EDITORIAL – Were media slow or biased about break-in at mayor’s business?

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

IF ANY OTHER business in town had been trashed as thoroughly in an overnight break-in as Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson’s was, it surely would have received some serious attention from the media.

Yet, they pretty much ignored the fact that tens of thousands of dollars in damage was done to his Tru Market car lot building. Glass was shattered, equipment destroyed, cabinets ripped apart, picture frames broken, a toilet smashed. It was spectacular vandalism seldom if ever seen before in Kamloops.

No doubt, hammers or other such instruments were used to accomplish it, and it took time.

And why? Robbery doesn’t seem to have been the motive — Hamer-Jackson says nothing obvious was taken. It was, in the strict sense of the word, wanton. Or even vengeful.

Maybe police will be able to find the culprit or culprits, and get some answers. Maybe not.

The property has been the subject of intensive media coverage in the past, including the torching of a vehicle there and insistence by the City that it be removed. And musings about whether he would, or legally could, set up his mayor’s office there, since council kicked him out of his one at City Hall.

And, of course, when he shut the business and put the property up for sale, there was a lot of coverage about that.

But this? Only CBC Daybreak did a brief on-site interview, though it didn’t make the program’s newscast. Nothing on Castanet, or InfoNews, or BC News Now, or Radio NL or CFJC. The mayor says he told a reporter from the latter about it on the weekend, but nothing showed up in the station’s news.

This incident was newsworthy whether or not it involved the mayor; more newsworthy because it did.

As of this writing Wednesday afternoon (July 30, 2025), most of the slowpoke local journalists are apparently getting with it and following it up, so something should be appearing soon, but it took the mayor to make the rounds advocating for himself before they finally, reluctantly, became interested.

Either they’re slow, biased or just have terrible news sense.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.