BY VOICE STAFF
The National News Media Council (NNC) has dismissed four complaints made against the Voice by Town of Pelham CAO Darren Ottaway, and upheld one.
Ottaway’s complaints related to an article headlined, Where are the tenders?, published on May 9.
The article described the newspaper’s attempts to obtain information about construction contracts awarded by the Town in East Fonthill. In early February the Voice filed a related Freedom of Information (FOI) request, which by law must be responded to within 30 days. Some 90 days later, the Town had still not provided the requested documents.
A former Town Hall staffer, whose name the Voice agreed to withhold, was quoted saying, “They would only have to go to the folder and press ‘print.’ It should take about five minutes. They are just pushing everything off to the election.”
Ottaway cited a Canadian Association of Journalist’s (CAJ) ethics guideline cautioning against anonymous sources taking “cheap shots.”
In their decision, dated June 29, the NNC found that the former staffer’s comment, “They are just pushing everything off to the election,” was only speculative.
“While [Ottaway] acknowledged the information requested by the newspaper has still not been provided, we find the comment in question is the opinion of the source, and that no information was provided to support the opinion,” stated the NNC. “In this view, we found the statement was speculation that should have been tested, and a breach of journalistic standard.”
The Voice does not dispute that the comment was speculative.
“In retrospect, we should have made it clearer to readers that this was the source’s opinion,” said Publisher Dave Burket, who cited the source’s familiarity with Town Hall operations.
“It was a speculative remark, based on years of experience, but still just speculative. We’ll take better care to distinguish such statements in the future.”
In the rest of their decision—at 1400 words almost twice the length of the original story—the NNC methodically reviewed each of Ottaway’s remaining four complaints, dismissing each in turn.
“The paper followed widely accepted journalistic standards by seeking sources, such as the former staffer,” said the Council’s finding. “No evidence was presented about ‘damage’ to the town because of this reporting.”
The finding concludes:
“In dismissing four complaints, the NNC noted [Ottaway] did not allege factual errors; that it is undisputed that an FOI was filed and not fulfilled at the time of the complaint; and that the winning contractor has not registered a complaint about the article. The NNC upheld the complaint about the comment by one anonymous source. [Ottaway] objected to what [he] called changing ethical guidelines. The NNC supports the prerogative of a news organization to set reasonable guidelines that reflect community standards and needs. In this case, the news organization followed best practice by making those guidelines readily available to readers.”
