PEI Media asleep at the wheel on PEI PNP scandal

In the United Kingdom, the birthplace of Canadian democracy, the breach of public and fiduciary trust by MPs is being exposed by the media to great effect. Newspapers like the Times, Guardian.UK, and the Sun are feeding Brits a daily dose of stories about how their less than honest MPs do fancy footwork with the public purse. In the UK, the scandal has ruined political careers over amounts as small as a few thousand dollars. Many MPs will not offer for re-election this summer due to the disgrace of breaching their public trust. On PEI the PNP scandal which is of magnitude twenty times larger than Britain’s petty expenses makes nary a ripple. On PEI the media are so deeply implicated in the scandal themselves they are tepid in demanding the government investigate. PEI’s media has become corrupt to the core. In the UK, Conservative MP Andrew MacKay will “step down at the next general election.” (BBC) That means he is resigning his seat. Mr MacKay breached the public and his fiduciary trust by claiming expenses for two homes. The Telegraph said the MP, who employs his wife, Rosemary, was paid nearly £3,100 towards his Scottish home as well as more than £61,186 for his London property between April 2006 and March 2008. The British media have pounded this story for weeks with front page coverage, pictures of MacKay’s two homes, his wife and himself. MacKay is one of 60 odd MPs who face public wrath for playing fast and loose with ethics. The Speaker himself resigned last week merely over his attempts to down play the fraud and stonewall the investigation. The UK scandal amounts to less than 1% of the money that the government of PEI has handed out to friends, high ranking officials and MLA’s in the PNP scandal. There are four MLAs who we know have taken $200,000 each. The Speaker and her husband are rumoured to have received $6 million dollars. The PEI media is reporting this story in a lackluster manner. The media denigrate the government critics who call for a public inquiry like Wayne MacKinnon and Rob MacEachern. There is no cry from the media for an investigation and the government is let off the hook with stories that go nowhere. The public get lukewarm stories assigned to either junior reporters like Teresa Wright of the Guardian or CBC reporter John Jeffery who admits taking the PNP bribe himself. The Eastern Graphic admitted to receiving several hundreds of thousands of dollars from the PNP slush fund. One of their columnists also admitted receiving money. This Liberal Government of Premier Robert Ghiz has compromised the ethics of the Fourth Estate in a manner not considered possible in a modern western democracy. CBC chief political reporter John Jeffery has admitted receiving PNP grants, which are essentially a gift. There is no interest rate, no fixed repayment and it is commonly known as “free money.” CBC management and brass all the way up the President of CBC refuse to take Jeffery off the story. Jeffery is compromised by his own admission. The effect is weak coverage of the story. Jeffery admitted last year on the air he is withholding information he knows about the program. The largest newspaper on Prince Edward Island is the Charlottetown Guardian, long known for its Liberal sympathies. When the story broke, The Guardian assigned it to a junior reporter with only minimal political experience. While Teresa Wright is churning out story after story, they lack the depth to draw blood from the government. The Guardian has senior political reporters who are left to report on “more important” stories. The message to the government is clear - we are not giving this story real weight. The weekly Eastern and West Prince Graphic have admitted receiving PNP money and do write investigative stories from time to time. However, considering the past reputation of both papers as barn-burners on scandal, their current efforts could be seen as less than fulsome. With more than one thousand people corrupted at the highest levels of PEI society, the media are complicit in what amounts to a cover-up with bland reporting. The only real heated commentary on the scandal is in the blogs, on-line chat rooms and reader forums.


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