Community newspapers vow to cut province’s submitted news

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/05/2018 (2701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The organization that represents community newspapers in Manitoba will urge members to stop publishing government press releases and columns by MLAs in retaliation for proposed legislative provisions that would no longer require governments to post certain notices in newspapers.

Ken Waddell, president of the Manitoba Community Newspapers Association, said Friday the industry is incensed that the provincial government has refused to withdraw a section in Bill 19 that would allow local governments to publish notices on the internet instead of in local newspapers.

“If our newspapers aren’t good enough to give public notice in, why would they want to have their news releases and their weekly columns in our papers? It makes no sense at all,” he said Friday.

Bill 19 is one of two proposed laws currently before the legislature that would eliminate the requirement to publish government notices in newspapers. Bill 8 would allow the province to publish a broad range of notices instead in the Manitoba Gazette, which would be available for free online.

The types of notices governments are obliged to post in newspapers include municipal planning matters, environmental hearings and boundary changes. Posting a notice on a government website is hardly the same as providing the public with proper notice of impending government decisions through their local newspaper, publishers argue.

Last month, the government announced it would delay enacting the portions of both bills, citing a lack of internet connectivity in northern Manitoba as a reason. But newspaper publishers say delaying proclamation of sections of the bills affecting newspapers until some later date offers them no assurances. They want the offending provisions removed altogether.

The MCNA, which represents 48 newspapers with hundreds of thousands of readers, believes that removing the requirement to advertise certain municipal and provincial notices in newspapers is “bad for democracy,” said Waddell, publisher of the Neepawa Banner & Press.

At recent public hearings on Bill 19, government MLAs got an earful from newspaper owners. The bill was amended at committee so that the section dealing with government advertising would not come into effect when the bill receives royal assent, but it remains in the proposed legislation and could be proclaimed at any time. Passage of Bill 8 has been put off until the fall.

Waddell said newspaper publishers are also upset that they were not consulted before the government introduced the two bills. He said he knows of a number of MLAs — including those on the government side — who are not in favour of ending requirements to place notices in newspapers.

“They have not been listened to, the public has not been listened to,” he said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca