Glenn Jones - Government Press Officer

Although he has been in the position for just over two years this address to Rotary was his inaugural formal speaking engagement.

            Glenn told us of his background, starting as so many of his Bermuda born contemporaries .in a single parent household.  "I was a latchkey kid on Spring Benny Road with a teen mother who worked two jobs and a grandmother who worked one.  They shared the responsibility of keeping me in line.  There was not a lot of money, but I was never at a want for anything I needed and there was plenty of love to go around."

            A product of the Bermuda public school system he went on to boarding school in New England in 1994 and then on to college in Boston to study broadcast journalism.  He became a broadcast journalist in the US and while working in Boston he won an Emmy for feature reporting, which to this day is his most treasured professional accomplishment.

            Returning to Bermuda he secured a job with the Royal Gazette while also working part time for HOTT 107.5. After about six months he was approached by the Premier to see if he would become his Press Secretary

            Besides the politics of his job, of which there is a lot, interaction with the media is a large component.  Now that he sits in front of a different computer with a different purpose he felt he had a fuller view of the journalistic landscape.  He has experience of working for both teams and has observed much "some of it pretty, some of it not."  He felt that the nature of the professional relationship between the Premier and the Editor of the Royal Gazette was grossly unhealthy.  Each blaming the other for it, which makes the situation, appear hopeless for improvement.  Both being staunchly adversarial is troublesome because it could factor into decision making on both sides and that is worrying.  "So how do we fix it?  Well having spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the subject finding a solution is vexing.  I doubt it is doable.  Here's why, in my view.  I think each man is cheered in his own private circle for the nature of the relationship as it is.  I think Zuill and Brown go wherever it is they go when they are not working and this subject comes up.. Zuill is buoyed by his friends to turn up the heat, even when unfair, and Brown is buoyed by his friends to keep counter punching, even when he can't win the round.  And around and around we go.   On this one, I think unhealthy is our destiny." 

            "I think too often in our local news, whether or not the writer of the story likes or dislikes a newsmaker, has too large a bearing on the outcome of the story.  This trend needs to be arrested, it is Petty and it is wrong"  If you are an expat who is a reporter and you spend a lot of time around other expats, which would be entirely normal, you are getting a different earful in your social circles about politics.  And according to the polls, we can presuppose the content of that earful.  However, if you are Bermudian born and black, your getting a different earful in your social circles if you spend time with other Bermudian born people who are black, at least that is the extrapolation one has to make according to the polls.  My argument to you is that all of this has an unsuspecting influence on how news in our country is covered.