Bryan Decries Recent Coverage, Then Says It’s Just About Taxes

An otherwise straightforward Government House briefing Monday about upcoming St. Thomas Carnival events and bill signing saw Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. waffle on his reasons for recently lambasting a local news outlet — the territory’s last remaining print newspaper.

“Well it’s always negative. I mean on the days when we have some of the great wins for the Virgin Islands, it’s always negative with the Daily News,” he said, responding to a question about comments he made during a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week for the opening of the Cyril E. King Airport parking garage. Bryan took that opportunity to deride the V.I. Daily News’s intent to transition into a nonprofit and called on Virgin Islanders to let the Pulitzer Prize-winning publication “die an evil and wicked death.”

“And sometimes it seems almost racist,” Bryan continued Monday, “because … it’s owned by a Caucasian who is not from here, has no investment in the community. And when you read the stories, it seems to be a mockery of we — people of African American descent on these islands — like we are a banana republic that can’t get anything right, when there’s so many things that are happening in the Virgin Islands [that are] positive.”

Bryan, who in 2019 proclaimed November to be David Hamilton Jackson Month and who in 2021 lauded the free press-advocate for feeling “the suffering of the people and through the power of the press was able to bring about social and economic change to better the lives of residents of the territory,” initially seemed to take issue with the newspaper’s reporting on the Virgin Islands government, saying Monday that the outlet published “degenerative type articles and editorials that make mockery of the government and its people.”