IVAN JOHNSON AND THE PUNCH BITE THE DUST

It was announced on 4 October 2021 that Ivan Johnson, the Editor, owner and published of the down market rag The Punch died that day of a suspected heart attack.  Thus ended the career of the man who Lynden Pindling called “the lyingest reporter” in The Bahamas. In his career, he damaged thousands of lives by the innuendoes, half-truths and lies that he spun in The Punch.  He appealed to the worst nature in Bahamians and pedaled homophobia, racism and misogyny.  Many are glad to see the back of him for the nastiness which he pedaled.  In the Christian spirit it is right and just to say rest in peace but the nonsense that The Punch printed in its last and farewell edition ( they announced the paper’s closure)  suggesting that he had made a high-minded contribution to our national life must be debunked and rebuffed. He hated The Bahamas and Bahamans and they were only good enough to make money off of them. As he neared the end, the paper had lost its sting and geos into history books with most saying: good riddance to bad rubbish. Here is a commentary posted on social media with which we agree:

It was, by all accounts, a failing business anyway. Ivan never made the transition to online media and was therefore losing contact with a whole new generation that looks to the internet for its news. Added to which he knew that he was about to lose the Gazette that Minnis had thrown him as a lifeline. Things were not going his way and the coup de grace may have been the FNM’s crushing defeat just a few weeks ago. It must  have been hugely embarrassing and deflating for him to be revealed to the country – and to himself – as a man utterly without influence over the way people voted. In the end, he was not the powerful shaper of public opinion he imagined himself to be. The other shareholders clearly had no interest in pumping money into a losing operation. And Ivan’s sisters simply don’t have the temperament or the interest or the muckraking talent to keep the show going. Time then to cash out. Still, he will leave them wealthy women even if it is blood money. Either way, it’s the end of an era. And not a moment too soon. The Punch and Ivan destroyed far too many lives and they did so with gratuitous, sadistic cruelty for more than 30 years. That carnage will forever overshadow whatever virtues Ivan may have demonstrated as a journalist or as a human being.