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Council voted to control the Media

Councillors Somerville, Robson and Johnson voted to control the Media in Halton Hills

January 30, 2006.

Halton - Halton Hills: At the January 9th, 2006 Council Meeting, CAO Perlin, supposedly at the request of Council, drafted a Media Release Policy (report #ADMIN-2005-0017) for The Town Halton Hills - Council's consideration.

Halton Herald Administrator - Al Kirouac

The report, which identified The Halton Herald.ca as a Media entity, yet discriminated against the Herald as an Electronic Group, in the manner by which the Media release Policy stipulated, how the news information is to be dispensed. The Halton Herald Administrator - Al Kirouac delegated the unlawful issues of discrimination as they were drafted into the policy, as well as raising a number of other concerns, one being; the adverse affects on societies where government controls the Media.

Councillors Lewis and Councillor Fogal both asserted, the information should be available to everybody and anybody who asks for it. Lewis asserted; the most cost effective and fairest way to disseminate this public information was to put it up on the website and make it available to everybody at the same time. He felt it would save money and time by staff not having to send it to the various so-called 'approved' Medias. "We don't need a policy, just put it on the Town's website and make it available to those who want it, and can then go and get it. It's public information and should be available to all taxpayers who want it", noted Councillor Lewis.

Fogal asserted, controlling the information was not in the public's best interest. She suggested changes be made to add the Electronic Media (the only Media group that was singled out in the policy to be discriminated against) be added to the list to receive the information, as the other various forms of Media are sent the information, which is a product of government and meant to be disseminated to the public. The suggestion was staunchly oppose by Councillor Robson and Councillor Johnson, who both favoured the policy as written, to control the Media.

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Councillor Fogal then tried to bring about a friendly amendment to the policy that would allow anyone to receive the public information, merely by requesting it, via - email request to staff, which would put that email address on a ‘list to receive the public information’. Once again her efforts were thwarted, this time by Councillor Somerville. Somerville asserted he had reservations in staffs ability to send out electronic information that could be changed by anyone. He went on to insist; whatever is decided, staff must send it out in a PDF format which the councillor believes cannot be altered. The Councillor failed to state why anyone would want to alter it.

Councillor Johnson indicated; composing and managing an email database, as Councillor Fogal had suggested, to send releases was too cumbersome. She favoured the report as it was written. Obviously, she hasn’t discovered her address book or the group address options in her email program. The current process in the dispensing of media-releases has an individual in each department sending out the individual news releases to the various individual Medias, as written out in the now-adopted policy.

The Policy describes three groups of News Medias; a select TV Group, a select Newspaper Group and the Electronic Media. The exclusive TV and Newspaper groups have the advantage of the various staff departments, as provided in the report, of sending individual various news-released information to them. The discriminating policy dictated; the Electronic Media or anyone else who wanted the public information has to wait to receive it from the website, after the exclusive groups had it provided to them prior to being posted on the web..

Typically, these government media releases are prepared by government staff, and/or our elected politicians who are essentially telling the public exactly what they want reported in the community. Rarely, if ever, does the approved Media elaborate when publishing these media releases. So essentially what we have is the Media publishing reports from government, verbatim, telling their taxpayer constituents; 'Black is Black'.

The first time The Halton Herald.ca reported; 'Black is Gray' concerning a report on the Town and Region, administrators at the Region and The Town of Halton Hills told staff to stop sending the Herald any news media releases, in what the Herald believes, was a deliberate attempt to disadvantage our newsgroup. We have confirmation that the discriminating direction that we believe infringes upon our and the public's Civil Rights guaranteed in Canada’s Charter of Rights came from retired CAO Bob Austin. However, we have not been able to receive any confirmation at this time on whose authority. We've also since discovered a connection between the Region and the Town's of Halton Hills, but at this time, are not able to elaborate any further.

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The report, with the "friendly amendment" was carried which to date, council and staff feel gives them the right to continue to unlawfully discriminate in it's practices and policies aimed to control the news Media in Halton Hills.

Readers may contact the editor at;

Mail: The Halton Herald.ca, P.O. Box 76, Acton, ON. L7J 2M2.

Email: editor@thehaltonherald.ca

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