By: Forrest R. Church, Publisher
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
I’m revisiting a time period from about 21-22 years ago. I do not have the time to delve into our archives for an hour to lock down the exact year.
It was one of my initial negative encounters publishing local news concerning a public meeting when first becoming a hometown news publisher.
I prefer not to disclose the identity of the business owner or the town; it’s all water under the bridge. I am someone who believes in forgiveness but not forgetting either. As the saying goes, “fool me once, shame on you” — you know the rest.
Anyway, things were different then. Public meetings, as they do now, generally had a visitor or two, sometimes less. It was the media, maybe 75% of council showed up, mayor, etc.
Recording meetings by local small government organizations and/or media was not common; frankly, reporters using audio recorders were somewhat uncommon. This was way before the pandemic opened the door for audio and video recordings online, which can be viewed on social media, YouTube, or even on many of our local government websites now.
Side note – I’m 1000% behind transparency, thus I love the idea of local meetings being made public via recordings. Shine a light in all areas, leave no shadows, and leave citizens with information, whether good, bad, or indifferent.
Back to my story, our little newspaper which only covered two one-stoplight towns at the time, invested in a few audio recorders to help our writers. Two main purposes.
(1) Our writers wrote slow and some people talked fast in public. They could not write as fast as people talked.
(2) To cover our bases (I said bases) when people wanted to circle back on us challenging what we wrote within the newspaper. I had not published news for long, and I had already realized this was going to be a “thing”.
Anyway, a tense situation occurred where a business owner was at odds with council, again, not uncommon. This individual was well known for going on tangents with a lot of people including local law enforcement, so I was not completely surprised.
The council listened to him, and they made their decision on a matter. He did not like their decision, and he became less than professional, or as I like to call it, “diarrhea of the mouth.”
Now, I’m not judging. Cut me off in traffic after church, and I’ve been known to have this condition flare up myself. Sorry pastor.
So fast-forward, and our weekly newspaper quoted what he said within the meeting, what the council said, and what his response was. “…” means word for word, as recorded on our little audio recording devices and translated into print.
So our little weekly publication went to press with the article. The phone rang a day later, and the mentioned individual reinvented ways of using the F-word; I think it was shared in French, native tongue, Italian, and maybe a few others.
Long story short, he was going to have his lawyer place a lawsuit on us like no other in the history of mankind and maybe find me in a dark alley for good measure because he sure as “F” didn’t say anything we reported.
I asked him if he would like to give his lawyer a copy of our audio recording, which contained every word spoken at the public meeting and was placed in print word for word, including the “ums” he used within the meeting. I also notified him it was a very long week, my generic coffee, which was all I could afford at the time was not working, and a work break extravaganza in a dark alley would be welcomed.
He then chose to share some more F-bombs, this time in Portuguese, Spanish, and maybe South Dakotan. I’ve never heard from him again, we have not exchanged business since. “It is what it is” as they say.
Why bring this up? Years, maybe even decades have passed without much in the way of issues with public meetings and our media outlet. I think people understand that there is hard-core proof with audio and video recordings that leaves little room for interpretation. Don’t get me wrong it still can happen and I can recall a few times over the years where one of our writers dropped the ball with their coverage efforts, but for the most part “I didn’t say that” has not been an accusation made much recently.
And frankly, most meetings in our area do not hold a tremendous amount of conflict within them. Generally, they have more of a feeling of an old-timers group drinking coffee and talking politics at a local restaurant. That’s the way I’d prefer these meetings personally.
However, for whatever reason there has been a surge in recent weeks/months. I believe maybe this has to do with the fact we continue to slowly expand our news coverage throughout the two county area at a heavier volume, thus our writers show up to more public meetings than before (some government entities are not used to this). I won’t go into details about how people are mad at us because they group all media outlets together as the same – thus we must all be evil.
Or maybe it’s an election year. I’m not a dooms day prophet, but if there will be end of days chaos, it will be during an election year, I’m convinced (I wrote about this before the assassination attempt and before the bid for reelection of a sitting President came to an end). It seems that good hearted calm people are one breaking news story from going off the deep end. I’m not trying to be funny, that’s an honest observation.
Public meetings are just that, very public. Their very purpose is to share important public information between local government entities, citizens, visitors, and the evil media.
In recent months, we have had a scenario where a newspaper writer arrived to a local meeting, and it was communicated, “Why is she here? We will just go into executive session.”
This of course breaks every rule in the book. I showed up to this meeting an hour after I received word of this, with the comment being denied (pre-meeting comment thus our recorders were not on). I’ll just leave it that there is always two sides to a story, so who knows. It is “all good” now with this public gathering; I think our heart-to-heart talk situated that scenario and if needed, we have each other’s personal contact information. So sometimes conflict creates good if both sides can be respectful and use reason.
We have recently had more of a humorous situation where in front of guests and media, we were asked not to share information that was openly discussed in a public meeting. This was lighthearted as the matter was certainly not a cover up of important public information, but it did open the door for future issues, so this needed addressed as well. Again, respect by all parties, we are good, and the matter is closed, we shared some laughs along the way.
These are just a few recent examples, I do not have the print space to blab on further.
Though I’m somewhat trying to keep this column humorous, there are some underlying issues with these shared stories that are not laughing matters.
Does anyone think a State-Run Communist media system is a good idea? Pick this. Omit that. Let me speak, but don’t repeat what I said. Elected officials asking for something stated in the meeting to not be printed. Don’t shed light on something that may look negative if printed. A terrible idea. How does this work in China and North Korea that portrays everything is perfect via their State Run media (as hundreds of thousands starve to death). This is why there are very specific rules in place in what can even be shared in an executive session at local public meetings. Meeting have to be open, public, transparent.
Transparency is extremely important, and though I dislike the term, the media is responsible for policing and sharing local government actions with the public that has long depended on media. I do not want to open a can of worms, but there are two local communities just outside our coverage area full of corruption that happened within a few years of their local hometown newspaper closing and they receive no media attention now. Lack of transparency opens the door for corruption, there has to be public accountability for us all. I’ve been asked to provide coverage to this area, likely never happening, at least with this newspaper.
I understand why many dislike the media. They are colleagues, but trust me, I’ve seen shady efforts trying to influence readers, viewers, and listeners to a particular angle. This does not just happened with extreme news outlets nationally, I’ve seen it locally. How can you be on a committee to shut down a community activity (activist) but then be trusted for bringing neutral unbiased news on the very subject you are protesting the night before?
Our system at The Village Reporter is simple, and, I believe, correct. Our writers are told to cover meetings from the beginning to the end. Leave opinions at the door, acknowledging we all have them along with at least minor biases, and print facts from all sides, whether popular or unpopular. It works. We have quite the mix in our circle, I’m not sure who would win the popular election vote if taken from just our inner office.
Are we perfect? Nope, not even close. But we do our best and have learned along the way. Not being conceited, I believe we are among the best locally.
We play by the Golden Rule. How would we feel if it were our family member? How would we want to be treated? If there is an accident, our photographers have been told we will pay them an extra half an hour to avoid publishing an overly sensitive image. We do not want bloody photos that some media outlets go out of their way to obtain. I’d rather have a photo of an empty car than one with paramedics extracting someone with lifeflight in the background. (Note – I’ve been hit hard for even printing these less sensitive photos). We do not sensationalize stories but we also again, do not hide from “tough news” either.
So, in closing if you go to speak at a public meeting, note what you say will likely be shared. Public council, school board, and township meetings are not a coffee group. They have rules and regulations, and anything discussed can and should be expected to become public via the media, word of mouth by visitors, or maybe someone researching official minutes of the meeting 50 years from now by a historian.
If you serve in public, I would encourage you to know the rules and regulations in place, especially on what can and cannot be pushed into executive session (out of public viewing). And realize that our team at The Village Reporter are not your enemies, we have a job to do, we hope that can be respected.
——————————-
That is it for this week. I’d love to hear from you. As always, feel free to reach out to me at publisher@thevillagereporter.com or via mail at 115 Broad Street, Montpelier, Ohio 43543.