The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The 19th century French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville said that the power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

The press in this country influences the political thought processes of the Bahamian people.

The media played a massive role in the outcome of the historic 2017 general election. The Free National Movement (FNM) got significant help from social and conventional media, especially from The Nassau Guardian and its erstwhile general manager and editor, Mr Brent Dean, leading up to May 10, 2017.

With two and a half years remaining in its current legislative session, the FNM administration is hard-pressed to find a newspaper or conventional media outlet sympathetic to its cause.

Dean’s resignation from The Nassau Guardian this past August was a massive blow to the FNM in more ways than one.

A close examination of the current editorial staff at The Guardian would reveal not a single FNM sympathiser.

Both Candia Dames and Juan McCartney are highly critical of the Minnis regime’s performance, especially its handling of the Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) matter.

One only has to peruse the write-ups in the National Review column to see this.

McCartney has been every bit as critical as Dames, particularly in a recent Facebook post about BPL which was published on a PLP Facebook page by party operatives.

Even the weekday editorials, which were typically pro-FNM prior to August, are now bludgeoning the party on a frequent basis.

At The Tribune, the FNM is faring no better, with Eileen Carron becoming less involved with the editorials.

At The Punch, Nicki Kelly is perhaps the harshest critic of the Minnis administration.

The FNM cannot look to The Bahama Journal for any journalistic support, seeing that its publisher, Mr Wendell Jones, is reportedly a supporter of the Opposition Progressive Liberal Party (PLP).

Looking at the landscape of social media, the only ally that the FNM currently has that is worth mentioning is Blame Dem, amid rumours that another prominent Facebook group has shifted its allegiance to the official opposition.

The efforts of the Blame Dem membership are laudable. But its members cannot match wits with Dames and McCartney.

This is where the FNM sorely misses the intelligent and informed Brent Dean.

Those who underestimate the influence of the fourth estate in politics are either being naive or are simply grossly uninformed.

Small wonder Sir Lynden Pindling stymied the growth of the media during his 25 years in power.

Pindling obviously remembered the massive influence of Cyril Stevenson’s Nassau Herald and the PLP’s Bahamian Times in turning the tide against the United Bahamian Party in the 1960s.

The appointment of Anthony Ace Newbold as press secretary in May 2017 failed to yield the results the FNM administration was hoping for, in what has been a public relations nightmare. Newbold has since left that post.

The FNM has done some good, but you wouldn’t know this by judging from the hundreds of discontented Bahamas Public Service Union and Bahamas Doctors Union members who are currently protesting.

With Brent Dean no longer in The Nassau Guardian’s editorial room, the FNM and its chairman, Mr Carl Culmer, must now focus their attention on overhauling their public relations machinery, with the aim of countering the negative assertions of McCartney and Dames.

Failure to do this might prove to be catastrophic for the party in 2022.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama

August 22, 2019.