A media storm has erupted over a claim that the Scenic Rim Regional Council is attempting to censor an online newspaper based on Tamborine Mountain.
A new media co-ordinator for Council wrote an email demanding the immediate removal from the Tamborine Mountain Daily Star’s website of a political article featuring Division 1 Councillor, Derek Swanborough.
And a flood of angry correspondence followed.
The demand was made by Lyall Mercer, since identified as a public relations consultant specialising in crisis and ‘public reputation’ management – defending public challenges to a client’s reputation.
His clients include the island nation of Nauru and the Liberal National Party. And now the Scenic Rim Council.
The first hint of any change in the Scenic Rim Council’s media arrangements came at 10.02am on August 5, when the Guardian received a media release denying a July 27 story about the Council’s $10 million commitment to the Beaudesert Bypass project if the State and Federal Government were prepared to commit $20 million.
The 63-word email came from the office of Kathryn Gurney, Acting Communications Co-ordinator for the Office of the Mayor and CEO, but the media contact was named as Lyall Mercer.
The Guardian replied pointing out that the story was based on a Council submission contained in documentation of national, state and local infrastructure priorities put forward to government by the South East Queensland Council of Mayors.
At 1.03pm the same day, Mr Mercer sent the first of his contentious emails to Peter Smith, the Editor of the Tamborine Mountain Daily Star. It referred to a fortnightly column by Cr Derek Swanborough, written as a representative of the Scenic Rim Regional Council.
But Mr Mercer complained that when the reader clicked on the link to the column the only article to appear was ‘a purely political piece’ about Cr Swanborough’s run for Mayor.
And he asked if any similar political articles by Cr Swanborough could please be removed from the Star immediately.
He said in light of the Council’s media policy there needed to be a clear separation of the work of Council and people’s personal political ambitions.
At 2.14pm Mr Smith fired off an email to Mr Mercer and Council CEO Craig Barke demanding to know on what legal authority Council was giving him instructions on what to publish in his online newspaper. And did they intend to give similar instructions to other newspapers which had published stories about the Council, such as The Australian, Courier-Mail, Fassifern Guardian, and the Beaudesert Times?
At 2.58pm Mr Mercer replied apologising if there had been any misunderstanding, claiming he had not been attempting censorship and ‘freedom of the press was paramount’.
He said accountability and transparency were very important to Council and he was merely seeking Mr Smith’s help ‘to ensure we keep to the high standards of our media policy’.
But at 4.17pm Mr Smith replied that the apology was not good enough for an attempt at ‘media censorship and media intimidation at it most pernicious and imperious’.
And he referred to a previous Council email that he said had accused both the Star and the Fassifern Guardian of publishing incorrect speculation about the Council of Mayors’ Report.
The email had warned: “Allowing a writer who is obviously well known to you to ‘speculate on reports’, and providing that writer with front page recognition, is a very risky practice. Speculation is not something any legitimate publication - like the Daily Star - would want to be known for.”
Mr Smith said there was an implied threat in the phrase ‘is a very risky practice’ and what the Scenic Rim Regional Council had done to the Tamborine Mountain Daily Star was wrong at the most fundamental level.
He added: “We are circulating this correspondence to all other media outlets so they are aware of the Scenic Rim Regional Council’s apparent new policy to hire ‘hard men’ to lean on Editors and Management of media outlets with a view to dictating their editorial policies.”