always get our way.

This is inevitable because the media's function is so close to the heart of the functioning of a modern democracy, with the duty of reporting on the news of the day and the performance of a country's leaders.

It is also inevitable that in a small place like Bermuda, the media comes in for more than its share of criticism. The fact that more people come into contact with the media than they would in a larger place tends to mean that its mistakes are magnified.

And because The Royal Gazette is the dominant media institution in Bermuda, that our reporting, both good and bad, gets more attention than most newspapers around the world.

Some of this criticism is fair, and we welcome it. We make no claims to be perfect and recognise that Bermuda is constantly changing and The Royal Gazette has to change too in order to reflect those changes. Most importantly, this newspaper belongs first to its many readers, and it is important that it delivers what its readers need to make their own decisions about their lives.

But there are times when people "protest too much'', or use the media as an excuse for their own shortcomings.

Recently, Transport Minister Ewart Brown told students that receiving negative news coverage in The Royal Gazette was a badge of honour, putting them in the same class as Dr. E.F. Gordon, Roosevelt Brown and a host of others. He may also have had himself in mind.

In this case, Dr. Brown was referring to a story in which we reported that a Project Ride scheme at CedarBridge was not functioning, apparently because of administrative problems. Some students at the school wrote a letter to the Editor protesting the "alleged negativity'' of the story; now Dr. Brown says they should be celebrated for being supposedly criticised in the newspaper, although the students never were blamed for anything and the story accurately quoted one of his own civil servants, Donald Dane, the Transport Control Director, raising a legitimate problem.

Dr. Brown might have done better to tell the students he planned to fix the problem, but instead chose the increasingly popular route of blaming the media, suggesting that it would be all right with Dr. Brown if someone was convicted of murder, so long as he or she appeared on the front page of this newspaper.

Do we report negative stories? Of course we do. We report positive ones too.

But we think the public has a right to know that armed robberies are increasing in this Country, that sex offenders who have been released from prison are likely to strike again if they have had inadequate rehabilitation, and that the Harrington Sound School reconstruction is going to go ahead despite earlier delays. Those three stories, at least two of which could be classed as "negative'', were on the front page of yesterday's newspaper: would you, the public, prefer to find them buried on Page 6 or not to know about them at all?