It’s not that local media is paid to shut up, it’s that many of the viewers and advertisers directly benefit from the big entity and will become angry at the news unless it has irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of some wrong doing.
when I moved here last century, NSA were already well established, there were bi-annual R&R USA ship visits, and annual joint airforce training.
The USA started to develop a USMC base in 2012
At the time we were instructed that they co-locate and personnel rotate, so you can't call it a base. not a base. definitely not a base.
They began permanently locating USAF assets at our airport a coupla years later.
They are investing $$big in USAF facilities a few hundred km south
AUKUS announcements have included: new bases for five branches of the USA military, including a second USMC MAGTF.
- and with that big step they've given up gaslighting locals with insistence that these are not foreign war bases.
Suddenly the growth of usa war bases switches from being fake news ('notabase') to not news ('they've been building over ten years').
I'm afraid that, given Darwin's location, allied military activity is going to be 'big business'. But the stanadard argument is that China has shown they are going to be aggressive, and that the alliances are much better than facing China alone. But living where a lot of that activity will likely be happening, what is your perspective?
The 'good' news for you, perhaps, is that the US's strategy now is not to concentrate in large bases, which can be overrrun by new and future long-range precision missiles, but to spread out on many smaller facilities.
my perspective is that it is a great indignity to host foreign war bases during peace time. But if they are here, even to visit, then I want better protections against the reality of crimes committed by visiting service personnel; and I want to close the loopholes allowing the USA to bring illegal weapons.
As an engaged citizen, I notice that local media over the past 10 years have not given this significant change to our town the scrutiny that any similarly sized development would receive.
scandals such as sexual assault are reported by outlets in other cities, but not locally.
what advice can you share to help me understand what is being done to so effectively manage the otherwise useful local media?