Someone once described what appears in the media every day as "the muddy footprints of history". It's an apt metaphor, because history does unfold itself in a maddeningly imprecise way, trailing blurred outlines and messy little dribbles.

For those who make history, the blurriness represents both a responsibility and an opportunity.

Responsibility, because history-makers are the ones we look to, in the first instance, to give us a better understanding of what each footstep means.

Opportunity because it allows history-makers to spin a little - to shift the outline slightly, so that the fit is more comfortable for them, or perhaps for the rest of us, in some way.

That's the theory of it. But in 21st Century Bermuda? Fuhgeddaboutit. We really do live in another world.

The Progressive Labour Party has spent nearly five years in office, years that have been characterised by a pronounced disinterest, both in reducing the blur and in using the opportunity it affords them to put the best construction on what they do.

At first, they said it was because they had had bad experiences with this newspaper, The Royal Gazette. But their attitude towards the rest of the media has been the same. Over the course of time, they have behaved as if, and have occasionally come pretty close to saying that, their real reason for not communicating with the media is a simple distaste for having to explain themselves at all.

Their attitude seems to be that ordinary citizens have no business poking their noses into the affairs of Government.

Quite apart from anything else, that has made the lives of those in the media very difficult. Not only are they cut off from the normal flow of information from members of the Government, they are also cut off from the guidance they would normally be able to expect about the accuracy of information given to them by their sources.

Is it true that Minister X has done Y? A reporter should be able to make a simple off-the-record telephone call to someone on the inside, and find out at least enough to make a decision about whether the story should be pursued or dropped.

During the last five years, that ability has been all but lost as officials of the Government have turned their backs on the media.

They have been unwilling, or perhaps unable, to grasp that shutting down the channels of communication translates quickly and directly into loss of support among the voting classes. That not-grasping is an odd, odd happenstance that I suspect is going to be mused over, and written about, for many years to come.

In the meantime, the media are stuck with their mandate to reflect as accurately as they can, every day, and in some cases several times a day, what is going on in the community.

When Government officials refuse to answer questions about what they are doing, it doesn't mean that the media just don't bother to do the story, much as that might be convenient for those Government officials. The media have pages and air time to fill. It means that they have to find other ways of covering the news - ways around the people who refuse to answer questions.

Sometimes, it is true, that turns a muddy footprint into a completely indecipherable blob.

In the case of the Government's little flirtation with Cuba, for example, it has been established as truth that Bermuda was in the final stages of negotiating a "memorandum of understanding" with Mr Castro's Government when the story broke. A version of the agreement had been submitted to the British Government for final checking and approval. The American Consul General has described our Government's behaviour as puzzling, and capable of giving offence to his Government (which is ominously similar to what other US officials have been saying about France recently, isn't it?). The European Union has urged its members, including Britain, to cut back on ties with Cuba, especially cultural ties, because of Mr Castro's recent disregard for human rights and justice in his country. The British Government now says it's having another think about whether our cultural agreement is a good idea.

We know all of those things as fact because they have been confirmed by officials of governments other than our own.

Our lot have said the following about secret negotiations with Cuba: It's not true. It is true, but it was never a secret. We're going to give them buses. We're going to sell them ferries. It's all about an airline hub. It's for cultural exchanges. They're going to teach us how to play football. They have wonderful musicians there. It's not an agreement between Cuba and Bermuda, it's an agreement between a Cuban government department and a Bermuda government department. Only the British Government can deal with foreign relations, so it's nothing to do with us. The media is to blame. It was wrong of the media to have asked a representative of Cuba questions about his government's human rights record. Capitalism has much to be ashamed of. Bermuda certainly should not have relationships with countries that have capital punishment (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). It's none of the public's business. It's nothing but media spin. The US should keep its nose out of our business. It's all Opposition spin. Everything is falsely being made out to be political. Two ministers have been to Cuba and seen opportunities…that's the whole extent of it.

I've probably missed out some parts of this highly imaginative response to the questions that are being asked, but there should be sufficient for you to get the flavour. It's a response that says, loud and clear, 'Don't even bother to ask. We're under no obligation to give you a truthful reply.'

The Editor of this newspaper, in an editorial published on Monday, criticised politicians for blaming the press for their problems. It was a pointless exercise, he said, because The Royal Gazette would not shy away from its responsibility to report on problems and debates in the community, whether they concerned Cuba, the Berkeley project, the housing scandal or anything else. The Royal Gazette, he said, would not be intimidated into avoiding these issues by criticism in the House of Assembly.

I think it can be inferred that he was also speaking for The Royal Gazette's weekly publication, the Mid-Ocean News, which first published the fact that the Cuban agreement was in the works, and which was singled out for harsh criticism in the House.

One Member of Parliament, Ashfield DeVent, during Motion-to-Adjourn comments on Cuba, described the Mid-Ocean as "a rag", and said "as long as we continue to accept this type of journalism in this country, we won't move ahead as quickly as we should".

Mr. DeVent did not criticise the Mid-Ocean's Cuban story specifically, presumably because the information it contained had been supplied by such difficult-to-criticise sources as the Deputy Governor and the British Foreign Office.

Instead, he criticised another, unrelated story, carried on an inside page, that described the British Government's reaction to the work of the Black Beret Cadre in Bermuda in the 1970s.

"The story was not attributed to anywhere," he thundered from somewhere deep in the righteousness of his indignation. "It is nonsense and it must stop. The country can't move ahead when our newspapers, our sources, are so poor."

Mr. DeVent works as a journalist, so it is easy to think he must know whereof he speaks. But his connection with journalism is actually a little tenuous, in that he has had no journalistic training, and has covered only Magistrate's Court cases since he started to report for the radio and television station, VSB, four or five years ago. That means that he has yet to test himself in most areas of the journalistic experience.

Had he been a little more knowledgeable about how things work, and perhaps if he had read the story a little more carefully, he might have recognised that the Mid-Ocean's story was about contemporary British reaction to events in Bermuda's recent history - one of a series the newspaper is running. The stories are being written from documents recently declassified and released by the British Government. The sources for the Black Beret Cadre article were, therefore, impeccable. With a little more knowledge, Mr. DeVent might also have known that the absence of a by-line on the story probably meant nothing more than that the editor wrote it himself.

Far from publishing nonsense, the Mid-Ocean is doing the community's ability to understand its recent history a service by seeking these documents out and publishing them.

The Mid-Ocean News has published some of the best stories of the five years of the Progressive Labour Party government. It has also - and this is just my own opinion - published a couple of clunkers. Any journalist worth his salt ought to give credit for the enterprise the good ones represent, and understand how easy it is for the bad ones to occur in the circumstances the PLP Government has created.

gshorto@ibl.bm