Where are the 'accredited media'?

Home Affairs Minister, Senator Ian Le Marquand

On Monday, during question time, the Home Affairs Minister made a remarkable, and certainly newsworthy announcement in response to a question by Deputy Trevor Pitman. The deputy asked:

St Helier deputy, Trevor Pitman

Deputy Pitman: 'Will the Minister clarify what was the conclusion into the brief investigation into who within the Police Force leaked the interim BDO Alto report to a UK child abuse denier journalist and has anyone been suspended over the action?'

Senator Le Marquand: 'The person most likely was the former SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) who took on the Historic Abuse Inquiry and who left in August 2009 with very noisy publicity for his predecessors.'

The SIO at the time that Senator Le Marquand was talking about at that time was Mick Gradwell. Now, I don't know the rights and wrongs of the handling of the whole Jersey Child Abuse Inquiry (operation rectangle) and the ensuing 'fall out' and various inquiries. But it seems clear to me, that the leaking of a confidential report, before it had been published, is a serious offence for any States Employee. The fact that it attracted so little interest from States Members and in particularly the 'accredited' media, is quite astonishing. 

A fellow blogger asked representatives from Channel TV why they had not reported the story. They told him they did not know about it. Channel do have a political correspondent and although one of their reporters was in the gallery for question time, the reporter had left by the time questions without notice had come about. To be fair, question time was moved to the afternoon and the staff would have had to be back for editing the evening programme, but one does question why they do not have a reporter 'permanently' in the States to cover all business, as the JEP and BBC do. It might help if they had their own box, of course. It will be interesting to see what coverage comes out from the latter two.

At least now they know about the story, by way of a blogger and a States-member-cum-blogger. 

In a previous blog, I commented on how the mainstream media were unable to be present for the public meeting at Communicare a couple of weeks ago, for the concluding part of Mr Michel's black headstone campaign (more to follow on next blog) because they were drinking champagne with the Lt. Govenor. Thankfully, the faithful citizen's media was there to provide footage, so that the meeting could be broadcast to those who could not attend. It is unfortunate that we have to do the work of the media, however we can be grateful for presence of bloggers who come to the rescue, in matters of public interest which would otherwise not be reported.