Sutcliffe Thinks Media Silence Is Golden

Published 09/23/2024 · Updated 09/23/2024

No muss. No fuss.

The big-time illustrious Globe and Mail called Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Happy Town News gave the grey lady the same treatment as lesser institutions.

“Like many large cities in Canada, our downtown continues to face challenges, including public disorder, which have been a concern for residents and businesses alike, particularly in the ByWard Market and Ottawa Centre including Bank Street,” Mr. Sutcliffe says in a statement issued by his office, responding to questions from The Globe and Mail.

You see in journalism, you usually don’t mention how the information arrives to you unless something untoward or unusual is done in transmission. Such as answering questions with a written statement. Which is how HTN handles it most often.

What that does is it allows Sutcliffe and HTN to say what they want with no chance of follow-up questions, which could be insightful or messy or unsettling. So the information is controlled by Sutcliffe and HTN rather than the journalist. Also sending statements allows lazy journalists to copy and paste a quote and get on with the incomplete story.

See. It works for everybody but the residents of Ottawa, or in this case, the centre of the universe slumming on the shores of Lake Ontario.

Open, caring and inclusive. This is not what prepared statements spoon-fed to journalists do. And Sutcliffe was a journalist. It’s interesting how quickly journalists lose religion what they enter politics. Perhaps it at least makes Sutcliffe feel uncomfortable.

So what you have here is yet another body blow for the media. Bad enough the publication balance sheet sucks, outlets are falling like 10-pins and journalists are as scarce as the truth, now government controls the message. Just propaganda.

And journalists must register to appear at news conferences because, perhaps, it controls the media just that much more. HTN, hope you got all those people registered recently when only three of them showed up for a Suttcliffe “media opportunity.”

There was a time when Bob Chiarelli was mayor when if a public servant wouldn’t talk to the media, the mayor would send someone to the staffer’s office to loosen his or her tongue.

One of the basic premises of local government is that it is accessible. That’s why it’s more interesting than government-by-press-release such as on Parliament Hill.

That’s why city hall is the most important level of government. Because it matters to you. Because it is accessible. It brings you the electricity, the water, transit kinda and potholes. The feds bring you submarines which are a tad far-off unless you can fit one in your bathtub. Remember, it floats in city water.

But HTN and Sutcliffe are making city hall like the feds and the province.

That’s not what we need. So much for the New England town meeting.

Ken Gray