Clarity is a goal of good newsmaking. So is accountability. A journalist's role in the political realm is to get to the heart of the issues that affect communities, and hold governments accountable, especially when it comes to the spending of taxpayers' dollars.
This means having the freedom to openly ask questions – including the difficult ones politicians often don't want to answer. Sometimes it means seeing things in a way government doesn't like, or delivering the message in a way politicians can't dress up with a more positive spin.
What is troubling, of late, is the penchant for politicians at all levels of government to take to social media to address the public, rather than through the media's watchful lens.
Certainly, there is a place for politicians to be accessible in ways technology can facilitate, especially when a traditional face-to-face with constituents can present challenges, including during a pandemic. But the core concern with its overuse is how much control over messaging it gives one side over the other.
Answering the media's questions on behalf of taxpayers is part of a politician's job. It always has been. But will it always be? The more attempts we see to avoid that forum and go right for the audience begs the question.
We were disappointed to see Mayor Cathy Heron use social media to attempt to discredit The Gazette on Monday. Our city hall reporter did accurately report on the July 5 council meeting. The use of a couple of terms in the story is where the real issue lies.
The relationship between politicians and media is a reciprocal one – one which involves positive and negative stories. Politicians know we'll be calling either way. But it works in the other direction, too. When our phones ring, we answer them, and we answer to the people whom we report on.
Our phone did ring last week. It was a city staffer, who spoke directly to our reporter on behalf of the mayor and the deputy chief administrative officer about the use of the term MUC (municipal utility corporation) in a story about council's proposed MEC (municipal energy corporation). The staffer asked for clarity and a correction. We agreed to both.
The MUC was an initial proposal by council in early 2018 which explored the idea of a city-created entity to provide a variety of municipal services, including waste-to-energy, primarily to other municipalities. The intent was to bring in more funds to buffer the city against funding cuts from other levels of government, and help keep property-tax increases down. This proposal was voted down in December of 2019.
A year later, in December 2020, council voted to embark on a similar journey, this time with the MEC, with more of a focus on solar energy generation, at least at the outset.
The two terms have often been used by the public interchangeably, as there are parallels between the two proposals. Even city council on July 5 saw the two terms as interchangeable, given that city chief administrative officer Kevin Scoble and Coun. Ray Watkins both referred to the current proposed corporation in front of council as a "utility corporation."
“There would be a unanimous shareholder agreement between the city of St. Albert on this utility corporation,” said Scoble during the July 5 meeting.
“If we had a utility corporation with a board of experts that are knowledgeable in the field, I think people will be more eager to deal with us and bring us more deals,” said Watkins at the same meeting.
We're quite happy to correct things when we get them wrong. Members of the media are human; we make mistakes. Getting it right is what is important. But did we get it wrong?
If council and city administration are using the terms interchangeably, it's easy to see why a newspaper reporter would. Or an editor. Or the public.
It doesn't matter how muddied the message gets, the truth at the heart of it looks like semantics to shift public perception – that by changing out the pieces and the name, the city is somehow changing the business model its public didn't want.
Perhaps what was once a utility corporation, by any other name or approach, to a taxpayer, is still a business model we're not ready to buy into.
