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Too many words have already been written and spoken about the now-infamous e-mail exchange between Premier Alex Scott and nighttime party organizer Tony Brannon. Forgive your writer for adding to the noise; hopefully by next week all of us will have either broadened the debate or moved on to bigger and better things.

If the incident has done any good, it has been to trigger fresh discourse about race. Though precious little of the dialogue has been constructive, at least people are talking. The challenge now is move beyond the predictable rhetoric from the usual suspects and see how many of us are willing to reach outside our comfort/combat zones into the realms of raw honesty, humility and benevolence. Both Tony Brannon and the Premier had the opportunity to do so this week, but they blew it.

Mr. Brannon chose to make headlines out of the Premier’s errant e-mail. Difficult for this writer, as a newspaperman, to condemn him for that alone. But what if (as a respected [white] colleague suggested to this writer this week), Mr. Brannon had taken a different tack? What if he’d concluded that the man made a mistake, he’s human, he’s under intense, constant scrutiny — and even though as Premier he should know better, I’m going to cut him some slack. What if, instead of branding the Premier a racist [which he almost certainly is not], Mr. Brannon had asked himself — ‘who am I to point fingers and judge others? Do I know enough about Mr. Scott’s life experience to put this errant comment in context?’ Instead, he chose to toss a joint to the insatiable wolves at Mr. Scott’s door.

Perhaps, if Mr. Brannon had cut the Premier some slack, it would alter Mr. Scott’s perception of people who look and sound like him. And maybe the island could have taken a few baby steps forward on race relations. Maybe.

And what if the Premier’s response, which took the form of a letter to the country, had been different? What if, rather than quoting long-dead poets, Mr. Scott had come clean and acknowledged that yes, the people who show his office least respect happen to be predominantly white? Is this a fact or not? Or, what if he’d cut Tony Brannon some slack and, instead of firing off an angry e-mail to his PR colleague, the Premier had concluded ‘well, this man’s raving e-mails might ooze contempt and conjure up images of a slavering Gila monster, incandescent with rage — but he’s a flawed human being just like the rest of us, so I’ll let it go’. Press delete and move on.

What if we were all a little more honest — and a little less hypocritical — on the issue of race? What if we all cut one another a little slack? It might even change the tone of some of our media commentators.

We’ve heard all week, from white people, how, if a white person had sent an errant e-mail with a comment directed at blacks, there would be uproar.

Well it happened — last summer — and we reported in on our front page. But it was met by whites with a deafening silence. And who sent the errant e-mail on this occasion? A Royal Gazette reporter, who had baulked at the prospect of having a black West Indian tenant. The Human Rights Commission investigated and resolved the matter to the satisfaction of the complainant, a prominent black hotelier. The reporter’s duties were shuffled during the probe but she now been back at her old job for some time.

Her paper, without a whiff of irony, yesterday criticized Mr. Scott’s handling of the latest e-mail incident and took issue with the Premier’s accusation of political bias in the media. The daily also leapt to the defence of its sister weekly, The Mid-Ocean News (which broke the Brannon story), for using what the Premier described as “obscene” language to disparage him. And its front-page lead story was UBP leader Dr. Grant Gibbons’ attack on the Premier’s letter.

The Premier is now hinting at marshalling the press. With such juicy material to work with, can we blame him?

While the Bermuda Sun would resist any attempt by the state to control the output of news, there is certainly room for a closer examination of journalistic standards (providing, that is, it doesn’t protract a national debate about sex toys).

Too often in the local media, lines between fact and opinon are blurred while balance and fairness are seen as obstacles to implicit political agendas. This arms Government with golden bullets with which to shoot the messenger and this, in turn, carries the risk of camouflaging real government failures.

We need a free press, yes. But we need a fair and honest press, too.[[In-content Ad]]

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