Bold moves to limit or even prohibit free-speech were once the currency of conservatives like Donald Trump and Ron Desantis. Now it's being spent by Democrats and Progressives like it replaced the dollar.
Vermont's mainstream media has reacted with outrage by free-speech limitations in the past, but when it came to Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak's demand to control what the police tell the public, complicit journalists described the action as simply requiring her approval. Her "approval" includes removing key information that has ensured the public's right to know since the First Amendment was adopted.
In a post on social media, longstanding journalist Mike Donoghue reveals what the no-longer independent news outlets of Vermont chose to ignore rather than challenge the mayor's decision, a well known MAGA party trick. As Pete Seeger might have said, "Where have all the ethics gone?"
Here is the post:
Northeastern University Journalism Professor Dan Kennedy in Boston has selected Progressive Party Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak of Burlington for perhaps her first award since moving into CIty Hall last year.
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In Vermont, a mayoral Muzzle for silencing the police and freezing out the press.
It might be high-handed for a mayor to order her police chief to funnel all public statements through her office, but it isn’t necessarily such an outrage that it warrants a coveted New England Muzzle Award.
But to compound that by announcing she would have a press availability to which not all local news organizations were invited — well, come on down and claim your prize, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak.
Mulvaney-Stanak, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and a leader in that state’s Progressive Party, signed an executive order last Wednesday ordering the Burlington Police Department to route all press releases through her office before distributing them to the public.
“People need the basic facts of situations for the sake of public safety and nothing more than that,” the mayor was quoted as saying.
According to Colin Flanders, a reporter for the Burlington-based newspaper Seven Days, Mulvaney-Stanak had “raised concerns” with Police Chief Jon Murad “about the content of his department’s public statements in the past. Murad has used press releases in recent years to criticize the court system and a perceived lack of accountability for repeat offenders.”
Murad was silenced after a defense lawyer asked a judge to impose a gag order on the Burlington police in response to statements by the chief concerning a local man who’d had nearly 2,000 encounters with police. Murad had accused the man of “violent, incorrigible, antisocial behavior” — and some of Murad’s comments were repeated on the public radio program “On Point,” produced by WBUR in Boston and distributed nationwide. It’s hard to imagine that the mayor was pleased by that.
Meanwhile, Vermont First Amendment legend Michael Donoghue, writing the Vermont Daily Chronicle for Vermont News First, reported on Friday that Mulvaney-Stanak would speak to the press at a media availability that afternoon — but that Vermont News First, which had been dogging the mayor over her acceptance of free donated meals, had not been invited.
After Donoghue’s story was posted, he added an update reporting that Seven Days hadn’t been invited, either.
“She doesn’t answer her cellphone and actually has asked VNF to stop calling,” Donoghue wrote.
Well, if Seven Days and Vermont News First were left off the invitation list, who was invited?
The city’s daily, the Burlington Free Press, didn’t report on the mayor’s muzzling of Chief Murad until today, and there are no quotes from her in the article.
There’s nothing about any sort of press availability in the statewide news organization VTDigger, whose reporter Corey McDonald wrote about Mulvaney-Stanak’s silencing of Murad last Thursday, on the same day as Seven Days. Nor is there anything from Vermont Public Radio.
Chief Murad, who’s leaving his post this April, may or may not have been out of line in disparaging a notorious frequent flier in the criminal justice system. But holding law enforcement to account is difficult enough without the mayor stepping in and lowering the cone of silence.
For Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak to worsen that situation by creating the impression that she would exclude some news outlets from a media availability (it’s not clear whether that availability ever happened) goes beyond acceptable and pushes this story into the Muzzle Zone.
Yorumlar