I Received A Jewel This Morning.

Take your new media policy and shove it, White Rock!

Home / J-Topics / Freedom of Expression /

July 4, 2011 - Posted by Grant Buckler

ShareThis City hall in White Rock, B.C., has told reporters they can no longer talk to city councillors without going through the city's public relations office.

"A press release from that city's administration section appeared in my inbox Wednesday morning informing me that I no longer have the luxury of picking up the phone and calling city council members directly to elicit information about the doings of that august body," writes Ted Colley in a column in Surrey Now. "White Rock city council has decided it no longer wishes to have unfiltered information released to the public.
"The policy requires reporters to call the city's PR person, or the city manager, to request an interview with anyone on council or staff."

************************

My inbox yeilded this treasure this morning accompanied by the comment;

"If I was on council I would be screaming blue bl''''dy murder"

*********************
One might say Aurora was more advanced  than White Rock. They started the process  with  passage of  a  Code of Conduct . Clause 3 required Councillors to explain the rationale  for  Council decisions
even if in disagreement.

The former  Mayor declared the Code had been written by a legal  expert on municipal law. He was even named but I never could accept that as a fact.

I didn't agree with the Code. I refused to sign it. I continued to convey my view of things to the people who elected me.

So follow-up  strategy was the one now employed by White Rock.Only two channels of  information were to be provided to the public. One of them being ,in the person of the Chief Administrative Officer. That was after they created a lesser position with the  publicly declared responsibility of correcting "misinformation" that might appear from time to time in blogs and letter to the editor and such.

That didn't work out as planned either.

Along the way, $126 K of public money was spent to silence the  critic.A whole bunch of collateral damage was done.

We all know the outcome of the second to final chapter of the  Grand  Experiment for Controlling the Message in Small Town Ontario.

So...People of White Rock ...Stay Tuned.


                                   WE STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE..