In the online comments to a Royal Gazette article about a speech made by Senator Laverne Furbert last week, the Senator herself complains that the newspaper only reported 1/10th of the content of her speech.
Sure. Whatever. That’s the role of the media: to distil the cacophony of daily events so that an average person can get up-to-date in a reasonable amount of time.
But I would like to thank Senator Furbert for raising a valid point.
(Background: Several years ago, Government set up its CITV channel at the cost of several million dollars with running costs of around $750,000 annually. A deal was struck with an American TV station for $200,000 per year to act as a mentor for the channel … no news as to what benefit that provided. And a station manager was recruited from California … what happened to her? Over time, dialogue about CITV and its relevance has faded away. Its website has been down for months and its YouTube channel has a whopping 14 videos.)
CITV does not cover sessions of the House of Assembly or the Senate. If CITV is to be retained, it should. Then those who care, can hear the other 9/10′s of Senator Furbert’s wit and wisdom.
I presume CITV does not cover the Legislature because Government does not want to give opposing MPs a platform. Instead, CITV gives Ministers a chance to broadcast their canned speeches without pesky reporters asking questions. Controlled exposure.
But at a higher level, let’s face, we are skint. We can’t pay for many basic Government services, but we continue to fund this vanity project? It’s time to look at whether this is a good investment.
CableVision, which delivers the channel to local households, is a digital network and should be able to provide actual viewership for the channel. We pay for CITV, and the public should be able to judge if it’s a worthwhile use of public money.
I am very surprised that the Opposition MPs have not taken up on allowances made in the Political Broadcasting Act in 2003, which give them a right of response to shows dealing with any policy of the Government or that are informative nature. There’s a lot of leeway there, and these response shows can be up to 50% of the time of the original broadcast. Moreover, costs for preparation and airing of the responses can be paid for by the Consolidated Fund.
In my opinion, Government has no business running a TV channel. It is a prime example of the fat that has built up around the civil service in recent years … fat that has resulted in our huge debt burden and increased taxes.
The local broadcast media is struggling. If Government were serious about developing opportunities for Bermudians in this sector, it would do far better to allocate some funding to independent producers to create local content for those outlets. Remember, we want tax payers.
UPDATE: This cracks me up.