4/24/2009 12:03:00 PM BBC blackout is bad news for local media
Quotable
'If the Bermuda Broadcasting Corporation goes under we lose our only significant news operation largely run by black Bermudians.'
Tom Vesey Sun columnist
It's hard to believe the media these days when any idiot with a laptop and a website can call himself a journalist. Sadly, the odds are there will be plenty of other idiots who will believe what he says.
The people who used to pay for high quality journalism through advertising have moved on. The department stores which took out full-page promos have mostly gone under and everyone else has countless new places where they can promote themselves.
You can advertise in bus stops, on the back of theatre tickets, using online classifieds and, of course, on the web pages of idiots with laptops.
Advertisers don't need to give their money to the press or the Bermuda Broadcasting Company - and many of them are very happy about that. When Bermuda Broadcasting went off the air last week it was a sharp reminder of how much we rely on just a handful of sources for our news. Its absence left a significant hole in the system the island uses to stay informed.
We grumble and belittle local media, as is our right and duty.
We leap on every sign of incompetence and amateurishness and roll our eyes when the newscast drags on for 15 minutes after the last newsworthy report.
But you would be hard-pressed to find a community of our size - or even double it - that is so well covered by homegrown media.
With two competing radio and TV newsrooms, our oversized daily newspaper, the Mid-Ocean News and this magnificent publication, we have a solid base of mainstream news gathering.
I don't mean to belittle the Bermuda Industrial Union's Worker's Voice, the other radio stations or the assorted blogs and magazines that enrich our community.
I'm simply emphasizing that there are only a handful of news operations upon which all of us - the talk show hosts, bloggers, columnists and everyone else in Bermuda - depend on to know what is going on.
Everything else, in a sense, is mostly derivative - it's based on the news gathered by the two broadcast newsrooms and three newspapers.
It is good sport to mock them but almost every journalist employed by them has been professionally trained.
Each paper and broadcaster has strengths and weaknesses. The best-informed Bermudians are probably those who juggle them all and reach intelligent judgments after doing so.
No one is completely happy with them. But they should think about how little they would know about events in Bermuda if they were not there.
The local media has been around for a long time - the Gazette since the 1780s, the Mid-Ocean News for almost 100 years, the Bermuda Sun and ZBM News for more than 50 and VSB for nearly 30.
There is no guarantee they will be here forever. New ways of advertising and communicating are rapidly turning the newspaper business into an anachronism.
It is not yet clear whether newspapers can enjoy a successful transition to the internet - or what will take their place if they cannot adapt.
The broadcasting industry has a clearer road ahead - modern society is addicted to television in a way that has often left newspapers withering in the wilderness.
But the turmoil at Bermuda Broadcasting makes it clear that they too have a fight for survival ahead of them. If they go under, Bermuda will lose its only significant news operation that is largely run - although not owned - by black Bermudians.
There has never been a black editor-in-chief of The Royal Gazette, The Mid-Ocean News or the Bermuda Sun, or a black news director at VSB.
Bermudians don't even need to get their information from newspapers or TV in the age of the internet. But they are the only places boasting trained reporters, the experience and oversight of editors, the presentation of competing viewpoints and real effort to dig up the facts.
The process is often flawed. But as the temporary closure of Bermuda Broadcasting reminds us, it is better than the void that would exist without them.
