We didn’t want to flood you on Saturday with all of the details behind the council press office posting, but here’s a bit of background if you happen to be interested.
Let’s be clear, we’re not having a go at the whole council — we are very much aware that a great deal of dedicated work goes on there in its many different departments – the latest news of the Blue Flag in Ventnor and the involvement of the Parks and Beaches division is testament to that.
VB school coverage disliked
It was clear that the council press office didn’t like some of the coverage that VB did on the schools reorganisation — unnecessarily rude phone calls late into the night pointed to that — but is an alternative view enough for a publication to be marked?
Isn’t expressing views — even, shock horror, if they differ with the people in power — a central part of healthy democracy?
Press (non)releases
Along with effectively cutting off our access to the council, they’ve also stopped sending us their press releases.
In the seven months that VB has been freely distributing the unedited press releases from the council, you’ve seen them on VB within minutes of us receiving them.
Not one of them was filtered out – whether we agreed with the content or not.
After Claire Robertson decided to turn off our press releases (without telling us, we might add), the first two that they decided not to send us were a plea for more foster families and the fire service reminding people to check their smoke alarm batteries. Nice.
Seems like a strange decision for a communications department to make – choosing not to distribute their self-penned material through a widely-read news site.
Could it be that they didn’t like the idea of the Island residents being able to directly comment on the wisdom of the things the council announced? You might think that hearing what the public felt about council news might have been of interest to the comms department. Who knows?
The Non-communications department
It’s not infrequently that we’ve found the Press Office at the council tricky to deal with. On occasions, the number of questions we have had to ask and re-ask to get to the bottom of things hasn’t been funny.
Having dealt with many PR departments over the last seven years while producing publications, we find it hard to recall one that has dipped quite so low on the co-operativeness scale.
Shouldn’t it be important that people have a choice of where they get their news from? … and that expression is made without fear or retribution?
