Saturday, Jul 21

King Breaks News Of Death Of Tammy Faye Messner, After She’s Already Been Buried

CNN broke into regular programming just after 8:50pm ET tonight to report the news of the death of Tammy Faye Messner. The former televangelist, singer and TV personality died Friday morning, but the family had asked family friend Larry King to hold the news until today. King told CNN’s Rick Sanchez, “they wanted to delay it a full day so that the family could all gather together.” In fact, Messner was cremated this morning and, as King explained, her remains have been “buried in a remote part of Oklahoma.”

Messner was a fixture on King’s program, appearing Thursday night, looking like a shell of her former self. Here’s the story from Access Hollywood… King told Sanchez he “was proud and blessed” that the family asked him to report the news. An emailer wonders: “did (King) even tell his bosses at CNN that he was sitting on the story? How can he be a ‘journalist’ if he holds news 24 hours at the family’s request?”

The story of the death of the former Tammy Baker stands out because as we read the Sunday Sun newspaper of July 23, 2007, the news of Tammy Baker’s death was already yesterday’s news. From our best research, first news of her death broke on Saturday night about 8.50PM. Although BU accept that the Nation Publishing company must have a cut-off time to go to press, we wondered in this case if better could have been done. Is it too much to expect a Nation News editor who was in tuned with the current events of the day to have replaced the story before going to press? A member of the BU household commented, what if the Prime Minister had died? Should the management of the Nation Publishing House not have a mechanism to refresh the news to minimize redundant articles like this one? Our best information suggests that the Nation Newspaper goes to press close to mid-night. We appreciate that the newspaper would have to be “type set” well before press time. Even if BU accept that it was too late to stop the press, we wonder if the Public Editor, Carol Martindale of the Nation could not have mentioned those articles which have become time-barred. If the Nation owned a blog like most of the decent newspapers, issues like this could be easily addressed.

In today’s Nation, the Public Editor hinted at big plans in the pipeline to bring the newspaper into the 21st century. We hope that any changes afoot will lead to a hungrier media house at Fontabelle, which will keep the journalism flag burning. We all agree that an active press is required to help protect our fragile democracy.

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Roy Morris Told To Resign From The Nation News ! ?

 

“The Board of the Nation met yesterday and asked the Associate managing Editor to resign following a report by a 16 year old intern attached to the Library…”

So begins one of the four emails we have received from four different IP numbers in the last few hours. The emails go on to talk about a police investigation and cover-up. Instructions to police officers from higher ups to ignore the complaint of the young lady.

What is the truth?

Folks… all we have is four emails – apparently from four different sources judging by the language and details. Is it a set-up to discredit the Barbados Free Press? Is it the truth? Is it the partial truth? Whatever the story, you can bet that we won’t read what really happened in tomorrow’s Nation News!

BU received word of the sordid details surrounding the recent event of Mr. Roy Morris. All we can say is we are very disappointed that a man who was entrusted with the responsibility to fairly and accurately disseminate news in this small country would resort to such activities which no doubt like Dale Miller will destroy his reputation forever. Perhaps the biggest disappointment to the BU household is the fact that Mr. Morris’s indiscretions have been many in the past and have been covered up by the management starting with Harold Hoyte and others. BU will say more in the coming days but for now, we congratulate Barbados Free Press for having the balls to break the story and pledge BU support to expose the hypocritical, corrupt and immoral behavior which exists in Barbados__ clean open!

In God we trust!