The Avis and The Daily News

The USVI has two major newspapers covering the daily news on the islands⁹⁵, The Virgin Islands Daily News (The Daily News) and The St Croix Avis (The Avis). The Daily News is based in St Thomas, but covers all three islands. It prides itself on its Pulitzer Prize-winning articles and its history of investigative journalism. The Daily News focuses on news stories that reveal corruption and debates political issues as well as covering cultural events and topics in special issues and weekend supplements. Crucians seem to think that this St Thomas-based newspaper only covers the negative aspects of St Croix – issues of violence and crime. The St Croix Avis or simply The Avis is a traditional newspaper still carrying its Danish given name, ‘avis’, meaning ‘newspaper’. The main focus of The Avis is the island of St Croix where it is considered the local paper. The Avis covers many cultural stories and issues of education and health, though investigative journalism also finds its way into the printed pages. The differences are furthermore expressed in the ownership of the papers; The Avis is privately owned whereas The Daily News is owned by a corporation.⁹⁶

In the two-day issue, Sunday-Monday July 5-6 in 1998, The Avis journalist Jamie Bate writes about the turmoil surrounding the re-enactment that ‘the story of the day was again [like 150 years ago] establishment versus anti-establishment’ (Bate 1998:

1). The establishment in the twentieth century, in which Bate writes, is represented by the governor of the islands, Roy Schneider, and the anti-establishment is represented by Senator Adelbert Bryan. Again, like so many years ago, ‘anti-establishment’

means emphasis on disruptive African culture and virtues and the ‘establishment’ is

95 A third ‘paper’ is the internet based The Source. But this was not in existence in 1998 when the re-enactment took place and is therefore not included in this description.

96 Recently The Daily News changed hands after a bankrupcy.

left with a ‘blank, stunned look on [its] face’ (Bate 1998: 2). Also, spectators are left standing in ‘unbelieving shock’ (Bate 1998: 2). Bate allows the parties in the fight to explain themselves, but nevertheless seems to keep an ironical distance to the subject when describing the sequence of events as follows:

In the early afternoon, the pomp of colonialesque sounds from a brass band added a surreal soundtrack to a program-stopping melee in which Sen. Adelbert Bryan, in full African regalia, wrestled with burly members of Gov. Roy Schneider’s security detail. (Bate 1998: 1).

The way Bate insists on the surrealism of the historical adjectives to the events, the

‘colonialesque’ music and the ‘full African regalia’, is emphasised later in the story by the description of the audience’s surprise and shock and Governor Schneider’s

‘blank, stunned’ facial expression. Simultaneously, Bate recognises the situation as a replica of the past struggles in the sentence reproduced above: ‘… the story of the day was again establishment versus anti-establishment’. Perhaps, Bate seems to suggest, it is only the style in clothes (African regalia) and music (brass band) that has changed – the issues are still the same. However, a mocking tone seems to find its way into the piece in the way the issues that remain relevant in the community are linked to a long-gone past. Thus, the senator is portrayed as not fitting in when wearing his ‘African regalia’ and in the same way the surreal brass band music from colonial times seems out of (contemporary) tune, to The Avis reporter.

In The Daily News Eunice Bedminster reports on the emancipation ceremony in two pieces both featured on the front page and page two under the common heading

‘Celebration disrupted’. The first piece, ‘Emancipation rolls on’, is a reportage from the event which focuses on the bond between past and future and the experiences of this by the audience. The excitement and fear of the Danish slaves 150 years ago seems to be in the air and several people Bedminster talks to remark on this.

Additionally, Bedminster reports on the people present, the media covering the events and the parades that were performed. The second piece; ‘Bryan storms stage’ is the longer of the two. It is a critical piece which already in the second paragraph states that Senator Bryan ‘just last week was sentenced to 90 days unsupervised probation on a destruction of property charge’. Meticulously Bedminster accounts for the moves

and thoughts of the police, gives qualified guesses about Bryan’s supposed speech topic had he been allowed to speak at the event⁹⁷, Governor Schneider’s plans to prosecute the senator for the disruption and the facial expressions of the USVI Delegate to Congress etc. It also becomes clear in this article that the supporters of Senator Bryan are people convinced of the paramount importance of African roots.

Bryan is quoted as saying: ‘I was born in Frederiksted and I will speak any time I want’ (Bedminster 1998: 2). The emphasis placed by Bryan on his place of birth goes hand in hand with a general debate in the community especially in St Croix in which being ‘ban’ya’ affords a certain (street) credibility to a person. Freedom of speech is connected to the privilege that follows local heritage. Moreover, supporters express strong concerns that Senator Bryan was not allowed to speak, because ‘He represents us all. The other colors up there don’t mean anything to us.’ (Bedminster 1998: 2).

However, at the end of the piece, Bedminster somewhat tellingly returns to the issue of the senator’s crime sheet in the third-last paragraph of the piece:

Bryan, who has a history of trouble with the law and has frequently disrupted Senate meetings, was found guilty of destruction of property in February for smashing Daily News photographer Steve Rockstein’s camera during Nov. 7, 1996, Senate meeting. (Bedminster 1998:2)

In this quote The Daily News steps into the ring and it becomes apparent that the newspaper may have a dispute with Senator Bryan outside the realm of the emancipation event. This paragraph cannot help but affect the perception of the article and its claims, I think, because it makes the constructed journalistic objectivity apparent to the readers. Both The Avis and The Daily News followed the controversy of Senator Bryan for the next few days, but neither seemed to find a resolution to the dispute. The coverage in the USVI news can moreover be understood in relation to small-town communities in which everybody knows everybody: less explanation is needed. However, news criteria would still have to be up to a certain standard.

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97 Most likely the article states he would have emphasised the absence of General Buddhoe and the superfluous use of the character Gov. Peter von Scholten. – This concurs with Larsen’s articles.

The articles in the two USVI newspapers differ markedly from the Danish in that they are part of a regular daily news-flow and not a particular ‘foreign report’ piece. This means that the journalists who are writing do not seem to focus so much on having to justify their interest in this issue or call on the identification of the viewer. Larsen, on the other hand, struggles to make the issue of concern to Denmark. Both USVI papers focus on the future-present continuum. The Avis, keeping an ironic distance, identifies a dissonance in the representation of the cultural-historical issues on the contemporary political scene, whereas the core of the debate may be the same. The Daily News, in the article ‘Emancipation rolls on’, accentuates the excitement and the feeling of coherence and contingency expressed by the audience to the event and the citizens of USVI. This is a less explicit political assertion than the one portrayed in The Avis. To The Daily News reporter it would seem that politically the issues are torn and debated, but when it comes to the historical presence of a common past the USVIs are united.

It follows that The Daily News split the story in two; one that reports on the events and one that focuses on the disruption by Senator Bryan.

As already hinted at, the journalist’s political and perhaps personal interests become apparent throughout the pieces. But the USVI journalists are not explicitly present in their articles in the same way that Larsen puts his own life in his stories. I would contend that this is because of the abovementioned need for identification which is readily at hand to the USVI journalists’ readers but not quite as easily engaged when it comes to Danish readers of USVI news. I want to discuss further the situation of the journalistic practice in the next section. I do this through a closer reading of Larsen using the categories of the professional and the personal journalistic practices developed in chapter 2. The categories make a conversation possible that will illuminate issues of journalistic subjectivity, ‘objectivity’ and un-biased reporting in the articles on the re-enactment. In short, questions of journalistic politics of positioning are at stake. I will take this conversation as my starting point in the following discussion of history, memory and archives.