NTV

Under my ownership CURRENT has made no pretense that we are a newspaper with the financing or even interest to undertaken investigative journalism. Rather CURRENT is an upbeat arts and entertainment paper with a healthy smattering of sex. Gone are the days where we chase imbibers through the halls of justice.

A newspaper is only a free press if it can continue to publish, and a free paper can only publish when it is supported by its advertisers through the provision of increased visibility for their wares. In a small city that also means you cannot bite the hand that feeds you.

NTV on the other hand is a government licensed body that through its local monopoly throws off mountains of cash and is charged under its license with providing something approaching the pretense of local coverage and perhaps a modicum of journalism mixed in with their
continuous and overwhelming tide of self-promotion.

While getting the facts right is always a problem when you are unwilling to fund researchers and deadlines are pressing but if NTV were willing to go to the expense to send a talking head all the way to Pouch Cove to report on a citizen’s nebulous compliant they might have come away with more interesting stories with even the slightest effort.

How about this for a story: Mayor’s son charged with uttering death threats to a CBC reporter. While I was traveling this story played out in court with a restraining order being issued against the Mayor’s son. Apparently the death threats stem from a libel lawsuit against the Mayor Sarah Patten which claims that she or her agents defamed the unsuccessful mayoral candidate in a mailing prior to the last election. Where is NTV?

Or here is another story: Given that the citizen’s complaint was a quasi-environmental one. Why is it that the Town of Pouch Cove (with the assistance of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador) insists on increasing the amount of raw sewage it pumps into the North Atlantic. Try explaining to the tourists what the froth on the ocean is chocolate brown.

In a rural environment of larger building lots it would seem to take only a modicum of intelligence that all rural communities should be insisting on wells and septic systems as a far better environmental and financial alternative than funding water and sewer lines which it can ill afford.  Where is NTV?