By Eric Stern
April 6th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
On March 30th Mayor Meed Ward wrote the following commentary piece in the Spectator:
“It is truly unfortunate to see the misinformation, speculation and rumour circulating in the community on these matters, and more discouraging to see some of those same rumours repeated in a column in The Spec on March 28.”
On March 28th, Spectator columnist Joan Little had asked a simple question:
“Why is all this happening at once? Because of the power a mayor has to hire and fire?”
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward: “It is truly unfortunate to see the misinformation, speculation and rumour circulating in the community on these matters…”
In the mayor’s commentary, she makes no attempt to answer Little’s question or to provide any information to stop the speculation and rumours surrounding multiple senior leadership departures at city hall. The mayor goes on to state “our residents deserve accurate and fact-based news and opinion coverage”.
Given that the City of Burlington employs people with serious communication skills it’s really surprising that, quoting the mayor, “misinformation, speculation and rumour” cannot simply be explained by someone, anyone, from the city providing “accurate and fact-based” information.
If Brynn Nheiley and Sheila Jones were fired, the severance and legal costs will be in the six-figure range for each one of them. Do taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent?
As a taxpayer, I have to wonder if the communications department is nothing but a taxpayer-funded PR organization for the mayor.
Something unusual is happening in politics and there are echoes in history. Napolean owned two military newspapers, allowing him to directly communicate with the military and public. After coming to power, he closed down 60 of the 73 newspapers in Paris.
Germany, in 1923, had 467 radio listeners. By 1932, there were over four million paying radio subscribers in Germany. Hitler was able to use this new technology to directly communicate with the public.
With changes in technology come political shifts.
We are at the beginning of the social media age. A new technology that allows our leaders to directly communicate with the public. Both Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre make extensive use of social media.
Eric Stern: “I am suggesting that without the balance of editors and reporters, the direct messages from our politicians and their PR professionals have the potential to be misleading.”
I’m not suggesting either will become dictators. I am suggesting that without the balance of editors and reporters, the direct messages from our politicians and their PR professionals have the potential to be misleading. Should we be looking at these direct messages from our politicians with a healthy dose of skepticism? Should we check the information with other sources, including newspapers and TV news and form our own opinions?
Newspapers were new in the late 1700s, radio was new in the 1930s. Do we place more trust in what we read or hear from a new technology source simply because it’s new?
Quoting the University of Chicago Press, “in the case of Donald Trump, Twitter seems to have been one of the key enablers for his meteoric rise to power, rather than the means to challenge or take away that power”.
Kellyanne Conway, Advisor to President Trump, coined the term “alternative facts”.
As a taxpayer, I expect facts.
Mayor Meed Ward, or her communications team, posts directly to LinkedIn, FaceBook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Threads and on https://mariannemeedward.ca/
The startling lack of information about the recent departures from city hall is a form of misinformation. With all of this ability to directly communicate with city staff and the public Mayor Meed Ward should be using information to counter misinformation instead of accusing Joan Little of spreading rumours.
| Are strong-mayor powers coupled with a PR machine what the residents of Burlington want? Please help send a message to Mayor Meed Ward by signing Blair Smith’s “Restoration of Democracy at Burlington City Council” petition on change.org Click HERE
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A great piece by Eric, also prominently featured in today’s Spectator.
I’d add that the mayor also deletes and hides critical replies on her various social media platforms and her website/newsletter under the guise of them not adhering to her “commenting guidelines.” This practice goes back at least as far as her first election campaign for mayor.
And much of what she writes in these endless “blame others, defend herself and her image” diatribes seems like a classic case of projection and gaslighting, in my humble opinion. (Some humility from the mayor would be nice.)
Trans-Derivational Search – TDS is a technique that the human mind is commonly believed to use in order to make sense of a communication (speech, phrase, picture, sound etc).
Whenever a humanoid come across information, the brain tries to make sense of it based on knowledge it has already gained. The brain will then scan for data it has already stored over the years and apply it to this new information (or experience).
Example
“You did it again yesterday didn’t you!”
Each person reading the statement above will personalise the message and try to make sense of it. Most will find something they did yesterday (using a trans-derivational search) and consider that to be the thing being referred to in the statement, even when it may have nothing to do with that actual situation!
Now this from the Mayor:
“It is truly unfortunate to see the misinformation, speculation and rumour circulating in the community on these matters’”
Huh???…. What “Misinformation”?, Who is “speculating”?, What “rumours” and who is “circulating” them ? And finally on what “matters”?”
Our Mayor, Marianne Meed Ward, speaks out of both sides of her mouth.
Not a good look.