Several Members of Parliament finished the marathon Budget debate on Monday night by indulging in a feeding frenzy over a column written by this newspaper's Sports Editor last week.

Members from both sides of the House, in a rare show of unanimity, took exception to two comments in a Friday Forum by Adrian Robson, itself written in response to an earlier complaint by United Bermuda Party MP Darius Tucker concerning the absence of the media at the Airport when the Under-19 national cricket team returned to the Island from their World Cup.

The column contained two comments that raised the MPs' collective ire: one, that MPs should worry about their responsibilities and let the media decide when and how it should cover sports; and the second, a tongue in cheek repetition of one "wag's" suggestion that some of the team, which had struggled in parts of the tournament, should have been put on the stop list at the Airport.

To take the latter comment first, it was clearly meant to be tongue in cheek, as Premier Dr. Ewart Brown acknowledged on ZBM News on Monday night. That said, it might have been better all round to have left the comment out; criticising, even humorously, 17- and 18-year-olds when there are much deeper problems in sports was perhaps unwise. But most people, if not our MPs, would recognise that there was no malice intended.

On the earlier point, one would have thought that MPs could make better use of their time than taking potshots at the media over this incident. We in the media work in the full knowledge that when we make mistakes, we make them for all to see. But with pressing issues concerning housing, drugs and crime, education and so forth confronting the Island, is the presence, or lack thereof, of the media at the Airport the most important thing MPs have to worry about, or is it simply that the media, and The Royal Gazette in particular, is an easy target?

That does not mean that MPs don't have the right to criticise the media's coverage of sport, but even then one wonders why they have spent so little time questioning the overall performance of Bermuda's national sports, for which they have allocated $26 million (or roughly $400 per Bermuda resident) for development, when, frankly, there hasn't been much to show for it. Isn't that an area for wider and deeper debate than a throwaway line in a column?

What was most disturbing of all was the near-reflex action of Cabinet Minister Derrick Burgess to threaten the employment of a non-Bermudian journalist. The same Cabinet Minister came dangerously close to inciting people to violence under cover of parliamentary privilege.

MPs need to recognise that there is a fundamental difference between news reporting and commentary. The writer has much more freedom to provoke and spark discussion in an opinion piece than in a news story. Any and all are free to disagree with it; if it encourages debate and an airing of opinions, then all the better. There would be little point in writing a column that was so bland that it contained nothing with which anyone could disagree.

To take that point further, there would be no necessity for the right to free speech itself if all that was said was so conformist and so in lockstep with the conventional wisdom that no one disagreed with it; and yet that is what was being suggested in the House of Assembly on Monday.

Worse, when a resident of these islands has his employment threatened simply because he says something with which others disagree, then freedom of speech has no value at all.

In the Bermuda context, a statement often attributed, although perhaps wrongly, to Voltaire that "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" could be changed to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, but only if you are Bermudian, and even then, I might not".

The implied suggestion that somehow non-Bermudians' human rights are more restricted than Bermudians is quite wrong and unconstitutional. That, of course, is not to say that there are no limits to freedom of speech – the old axiom about shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is the classic example.

But there is a great distance between that and a tongue in cheek reference to the stop list.

This would be less worrying if it was the first time it had happened. It is not. Royal Gazette reporters are regularly belittled at public events or in the House of Assembly. Construction foreman Curtis McLeod lost his work permit for having an admittedly vigorous disagreement with an MP. Dr. Catherine Wakely lost her job for having the temerity to speak up for her medical clinic patients.

The question all Bermudians must ask is this: If those in authority can threaten to do this to the media, or to an individual, what's to stop them doing it to you, simply for having a difference of opinion?