City council supports critical journalism
Motion approved commending investigative reporting
St. Catharines councillors are commending the critical eyes of reporters at a time when investigative journalism is “under attack.”
City councillors unanimously approved a motion by St. Andrew’s Coun. Joe Kushner, Monday, commending the media for investigative reporting while opposing censorship of the news.
“For councils and for elected officials to operate properly, it’s important that we do have a critical media and an investigative media,” Kushner said.
“As a council we should be thankful and appreciative of the work done by the media in criticizing council and doing investigative reporting.”
Despite supporting the gist of the motion, St. Patrick’s Coun. Matt Siscoe said he prefers an “antagonistic relationship” with journalists.
“I would imagine that the media no longer cares or desires our commendation. I would hope that that would be the case. Personally, I prefer the antagonistic relationship. I think it works best that way for the media to actually do their investigative reporting,” he said. “I would suggest that we keep in mind that commending the media can be seen as pandering in a lot of different ways.”
Kushner said his motion was inspired by the actions of Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, which he said attacked local media regarding coverage of the organization’s failed lawsuit of St. Catharines resident Ed Smith.
“The result is that the media is not only under attack, but is discouraged from doing investigative reporting,” he said.
Mayor Walter Sendzik successfully amended the motion to also request that media companies invest in local journalism — after decades of “hollowing out of local news in communities across Ontario and Canada, and in our own community.”
Journalists, he added, “can try to investigate all they want, but when you have one writer trying to cover five stories it’s very hard to make the number of phone calls that they need to make to do the kind of reporting that needs to be required.”
“If we really want to stand behind media, we should also be requesting that the owner of these newspapers continue to invest in the editorial side to ensure that the coverage is reflective of the issues of our community,” Sendzik said.