Personal tools
You are here: Home → News → Council Bid to Exclude Press Slammed
 

Council Bid to Exclude Press Slammed

An Aberdeenshire councillor is criticising his own council's lack of openness regarding a meeting to brief Aberdeenshire residents on the Council's budget cuts. The budget briefing meeting is to be held in Meldrum Academy this evening. Local journalists have not been invited and a specific request from a reporter to attend was refused by the Council.

Said Cllr Martin Ford: "I am surprised the Council sought to prevent a journalist from attending the meeting. The Council's budget cuts will affect everyone in Aberdeenshire and are rightly a matter of great public concern. People are entitled to know what their Council is doing.

   

"Clearly only a very few people will get the opportunity to attend a briefing meeting in person. Many more people will find out what is happening from reports in the media. The Council should be assisting in the process of informing the public, not hindering it.

  

"The Council's Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition may well be embarassed by the cuts imposed on the Council by their colleagues in government - but a strategy of refusing to talk about the cuts in front of the press is both ridiculous and undemocratic.

   

"The leader of the Council should be speaking out against the cuts, not hiding from the press."
Document Actions