IT is no secret that the media and politicians have something of a love-hate relationship.
And this is not a situation limited to Jersey but one that occurs the world over.
We need each other, after all. And we each need the other to engage in order to do our jobs properly.
Most of the time that relationship works well in Jersey. Sure, we all have our ups and downs and there have been States Members who have decided they would rather not engage (although it should be noted that they always come back in the end).
At times it can all feel like a bit of a game too.
But quite what game Infrastructure Minister Kevin Lewis and his team were playing last week is beyond me. And it is not one that they should be allowed to get away with without us, the media, at least raising it publicly and standing up for ourselves.
In a release sent out to all local media last Tuesday and subsequently uploaded onto gov.je, Deputy Lewis says he would like to clarify the current position with the purchase of the final three fields required for the site for the new Les Quennevais School.
It goes on to say that having met the owners of the fields – Mr and Mrs Carrel – they agreed to make a joint statement to correct ‘misinformation’ published earlier in the year.
They are, it adds, keen to ‘re-establish business-like relations between the States of Jersey and Mr and Mrs Carrel’.
You see, progress on the deal for the States to buy the fields was halted earlier this year when the owners increased their sale price from £194,000 to nearly
£4 million.
Mr Carrel, who inherited the green-zone sites, later claimed in a statement from his lawyers that he was being ‘bullied’ into selling off the land for less than it was worth – something the States denied.
And it is all those facts that apparently need to be corrected, according to Deputy Lewis’s statement.
He said in the press release: ‘Politicians do not control the editorial direction taken by media organisations. However, I would like to apologise for the distress caused to Mr and Mrs Carrel by the media coverage of this case. It damaged goodwill and led to a halt in negotiations. I hope the new ministerial team can resolve this matter in a spirit of co-operation, hopefully without the additional public expense of concluding a compulsory purchase.’
He later adds: ‘The media subsequently reported that Mr and Mrs Carrel had demanded £4 million for the sale of his fields, and that Mr Carrel had asked for use of the playing fields to cease at 9.30 pm every night. The minister wishes to make clear that Mr Carrel had not demanded £4 million, and that while a request was made to limit activity on the playing fields after 9.30 pm on Sundays and bank holidays, this was not simply for the benefit of Mr Carrel but for all the nearby residents.’
In the media we are used to letting things go, and criticism, often unfairly, is usually water off a duck’s back – it goes with the territory, after all.
But this wasn’t just unfair, it was simply wrong – factually and morally – to be blaming the media.
And did he/they (whoever had the final say-so) not think we would question it?
The JEP has the proof that everything it published was an accurate reflection of the situation according to all the emails and reports relating to the matter.
All of those documents, including a report attached to the official ministerial decision when the matter was first raised, say that the new terms put forward by the owner’s lawyers included an uprate to £3.8 million.
The report itself states: ‘On 14 February 2018 further communication was received from the owner’s legal advisers, the effect of which was to renegotiate all of the major terms pertaining to the acquisition including the consideration agreed and to further seek to include a number of conditions on the future use of the land.
‘To summarise, the terms are a significant departure from the agreed heads of terms and are: Revise the consideration from £15,000 per vergée to £16 psf (resulting in a total change from £194,100 to circa £4,000,000).’
The report clearly sets out the changes to the terms.
The States are obviously trying their hardest to get Mr and Mrs Carrel onside to avoid a costly and aggressive compulsory purchase acquisition, which they agreed last week to back if necessary.
And they are, it appears, willing to say more or less anything to that end.
It is one thing to pass the buck and blame the media – totally wrongly – behind the scenes as a way of trying to placate the owners.
It is quite another to do it publicly when it simply is not true and the mistake in reporting the situation, if there was one, was at their end.
The JEP is used to handling requests for apologies, sometimes justified (mistakes do happen, after all), sometimes not.
And it is not often we seek our own even if we may have been wronged.
But in this case all our local media who reported on this issue really do deserve an apology from Deputy Lewis and co, especially the individual reporters who worked on the stories and were simply doing their jobs – and doing them well.
The public also deserve an apology for quite simply being lied to.
