Until this week, journalists were able to approach city council members directly with questions within council chambers as soon as meetings wrapped up at Tom Davies Square.
No more.
Among new rules affecting media access the city instituted without consulting local journalists, reporters who wish to interview an elected official must now go to a designated waiting area.
Once there, journalists are to let city communications staff know which member(s) of city council they’re interested in talking to. The staff member will then bring the requested member(s) to the designated waiting area, which I will refer to hereafter as the media pen.
So, what’s the big difference and why does it matter?
It’s a layer of bureaucracy separating journalists from our only guaranteed direct access to elected officials, which makes us even more reliant on city communications staff than municipal policies have already forced us to be.
(For context, the City of Greater Sudbury Communications Policy stipulates, “No employee of the City of Greater Sudbury may engage in a media interview without approval from the Communications Section.” This means every media inquiry must go through communications staff, even if it’s a straightforward fact-check. Staff members follow this policy to a T, as I’ve learned, much to the potential detriment of timely responses.)
Journalists’ previously unfettered access to politicians in council chambers at the end of city council and committee meetings was valuable because they don’t always pick up the phone.
During my three years covering the City of Greater Sudbury, there have always been a few members who haven’t responded to my phone and email inquiries. This approach tends to cycle through members depending on who becomes the subject of critical reporting at any point in time.
They get a “no comment” in articles, and readers gain insight regarding their respective commitments to transparency and accountability.
But, what about those issues the public demands answers for, which necessitate a stronger push for answers from journalists?
That’s where the opportunity to ask politicians questions in-person is integral.
(On this front, you’ll find that local journalists will squeeze every minute they can get out of Progressive Conservative MPPs, all the way up to when their handlers pull them away. This is a product of the province consistently declining media interviews. They issue written statements instead, which rarely answer all of the questions posed. Follow-up emails reiterating unanswered questions are ignored. Despite numerous requests for phone interviews during my three years at Sudbury.com, the only verbal comments I have received from a Progressive Conservative politician or provincial staff member have been a result of asking MPPs questions in-person.)
But, can’t elected officials decline to comment regardless of the newly imposed media pen?
Of course. That’s always their right, but there’s a big difference between a journalist presenting the inquiry’s context directly to a politician before getting a “no comment” and getting an interview request denied through a city communications staff member (an intermediary process through which the journalist makes no direct contact with the intended interview subject).
The City of Greater Sudbury’s media pen is also at the opposite end of council chambers from where city council members enter and exit, which makes slipping out easy — (by design?).
Also included in the city’s new rules for journalists is a requirement that we wear a city-issued lanyard identifying ourselves as “Media.” City Communications and Community Engagement Interim Director Kelly Brooks explained that this is being intended to help “ensure the security officers stationed at the bottom of each set of stairs allow you access to the floor as required, as only members of the media are permitted on the council floor.”
This requirement doesn’t really matter at face value. I mean, it’s just a lanyard.
However, the irrelevance of this measure in Greater Sudbury is symptomatic of a city adopting broad, ill-fitting blanket approaches to media handling they’ve picked up from other jurisdictions. These measures might make sense in Toronto, where there’s a vast media landscape, but not in Greater Sudbury, where there are five journalists at meetings, tops. More often than not, I’m alone.
During Monday’s planning committee meeting, I was handed a “Media” lanyard despite being the only journalist present and there being no security guards in council chambers.
Afterward, I waited in the media pen to speak with Ward 10 Coun. Fern Cormier. He quickly waved me over, so I walked up and spoke with him where he sat in council chambers, as usual. A city communications staff member approached us to remind us of the new policy, which dictated that I was not allowed to be where I was standing and should have waited for Cormier to join me in the media pen. We shrugged it off and continued talking.
Ignoring the city’s ill-advised media policy was a fitting start to its first day.
Nothing the City of Greater Sudbury has adopted here is unique. Public institutions everywhere are creating communications bottlenecks with top-down, stage-managed messaging which strangle the waning transparency journalists are struggling to hold onto for as long as we can.
It would be nice, however, to see the city change course and take a step in the other direction.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
