the Royal Gazette gives them a front page photo declaring my employer's name - exactly what they wanted.

Come on. I even walked right past these guys noses on purpose, and they didn't even recognise me. They had no clue who I was and I guarantee you they aren't blog readers.

The PLP should condemn yesterday's 'protest'. But they won't. This is exactly what they've decried for decades - people's livelihoods being threatened for political speech and political choice.

There are a few things that I don't understand in the very pro-PLP press coverage that we're being treated to of late.

Firstly, how can there be so little follow-up on the resignation of a Cabinet Minister who appears to be on the verge of facing criminal charges arising from an investigation by the Police's Fraud Squad?

Secondly, other than a brief reference in last week's Mid Ocean News article, why won't the press report on the glaring conflict that Dr. Brown has in shutting down the Medical Clinic, when the private clinic he owns stands to benefit? That direct financial link is worth it's own media investigation. The Royal Gazette even ran a comment from Dr. Brown over the weekend but didn't appear to get into his potential direct financial benefit from closing the public clinic.

Thirdly, why has no-one gone to get the Premier's comments on the Immigration dispute that is going to the Supreme Court?

Fourthly, can someone put the brakes on the PLP-lovefest over at the Bermuda Sun? They're not even hiding their bias anymore.

The Sun ignored Dr. Brown's racial attack on Grant Gibbons; they're running op-eds by the Premier's "consultant" on race (which, to quote UBP Senator Bob Richards is like putting Jeffrey Dahmer in charge of the Vienna Boys Choir), where he repeatedly trots out patent falsehoods on the taxpayers dime in the name of an 'honest' discussion of race; and they shamelessly pandered with a series of puff pieces on Dr. Brown's sartorial elegance.

A little balance would be helpful.

What is the editor at the Bermuda Sun thinking running a headline like this:

"Has Planning lost its balls?"

Firstly, it's in bad taste for a reputable news organisation.

Secondly, the whole 'balls'/testicular fortitude sayings are more than a little sexist, implying that only men can be tough.

Good article. Dumb headline.

The Royal Gazette's latest poll makes for interesting reading, but for crying out loud can they not lay these trends out in a few graphs? Come on. Get with the program!

A lot has occurred since the last poll, including Dr. Brown's racial tirade in Parliament, and the UBP's internal meltdown.

So from a first quick read of the poll it's interesting that although the UBP's support has declined substantially, and probably not surprisingly, the PLP and Dr. Brown have not capitalised on that.

The support that has left the UBP has not shifted to the PLP.

Wayne Furbert's position has to be extremely tenuous right now. The hits just keep on coming.

Also interestingly, and somewhat reassuringly for those of us who've always pegged Dr. Brown as divisive, the Premier's favourability has declined, although only slightly, in the face of his counterpart's disastrous few months. Even more significantly, a number of the unfavourable metrics around him have increased.

I've always felt that he has a major trust issue with the public, which is a large negative that is pretty fixed and really won't move. Most people's opinion's on him are set.

Dr. Brown's initial favourability rating after he took office was not really that high, at 54%. A bigger bounce would have been expected after such positive press and a larger than expected defeat of Alex Scott.

Compound that with the poll revealing that those who view him unfavourably has increased, and it would seem that his first few months haven't won many people over. I would presume that his confrontational style with the UK, his attack on Grant Gibbons in Parliament and his desire to pave over the island aren't endearing him to too many people. He can throw as many millions as he wants at sports and social clubs, but I can't see his numbers moving up much.

Make no mistake, the PLP and Dr. Brown are in the driver's seat. But as I've said before he is by no means invincible. The problem is that the UBP is a mess right now and needs to sort things out quickly.

The story of this poll to me is the UBP. They're losing ground, while the opportunity to gain is there; the public remain unimpressed with the Governing PLP, regardless of their Premier.

Friday's Dr. Brown love fest at the Bermuda Sun (see here, here, here, here and here) was a little embarrassing. I guess they couldn't wait for Valentine's Day.

Consider this:

Which story received front page treatment and which was buried on page six: Dr. Brown's leisure suit and his dog or the appalling results in Education?

I don't need to answer that for you.

The Bermuda Sun hearts Dr. Brown.

But seriously, remember how on Friday I pointed out that Dr. Brown has a habit of upstaging his Ministers on the fluffy photo-ops yet hangs them out to dry with the bad news?

Well, check this out:

Does that mean the Bermuda Football Association is about to get what it's been asking for to help raise the standard of the game here?

Dr. Brown says he doesn't want to "steal the minister's thunder" and that we can expect an announcement next week.

Uh, you just stole the Minister's thunder. Mark down another.

I even hear he's out cutting another ribbon in St. George's today.

Because I don't want to be accused of being negative, I must complement Doc. Hollywood on the Robert Bassett painting hanging over his sofa. I have the same print in my house.

I'm not sure if this is the website for Government's new TV station - I don't think it is - discussed in today's Royal Gazette Editorial, but Onion TV is live and apparently going on Cablevision.

Not much there right now.

[UPDATE: This would appear to NOT be the Government station, but a separate project.]

Sometimes, you've just got to believe in karma.

After the Bermuda Broadcasting Company's Gary Moreno gave Phil over at Limey in Bermuda a hard time over a rapidly deleted phony post under his name (resulting in Phil implementing comment moderation) the Bermuda Sun ran an article on the non-issue... before having to apologise for a comment posted on their site shortly thereafter.

And now, the karmic forces are at work with Gary Moreno apologising on last night's ZBM/ZFB news broadcast, for ZBM having reported earlier in the day that Chesterfield Johnson, convicted murderer of Connie Furtado, had died...except he hadn't.

Talk about checking your sources! Having to apologise to a convicted child murder takes the cake.

Sweet justice indeed.

The storm in a tiny teacup being manufactured over at Limey in Bermuda continues, over my post calling for disclosure, specifically that of the Royal Gazette's pollster who is a close relative of the Premier.

What's so odd to me is the implication that asking someone to disclose their potential conflicts means you're suggesting dishonesty or impugning their integrity.

Which is, if I may be blunt, a bizarre assertion that essentially kills any progress on disclosure.

Disclosure and integrity are not binary, quite the opposite in fact. Calling for disclosure does not imply dishonesty on the other party, but that's both the spin and the excuse.

Of course, if you accept that then any call for disclosure could always be countered with the claim that you're suggesting the other person is dishonest. But that twisted logic means we'll never get anywhere.

The fact of the matter is that modern societies and modern political systems mandate extensive disclosure for their elected and aspiring candidates, and parties who wish to trade with the Government. The US Senate just approved a bipartisan (imagine that) bill creating an online database for all Government contracts so that the public can see who gets what and from who and what there connections are.

Check out opensecrets.org if you're interested in campaign finance disclosure.

In Bermuda we have secret arbitrations, Public Accounts Committees held in private, MPs who require athletes representing Bermuda to be drug tested but not politicians representing Bermuda and political fundraising that is completely off the radar screen and is about to exploited to its fullest with massive foreign corporate influence over our Premier.

All this because we're engaged in some sort of 'they did it' politics of retribution. I'll defer to the ever reliable Smoking Gun at Limey in Bermuda:

The problem lies in the fact that most PLP supporters cannot accept that the members of today's opposition might have very little to do with what was going on 30 years ago...

So let's start anew. Full disclosure for all. No more inside deals...

Most importantly - just because someone points out that it might be in the best interest of all to know that someone is related doesn't mean they are suggesting corruption. But if there is a desire to hide the facts that friends & relatives are participating or benefitting from decisions made and contracts offered then yes corruption would be a possible conclusion. Or at the very least, flagrant nepotism.

As I said before, the spin is that "integrity trumps disclosure" while I maintain that integrity mandates disclosure.

From the guy who temporarily streamed Parliament over the internet, Doug De Douto's latest offering is an RSS feed he created for the Royal Gazette's website as well as aggregating Bermuda's blogs and websites into a shared Google Reader site. (you can get the aggregated feed here rather than visit the site)

Bless you Doug!

I use Bloglines to pick up my feeds, although there are many others.

"Hear ye, hear ye. Today, I, William J. S. Zuill, Editor of The Royal Gazette, do proclaim that June 7th, 2006 be David Burch Day. O yea, o yea, o yeah."

Or something like that, pardon the butchering of Town Crier-ese.

The political neutron bomb that is PLP Sen. Burch achieved a rare feat today, 3 front page lede stories...covering a range of offensive offenses:

1) the attacks on the selectors of the new Regiment Commanding Officer
2) the attacks on the auditor
3) the Broadcast Commission's ruling on the "House N**gers" attack

Well done. That's hard to duplicate.

I must say that when I heard last night that the Broadcast Commission had ruled against Sen. Burch's "House N**ger" slur I thought I'd be eating crow after ruling any rebuke out.

But it was a pretty mild rebuke so the jury is still out. I'll start marinating the crow, but it's too early to start cooking it.

The ruling that Sen. Burch violated the 'spirit' of the Broadcast Act rather than the act itself, seems to be the laying of the ground work for letting him off the hook. I hope to be proven wrong.

And who's writing the press releases lately for these commissions, or did the Broadcast Commission decide to emulate the Human Rights Commission and have a go at Pat Gordon-Pamplin?

Both commissions couldn't bring themselves to deal solely with the offense itself, but decided to cast aspersions on the complainant(s) as a way to provide some political cover for the rabid Senator.

The ball should be over to Alex Scott now. Surely he's got to know that Sen. Burch is a loose cannon, a disgrace and a liability. So why's he keeping him in Cabinet?

Lack of better options, which is a pretty sad indictment, or is he necessary to hold together his fragile governing coalition?

From the horse's mouth:

“We did mislead you before Thursday by posing as a united front on Tuesday. We did mislead you - individually and collectively - on Thursday at the polls by smiling and being quiet about our level of discontent with the leadership and our intended action on Thursday evening.

“We misled you because we had to - because our greatest goal before Thursday was for the Party to win the election.

Dr. Ewart Brown, July 28, 2003

versus

He told the public meeting: “I will always tell the truth. I might not tell all of it.”

Dr. Ewart Brown, Feb. 22, 2006

Further comment unnecessary.

The absurdity of Dr. Brown's latest tirade against the media (for actually asking him challenging questions) is that what he's trying to create is his own little media plantation. He's trying to become the master of Bermuda's media, ruling over a field of journalists who serve his interests with no voice of their own.

But the relationship between politicians and the press doesn't work that way. It's a marriage of convenience, where news organisations cover political parties staged public relations exercises (and if you haven't noticed, Thursdays have become the weekly press conference day - 3 papers are printed on a Friday with the broadcast media tending to repeat Friday's news all weekend) but expect in return some back and forth on their own issues.

Our Transport Minister however seems to have developed a fondness for one way streets. There's an easy solution for all this. It's quite simple really, as plain as the brown noses he looks for on the media's faces: the press should stop showing up when he calls a press conference.

That'll fix it.

Ahh, the soothing and reassuring tones of a PLP MP's rant against a) the media and b) whitey.

The only variation in this week's installment of the media conspiracy is that for surely the first time in Bermuda, and perhaps world politics, a member of the Government used the term "man-boy". Not normally a phrase I expect to hear from the second in command (scary I know) of a country.

The irony of this is that Bermuda's media are a bunch of pussy cats, Mid Ocean News excluded, exteremely deferential to the Government of the day and rarely confrontational in their questioning.

But Dr. Brown knows that. He's an American, where the press can be quite aggressive, although perhaps not as much so as the UK press.

With all this talk of media bias and plantations, in addition to the millions of dollars being thrown at the problems the PLP have ignored and exacerbated over the past 7 years, one can be forgiven for getting that itchy feeling that ground work is being laid for an election.

It's all so 2003.

But I thought he was a private citizen discussing non-political topics?

So how does Mr. Burch explain his use of the term "We" when dismissing the Berkeley "Death Trap" allegation on his radio talk show Sunday Night:

Last night Sen. Burch said: "Much has been written about the new secondary school and its preparedness. "Certainly we shall provide a full and frank explanation shortly, but I could not let this opportunity pass without a brief comment."

I've also been told that Sen. Burch interviewed the Finance Minister (who ended the show with a rant against anticipated criticism).

And he has the nerve to call The Mid Ocean News a rag?

While perusing the Royal Gazette's website I just noticed that they've added a new section entitled "Gazette Video" which currently includes video of the Budget press conference and Sen. Burch ducking and weaving on the Berkeley "Death Trap" story.

Ordinarily Government would give anything for the headline in today's Royal Gazette:

Affordable and available

Unfortunately it was about drugs and not housing. What a difference a little context makes.

It's a good thing this blog is written and not spoken, because for once I'm speechless.

The hypocrisy is simply astounding, and the Mid Ocean News was kind enough to lay it out in adjacent articles.

Read it and weep:

- PLP Cabinet Minister and Senator David Burch's political radio talk show = a great thing - direct communication with the masses - no conflict of interest.

- PLP PR Officer Scott Simmons and a PLP Cabinet Minister Wayne Perinchief sit on the Broadcasting Commission (which regulates political broadcast) = no conflict of interest

- PLP Senator and Chairperson of the Bermuda College Raymond Tannock participates in the decision to try and block Bermuda College employee Gina Spence's appointment to the Senate = no conflict of interest, doesn't recuse himself

- the newly appointed UBP Senator Gina Spence, who runs a radio talk show with Bermuda College students, that has not been political = conflict of interest, has the last broadcast stopped and is told that it could be used inappropriately for political purposes

If people sit back and say nothing we deserve exactly what we're getting.

After having further discussions with a few lawyerly types it would seem that the Political Broadcast Directions that I discussed yesterday - and how they would apply to Senator Burch's radio talk show - are open to a substantial amount of interpretation.

I've heard a range of opinions on how they may or may not apply, and don't think at this point that I could point to any real consensus, nor have the 2003 amendments ever been tested.

But, as one reader pointed out to me this morning, the PLP's track record of respect for the regulations surrounding political broadcasts isn't a good one:

"I might be a bit off-point, but I sometimes wonder whether the PLP ever paid the $300,000 they were supposed to cough up after Jennifer Smith ran a 30-min one-sided policitical broadcast. I think it was in early 2001 or thereabouts."

The reader is correct. Jennifer Smith ran a televised speech that was paid for by the taxpayers yet subsequently deemed to be political due to its partisan nature and attacks. The party, under then Premier Jennifer Smith, never saw fit to do the honourable thing and reimburse the taxpayers as directed (of which I'm unsure of the amount).

You're surprised?

I've been thinking about and discussing with a few people the implications of the statement made by David Burch that he has no intention of giving up his Sunday night radio talk show on HOTT 107.5FM now that he's a Senator.

Mr. Burch obviously is aware that if his show is deemed 'political' that he has much less wiggle room, hence his statement on VSB that most of the stuff he deals with isn't political, which is absurd if you've had the misfortune of tuning in.

Regardless, there are a couple of problems with this. Let's start with the obvious:

1) As a Cabinet Minister Sen. Burch operates under collective responsibility. Hence, when he speaks he speaks for Cabinet and any statement that he makes - and he's come up with some pretty offensive ones - represents all his colleagues and the Government of Bermuda. I struggle to believe that his colleagues are going to want him free-wheeling every Sunday night as he has been for the past few months.

2) From a legal perspective having a politician running a weekly radio talk show could run afoul, or at least test the limits, of the Political Broadcast Directions 1980 and their subsequent amendments in 2003.

I discussed some of this with a lawyer friend who provided the following comments - after a preliminary read of the act and amendments, so take it with a grain of salt:

The issue seems to boil down to the paragraphs 2 and 4C of Directions.

If the show is a political broadcast, then he would have to comply with all of rules relating to such broadcasts. The definition of 'political broadcast', as per paragraph 2, as amended, is:

"....a broadcast of a political nature the subject of which is designed to promote the view or interests of-

(a) a political party, a political organization, a person, or a group of persons which is not recognized as a party or organization;

(b) a member of the Legislature in that capacity; or

(c) a candidate, without equal time being given to promote contrary interests or views".

Arguably, Burch's show falls within the ambit of (a), (b) and (c).

The get out is paragraph 4C of the Directions:

"(1) Undertakings shall ensure that the reporting of news and public affairs is factual, is presented objectively and is without political bias.

.......................(4) Nothing contained in sub-paragraph (1) shall be construed as preventing an undertaking from broadcasting political commentary, so however, that

(a) the commentary is identified as being political; and

(b) an opportunity is given to the public, either contemporaneously with the broadcast or in a subsequent broadcast, to comment upon the commentary.".


'Political Commentary' is defined in paragraph 2 as:

"political commentary" means a broadcast of a political nature the subject of which is designed to promote public discussion and debate of political issues and includes political debates between political candidates or individuals with opposing views, news commentaries and talk shows;".

His show certainly falls within the definition of 'political commentary' (....." broadcast of a political nature the subject of which is designed to promote public discussion and debate of political issues"), BUT it may be possible to argue that it doesn't comply with 4C(4)b): "an opportunity is given to the public, either contemporaneously with the broadcast or in a subsequent broadcast, to comment upon the commentary".

I haven't listened to the show, but I have heard from several people who have that if you call in and disagree or offer opposing views you can expect to get cut-off and/or abused.

If this is the case, I do not think that it could accurately be said that the public is given the opportunity to 'comment upon the commentary' - this may make the show subject to censure by the Broadcast Commissioners and, certainly, he would have to change the show in order to give dissenting voices an opportunity to be heard.

I have listened to the show; dissenting opinions are not entertained and the guest list is decidedly one sided.

Political broadcasts are regulated differently depending on the period (oddly the closer you get to an election the less you can broadcast), but things like equal time and response for the Opposition, as well as Burch's show using up Government time could get sticky.

I'm going to sit down and re-read the act and amendments tonight to see if there are any other implication. But I'm not a lawyer, so I'd be interested in any other comments/interpretations that anyone might have.

Just click the "feedback" link at the end of this post and send me a note. Anonymity will of course be protected.

It hasn't gone unnoticed, by me at least, that since Dr. Brown emerged about a month ago from his Pay to Play bunker, he's been very active on the photo-op circuit.

It also hasn't gone unnoticed, by me at least, that the press has given Dr. Brown a free pass in not using these opportunities to pursue answers to the myriad of outstanding questions over his pay to play shenanigans.

So, in the spirit of providing some incentive for our reporters to, if I may borrow a phrase from Doc Brown himself "display their testicular fortitude", I'm issuing an open challenge to the media (Mid Ocean News excluded, their fortitude isn't in dispute):

Dinner for two (sorry VSB, I couldn't resist) for the first reporter to use Dr. Brown's next contrived self-promotional photo-op to challenge him with a serious, probing question on the pay for play scandal ... and produce the results in a print article or on their broadcast.

No freebie's please. A real, tough question. Persistent and aggressive follow-ups get a nice bottle of wine.

The Bermuda Sun seems to have picked up Fred Barritt (of Not the Um Um fame) as a columnist, and a good one at that.

His first column on Independence cut through the BS to address the real question, which is not can we go Independent, but should we. He nailed the question, and the answer.

This week he penned a highly entertaining piece on the pay for play scandal and the quality of representation and our representatives.

He generated more than a few chuckles with some lines I wish I'd come up with.

The Sun has done well to pick up such an entertaining writer. Mr. Barritt's column is one more reason to look forward to Fridays.

If you need a good long laugh check out today's Royal Gazette, p. 30, bottom left corner.

You might have noticed that I can gain or drop a lot of weight in the week which passes between publications of my RG columns! In light of this I'm changing the by-line of my column to 'Opinion by Fatboy Slim'.

Today's photo (if you read the print version) is my alter ego - stern chubby Christian. Last week, was happy slim Christian*. This way people can't spot me on the street, it's very helpful. Maybe the editor uses stern chubby me to go with certain columns and happy slim me for others. It helps set the tone.

* Stern chubby Christian is a file photo taken in July for the 2003 election, while happy slim Christian was taken a couple of months ago.

One last comment, well maybe not my last but another, on that Letter to the Editor today.

I have little doubt that this letter is a classic example of the Bermudian version of Astroturf Activism/Organising. What is that you ask? Let me explain.

Astroturf Activism has been going on in the US (and Bermuda) for years, but is much less sophisticated here and in this case blatantly obvious - which defeats its whole purpose. When done properly it's very effective, but when you see a gushing shameless letter like today it doesn't work.

Let's start with the US. Lobbying has been refined to both an art-form and a multi-million dollar industry in the US, it's taken over K Street in DC. Any organisation can find a lobbyist to work the halls of power and try and gain a favourable reception for their interests. But lobbyists are a dime (or a few hundred grand) a dozen and usually represent specific corporate interests or an interest group. Think Enron/Halliburton or the Sierra Club/Planned Parenthood for different extremes on the continuum.

Organisations figured out some time ago that what really gets the attention of a politician is when an issue matters to their constituents. Once the calls start coming in from the home district the Senator or Congressman really pays attention. So the question from interest groups became "I wish we could buy some of that?".

Well, it turns out you can. Astroturf organising involves political consultants providing services to simulate grass roots interest in an issue. They setup phone banks, cutely named interest groups (Citizens For Higher Emissions), letter writing campaigns, media blitzes, all intended to apply pressure interpreted as genuine grass roots action - not the shady balance sheet driven corporate interest type of lobbying.

Ok. On to Bermuda.

Bermuda lacks a full-time political industry of professional consultants etc.. It's almost entirely volunteer based other than the actual politicians themselves, who are mostly part-time. So Astroturfing here is a little different, and until today, probably not really noticed, making it pretty successful. In Bermuda unlike the US it's generally aimed at convincing the voters not the MPs.

If you listen to the talk shows alot you're in the area that the PLP have cornered quite well as their astroturf. They've got a core group of party activits who get the talking points on an issue and call in constantly, parrotting the message of the day as if they're just random Bermudian, some are self-appointed experts but the effect is the same. This was done particularly well in the run-up to the 1998 election. The talk shows aren't nearly as PLP friendly lately but the UBP has almost no presence there.

In the print media, the Letters to the Editor page is where this mainly goes on. A party worker or politician writes a bunch of letters on an issue or about themselves and then finds a constituent to sign it, either for attributed or anonymous publication.

People read the letters and say:
"Wow, Politician X is doing a great job. He/she is getting all this grass roots support."

or

"people are really for/against this issue judging from the Letters to the Editor".

If a politician needs to project an image of being a hard working man of the people who's notching up accomplishments, you get a letter like today. If they want to attack another position or person then they send out the attack dogs with anonymous letters all around the same theme. Simulating this grass roots support helps convince others in a way a politician or the parties couldn't.

So, in the case of today's letter, I'd bet that (another multiple choice question for you):

a) the letter writer is a die-hard PLP member posing as random constituent at Dr. Brown's direction
b) the Doc is starting a little letter writing campaign of his own to try and rehabilitate his reputation for an opportunistic run at the weakened Premier
c) an election might not be that far off (more on that in a later post).
d) all of the above

As an aside, there's also 'grass tops' activism which would be getting a bunch of community/corporate leaders to all publicly endorse/support and initiative.

Anyway, as the PLP have lost their grass roots appeal and support you can expect to see lots more Astroturfing, probably not as crude as today's example.

A little subtlety might have helped with this Letter to the Editor.

I try to not make a habit of commenting too much on other columnists, particularly in my columns, but after reading Cal Smith's column yesterday I found a couple of things worthy of note:

Firstly, Mr. Smith nicely captures the atmosphere in NY and the general value which Americans attach to their freedom of speech - although there do seem to be plenty of threats on it lately...most noticeably the 'balance' between security and free speech/protesting that has begun in the post Sept 11 world. (At both party's Presidential conventions this year protesters were intended to be confined to ironically named 'Free Speech Zones', although in NY I think the numbers were overwhelming and they didn't cooperate as well.)

Also of note is that the Bush Cheney campaign requires attendees at their campaign events to sign a pledge of support for the President in order to gain access. These are their events (and it's all marketing anyway) so they are entitled - I guess - to be selective on who attends, but it is a bit 'un-American' I would think and suggests a fear of the public.

Anyway, that's all a bit off topic. My point is that free speech is under threat in the US, but Mr. Smith's underlying thrust is correct I think that it has high value in the psyche of Americans.

What I really want to talk about is this assertion at the end of Mr. Smith's column:

Still there is legitimate concern that at least one high ranking member of the UBP, the Deputy Leader Mr. Michael Dunkley, does not place a high value on freedom of speech.

This man has declared that whatever I have to say has no relevance because I am a political �has been�.

Michael Dunkley in his original letter (included at the end of this post as it is not on RG's website) never said that, and he never questioned anyone's right to speak, although I don't think there was any need to go after Cal Smith, Rolfe Commissiong and Senator Roban. This strategy distracted from his underlying point and made it seem a bit too personal.

Mr. Dunkley's point was that there was a noticable absence of Cabinet Ministers and elected members around the Premier willing to lend their support. The Premier was sent out alone and could only rustle up a few of the party's most reliable, unconditional, staunchest defenders. That's ok, there's nothing wrong with that, but it was telling and suggested a lack of unity within the elected PLP group.

What concerns me about Mr. Smith's misrepresentation here is that while a clever tactic to try and dismiss the criticism, undermine Mr. Dunkley's credibility and change the topic from dishonesty in the Government ranks - it suggests a move towards another trait of US political discourse.

Free speech in the US has been increasingly invoked as an defense for political dishonesty, allowing people to present your opponents' words in a false light. Mr. Smith invokes this method in his article attempting to portray Mr. Dunkley as anti-free speech. Mr. Dunkley never questioned anyone's right to free speech, he questioned the weight the messengers carried, which is a judgment everyone makes when listening to public debate.

Perhaps Mr. Smith took the Republican convention and free speech a little much to heart. He's adopted their tactic of lying about the war and voting record of John Kerry, picking his words and presenting them in a dishonest way. John Kerry and the Democrats do this less often and less effectively than the Republicans but they can do it as well.

The Democrats angle at their convention wasn't to lie about Bush's record but to be selective in what they presented about their candidate, focusing almost exclusively on his Vietnam service. This was responded to by the Republicans in the form of dishonesty and distortion with the Swift Boat Vets ads. Being selective is ok, being dishonest is not.

The intentional misrepresentation of people's statements is something that I hope doesn't start to become pervasive in Bermuda politics, although it appears to have already arrived.

--- Michael Dunkley's Letter to the Editor ---

August 17th, 2004

The Editor
Royal Gazette

Dear Sir,

I read with great interest the article in the Royal Gazette on Saturday August 14th titled �PLP rallies around the Premier.� The support that the headline referred to is delivered by Calvin Smith, �Commentator� Rolfe Commissiong and Senator Walter Roban.

I believe there are a few important observations that need to be highlighted as a result of the comments in this article.

First, it is my opinion that Calvin Smith is a �has been� in political terms; when was the last time he was elected by the people to serve the people? On the other hand both Mr. Commissiong and Roban are political �wannabees�; when have they ever been elected by the people to serve the people?

Secondly, if this is all the support that the Premier can get as he faces the sharp uphill climb trying to dig out of the deep negative hole of public opinion dug by himself and his PLP colleagues in connection with the BHC matter, then one would have thought that the Premier could have rustled up a few people with credibility to speak.

After reading this article I am more convinced than ever that the PLP will do whatever it can to cover up their unethical, incompetent or �practices of criminal nature�, as Mr. Commissiong commented.

Mr. Commissiong is quoted in the article as saying �But yet the UBP, after having whipped up the degree of hysteria solely for a political game that they have yet to see realized, continue with the tactics of division and innuendo in attempt to irresponsibly cause a loss of confidence in the Government.�

Firstly in reply to that comment, the PLP themselves have caused the public to lose confidence in them.

Secondly, please allow me to make the record clear; nothing could be farther from the truth. As an opposition one of our mandates is to stimulate the best from the government. In this case within the BHC we have pointed out gross mismanagement, corruption, unethical behavior, incompetence or call it whatever you choose.

This culture was developed since 1998, under a PLP government.
The UBP, while in Opposition, will continue to fight for an ethical, responsible and competent government.

Isn�t that what all Bermudians want?

Sincerely,

Michael H.Dunkley, J.P, M.P.
Devonshire

One of these things is doing it's own thing:

Pick the odd headline out.

"Mid Ocean News: 'Bermudians hold fewer jobs, Govt. figures show', Aug. 20, 2004"

"Royal Gazette: 'Bermudians making gains in international business sector', Aug. 20, 2004"

"Bermuda Sun: 'Job numbers drop for locals and rise for non-Bermudians', Aug. 20, 2004"

Another example of the biased reporting of the Royal Gazette!

The funniest thing is that after reading the first sentence you wonder if you're in the right article.

I guess all the abuse from the Government about the press focusing on the negative has resulted in RG taking the glass half full approach.

I don't know what's up with the Royal Gazette's website lately. The updating of it, normally around 10AM - give or take 1/2 an hour, has been very erratic the past week. Some sections like 'Opinion' haven't been updated since August 11th.

As someone who both buys the papers and researches with them online it's a little frustrating. Sometimes the Mid Ocean News section of the RG site doesn't get updated until very late in the week. That's a shame because they are doing some great investigative reporting, the editorials are always great and they are likely to be the driving force behind the BHC scandal coming to some sort of resolution, and accountability taking place.

Generally the local press websites could really use some work, better archiving, searching etc.. One hurdle could be how much revenue they really generate and how much they might actually take away from sales of the print editions.

I for one, would be willing to pay for full online access (something the Bermuda Sun floated and then dropped)and better searching capacilities or receiving editions as a downloadable pdf file for example as The NY Times and The New Republic provide.

Hmmm, it seems that UBP politicians can take issue with the press as well.

At least Mr. Moniz takes a less hysterical and demonizing approach than some.

But this could always be a plant by the Royal Gazette to pretend that the UBP PR department doesn't write all their political articles, couldn't it.

The political junkies out there might be interested in the online exhibition of US presidential campaign ads.

There's also an article in yesterday's NY Times (so you may need to subscribe) about this exhibit.

Does anyone know if this show ever came off on ZBM? I clipped this out of the Gazette over 3 months ago but have never seen the show on or plugged at all on TV9.

Just wondering as it looked interesting.

Nigel Regan of the Sun has a good run down of the highlights of Tuesday night's Violence Forum. The headline is a little charitable as there wasn't much if anything in the way of solutions discussed before I left.

You might have noticed that the Sun counted 100 in attendance where the Gazette had 60. While reporters are better with words than numbers that isn't the problem here.

The explanation is actually quite simple and very Bermewjan.

Even an urgent problem like discussing violence in our community happens on Bermuda time. The event was due to start at 6:30PM but didn't really kick off until closer to 7PM, and even then the crowd was a little light. RG's reporter had to meet his deadline for Tuesday's paper and left early. Nigel Regan of the Sun on the other hand had the whole of Tuesday to work on his story for Wednesday's edition.

My count at 9PM was 95 people, but at 8PM it was closer to 60.

An observant reader has pointed out that the Bermuda Sun poll on Independence doesn't add up to 100%!

He's right, it seems to be always out by 3%. So bearing in mind that they are unscientific to start with this one should really be treated with suspicion.

While we're on the topic of the web polls I'm sure I don't need to remind people to not read too much into them. They are not representative of the Bermudian electorate, anyone can vote - whether an eligible voter or not and they can be easily rigged with multiple votes among other things.

But they are interesting nonetheless.

I won't hold my breath for Renee Webb to take the RG to task, as she did immediately before the 2003 General Election, for two articles in today's RG. Back in July Ms. Webb attacked the press as being "vicious and extremely dangerous, particularly in this pre-election period". I invite her to revisit the issue.

Today, coincidentally by-election day, the RG has two potentially damaging headlines for Corin Smith as people head to the polls. The two headlines that would have invoked a viscious response from the PLP attack dogs are linked below:

Foes wonder which side UBP�s Smith is on
and
UBP's Smith denies plagiarism claim

Today�s Royal Gazette gives us a rundown of the PLP hopefuls, albeit with a rather gushing and mischevious headline.

The PLP, have been taking some deserved lumps lately for lacking diversity and running a racially divisive campaign - but Alex Scott has been cranking up the PR machine and trying to portray his party as diverse and representative of all Bermudians.

The Royal Gazette kindly obliges in this article by saying that the PLP candidates "impress with their diversity". I'm sure Mr. Scott appreciates the early Valentines Day gift!

Couple that with the other gushing article by Mr. Johnson about new PLP Attorney General Sen. Larry Mussenden and I'm starting to this that Ms. Webb is right about her media bias, she's just got it backwards!

The RG seems to have gone completely pro-PLP.

CORRECTION: The line "mischevious headline courtesy of Ayo Johnson" was corrected to say "mischevious headline". Reporter's rarely if ever write their own headlines. However this one was pulled directly from the first line of the RG story where it stated that "The line-up of potential Progressive Labour Party (PLP) candidates for the Sandys North (district 36) by-election on March 4 is impressive in its diversity".

It looks like the Royal Gazette has bought into the hype and style over substance of Alex Scott, as evidenced by the following unsupported statement in the article:

"Like the Premier, Sen. Tannock, 57, is not averse to working with the Opposition on crucial national issues. "

You'd have thought the reporter would have supported this statement by pointing to anone issue where the Premier has actually followed through on his promises to work with the Opposition. Nope, nothing. Maybe the Premier's still campaigning!

So far the 'working together' has involved lip service in speeches (see here and here). The only thing anyone has heard about is an agreement, driven by the opposition, for a bi-partisan group to work on a code of conduct to prevent a repeat of the PLP's race baiting during the election.

I recall (although I can 't find the reference) Premier Scott specifically saying that he'd be interested in working together on housing and the UBP's plan, but no approach has been made yet from what I've heard.

This is the exact same empty rhetoric that Premier Scott and Dale Butler gave to releasing the old reports, delayed and hidden by the first PLP administration. We've had a trickle (Asbestos report) but nothing to write home about. Bear in mind the auditor's report is now languishing on the order papers in Parliament.

I think what you're seeing here is that because Alex Scott gives interviews and isn't beligerent, unlike his predecessor, that some in the press don't want to upset the apple-cart and call the Premier on his BS. You scratch mine, I'll scratch yours. They need the Premier as much as he needs them.

The press also report regularly that Alex Scott wants unity and to bring the community together. However, only weeks earlier the same man was preaching about how demographics were all that mattered (PLP election rallies).

Talk about giving out free passes!