The Gods of Time were very kind to Gov. Phil Scott when they arranged for March 15 to fall on a Friday this year. The 15th was the expiration date for the Adverse Weather Conditions emergency housing program, and that’s when the governor, in all his infinite wisdom and alleged niceness, deliberately unsheltered nearly 500 vulnerable Vermonters.

And partly because it happened on a Friday, the press coverage was scant and woefully incomplete. Almost to the point of moral bankruptcy.

It was bad enough that the coverage of Scott’s decision was slanted pretty strongly in his direction. But the lack of attention to the details of his slapped-together temporary shelter “system” may well let him off the hook entirely for an administrative failure of the worst kind

Friday afternoon is the beginning of the long, dark, largely journalism-free weekend. Staffing is minimal at best. Our biggest outlets (VTDigger, Seven Days, Vermont Public) may have a designated reporter who’s on call to cover big breaking news, and the bar is pretty high for that. The TV stations have smaller staffs but still maintain a weekend presence because they’ve got airtime to fill. But don’t expect their A-Team, such as it is. Any coverage from Friday afternoon to Monday will mainly focus on fires, crashes and crime.

With the background set, what did we get for shelter coverage from Friday evening, when the shelters opened, until now? Damn near next to nothing.

To start with, did any media outlet ask some basic questions about the shelters? Capacity, size, type of building, amenities (bathrooms, showers, food prep/storage, personal belongings storage, etc.), previous use?

No, they did not. At least not as far as I can tell. If they did, they didn’t bother reporting it. That information should be readily available from the Department of Children and Families.

Did any media outlet send a reporter to tour the facilities? By my count, three did, and they all visited before the shelters opened Friday night. Vermont Public and VTDigger shared a story (also referenced below) that brought us inside the shelter at 108 Cherry Street in Burlington. WCAX’s Ike Bendavid filed a report Friday afternoon including indoor footage of the same shelter; both included images showing just how appallingly close together the cots were. Bob Audette of the Brattleboro Reformer (or possibly just Reformer photographer Kristopher Radder) went inside the hastily-arranged fourth shelter in an office building formerly used by Entergy Nuclear. Radder’s photos show state workers scrambling to turn the empty space into a shelter in 24 hours’ time.

That’s it, as far as I can tell. Nobody else bothered to go inside any of the four shelters. Nobody even tried to visit the shelters after they opened.

I mean, it was after hours on Friday. Quittin’ time!

Also, I have seen a grand total of one story that included the viewpoint of a person evicted from a state-paid motel room: the shared Vermont Public/Digger piece.

C’mon, folks. These real-life accounts are what brings life to a story about public policy. The experiences of these people ought to be held up as part of a journalistic endeavor. When their voices go unheard, the resulting coverage subtly (or not-so-subtly) reinforces the stereotypes about unhoused folk. And it lets officialdom off the hook for the grim reality of what’s being done.

I’ll say it again: I still believe that the goal of good journalism is, in the words of Mr. Dooley, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In this case, “the comfortable” include all the responsible state officials who had homes to go to and beds to sleep in. Our press failed to hold them to account.