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25
Sept
Ex-Ripon council leader accuses new mayor of censorship
Former Ripon City Council leader Andrew Williams has accused new mayor Barbara Brodigan of censoring public criticism after critical posts were removed from the council’s Facebook page.
However, Cllr Brodigan responded by saying she had not even seen the comments in the latest round of political bickering.
Councillor Williams forwarded emails to the Stray Ferret in which he asked the city council’s administrator why some posts had been removed.
The administrator told him she had received a phone call from Cllr Brodigan informing her chief officer / clerk Paula Benson “had been in touch with her and had asked for the Facebook page to be looked at and derogatory comments be removed”.
The administrator said she subsequently removed the comments and forwarded emails from people asking why comments had been removed to Cllr Brodigan, who pledged to oversee “the most open and accessible council that Ripon has ever seen” when elected on Monday.
Cllr Brodigan also claimed the city had been “badly let down by the previous leadership”.
Cllr Williams, who stepped down as leader shortly before the leadership role was abolished, said:
So much for openness and transparency. This is clearly censorship of the public. It’s not for the council to remove derogatory comments. If that’s the feeling of the public, the council should respect that. That’s democracy.
There is a difference between derogatory and defamatory.
On Monday evening she pledged to lead the most open and transparent council ever and on Thursday afternoon she is contacting staff asking for posts to be removed.
Cllr Williams said staff ran the Facebook page during his time as leader and “it was certainly never policed by me”.
He also questioned why the chief officer, who is on sickness absence, was contacting the mayor about the matter.
Only one of four city council staff are believed to be currently at work.
Asked to respond by the Stray Ferret, Cllr Brodigan said:
I personally did not see the posts on the council’s social media account and so cannot comment on the nature of the content. The administrator removed the posts on the instructions of the chief officer, who is her line manager. I was simply the messenger. Cllr Williams clearly has a different viewpoint to the chief officer.
At the moment a number of councillors, including myself, are working hard to implement much needed change on the council. As I have said previously this will include making the council more open and accessible. Plans are in place to start our Town Talk events in the town hall and RCC Roadshow in the community. Maybe Cllr Williams has a different viewpoint on this too.
Ripon City Council has a social media policy, which all organisations do, that have a social media account. I will quote from this policy:
Moderation - Most online communities have their own rules and guidelines, which we will always follow.
We also have some rules of our own:
We reserve the right to remove any contributions that break the rules of the relevant community, or any of the following guidelines:
• be civil, tasteful and relevant;
• don’t post messages that are unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive;
• don’t swear;
Please take care not to make libellous statements.
In law this means a statement that lowers the reputation of a person or organisation in the eyes of a reasonable person. By publishing such a statement, we can both get into serious trouble.
We will therefore take down any statement that could be deemed to be libellous.
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