Dissatisfaction
at the media’s handling of the PUB's Interim Report consumed much of
the space afforded DARKNL: WEAK MEDIA NO MATCH FOR DAMNING PUB REPORT on May 19th. The media's coverage of the Report was brief to the point of being inconsequential. I thought the public
had a right to expect additional detail and analysis of the PUB’s work into the causes of the January 2014 'Blackouts'.
Why? The chief
reason is the sheer scale of the outages and their impact on so many lives and
businesses.
Another is that
the level of condemnation by the PUB of Hydro management was unprecedented.
While the
media admittedly are an easy target, no one should think that it is solely their
role to ask questions and to inform.
The
Opposition Parties and their leaders, and others, play a vital role in the
process, too. When media are not
prodding them they ought to be prodding the media. Typically they don’t, but now and again, as
in the Humber Valley Paving affair, the Liberals show occasional energy.
