Shooting the messenger

The cliche ‘the truth hurts’ seems to have hit nobody in our community harder last week than the outgoing New Mardi Gras board.

After spending several minutes at Saturday’s AGM lamenting the quagmire that was this year’s board election, former co-chair Nick Parker took the melodramatic step of berating this newspaper for printing just a handful of the backroom shenanigans unfolding as the election drew near.

Tabloid, he claimed. Gutter journalism. A low point for community news reporting.

The only adjective he failed to mention was the most important one — true. In fact at no point did Parker say our front page article last week, ‘Dirty election tactics’, was wrong. It seems he just didn’t like us telling the broader community what was going on.

That Parker decided to use his final speech to the membership to take a swipe at a community newspaper that has given New Mardi Gras more than $1 million in support in the last 10 years was disappointing.

But we’re no stranger to criticism from New Mardi Gras’s elected office bearers. We copped a flogging from some on the then board for telling you the truth about the party parade split just over 12 months ago.

And we have faced massive pressure — including the threat of legal action — to back down from our reporting on this year’s election.

“I also demand that you and your organisation cease and desist from reporting, giving opinion or otherwise publishing or promoting (explicitly or otherwise) that the election process is lacking integrity or is otherwise brought into disrepute,” the lawyer’s letter demanded at the 11th hour last Friday.

What that lawyer and the New Mardi Gras board failed to acknowledge was this paper having an email from company secretary Peter Munro to candidates discussing those unattractive behaviours outlined in our article.

We made no allegations against any candidate — we merely reported the situation based on information provided to us. Munro chose not to answer our questions.

There was also a lack of acknowledgement for the continuous spam arriving in NMG members’ inboxes asking — begging — for those all-important proxies to ensure a position on the board.

And those emails didn’t just come from candidates themselves — a former chair also emailed some members and an SSO staff member received an email from the girlfriend of a NMG board member seeking his support for her lover.

Further, on Saturday afternoon as the NMG crowd grew tired, nine of the candidates seeking election made powerful references to the disgrace that was this year’s board election.

Steph Sands was probably the loudest, calling the electioneering a disgrace before promising to fix it up “even if we have to go to court” — and promising it would be her last year as a candidate.

We here at SSO have thick skin — we are used to organisations like New Mardi Gras bringing pressure to try and force us to only print ‘good’ news stories — and by good we mean only those that present the organisation in a positive light.

But if the lead-up to Saturday’s New Mardi Gras election has taught us anything it is that our community is now in need, more than ever, of an independent, questioning newspaper that doesn’t bow to the every demand of all its media partners, and we will continue to be that voice.

Further, we hope the incoming New Mardi Gras board realises that no amount of PR spin, legal threats and finger-pointing can absolve any amount of wrongdoing.

For it is only after accepting this reality will it be able to shake off the mud and re-earn the trust of a community smarting from a series or circus-like commotions.