Dem Gov Gina Raimondo Attacks Rhode Island Media, Ranting Against Their Reliability

With low poll numbers, failed results, and lingering scandals with her administration, Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo is lashing out at Rhode Island’s press corps as untrustworthy and unreliable because they don’t shower her with praise. At an event last night at Brown University, Raimondo took aim at the state’s largest paper The Providence Journal, calling it a “shadow of its former self” that “you can’t rely on” for accurate news, as well as NBC’s Rhode Island affiliate, commenting that her weekly “one on one with the Governor” interview with the station has turned into a “fight.” In her anti-media rant, Raimondo also spoke about the need to rely more on social media and building a Facebook presence instead of engaging with Rhode Island’s local news outlets. As Raimondo shows clear signs of frustration for her lack of results as governor, now she’s decided to start attacking her state’s major news outlets for not giving her the positive coverage she wants.

GINA RAIMONDO: “It’s almost impossible to get the news out if you will, and we’re struggling, even in the short time I’ve been in government. I’ve been in public life for six years, six years ago when I started this, our local paper the providence journal was something many or most Rhode Islanders read, certainly all influencers read, that’s – it’s a shadow of its former self and not true, I think they’re down to sixteen reporters, so you can’t rely on that. Uh, news, Broadcast News, has become almost like talk radio. You know, I start, I do this one thing with live T.V. and it started out, even when I started two years ago, it was a nice back and forth and now they call it “going one on one with the Governor” like it’s all a fight, you know, motif. So we’re constantly trying to figure it out, we’re relying a lot more on social media, I’m investing a lot in building my Facebook presence. We find that people trust Facebook, people trust their friends, and it’s the only place they’ll really go and sort of hang out long enough to, you know, engage with the product. And it has to be much more hyper local, that’s also the only way that we’re learning, like I’m actually spending a lot more time with local, local, hyper, micro, local media in Rhode Island, because people do read that. But it’s a challenge, it’s a huge challenge, and we’re all figuring it out as we go.”