All the city council news that’s fit to print (or not): Social media v. mainstream media

There have always been Facebook groups in Thompson, at least since my arrival in 2007, with lots of members who complain, sometimes with good reason and sometimes with no reason, about the state of affairs in the City of Thompson, with city council, no matter who is on it at the time, being a favourite target, both as a corporate entity, as well as a bullseye painted on the mayor and individual councillors in office at the time.  These Facebook groups come and go over time. Administrators change or burnout, folks interests switch, whatever. Most of the groups are gossipy with their requisite share of trolls, neanderthals and other malcontents. But truth be told, the membership of most of these groups is made up largely of pretty ordinary concerned Thompsonites or former Thompsonites who truly care about their community. I know many of these people. Some are friends. They don’t (for the most part anyway) just sit in the dark in their basements posting Facebook rants at 3 a.m. They volunteer. They vote. They write letters to the editor. And, yes, sometimes they rant.

But what I am seeing recently for the first time is one of these Facebook groups performing an alternative watchdog role to the mainstream media when it comes to the goings-on at city council. The approach is still a bit scattershot, but they do know how to link to real municipal documents, including juicy correspondence at places like the City of Thompson’s website, All-Net, a Winnipeg municipal software company, which began in 1999 as NewWave Communications, as well as court documents found online at the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench court registry.

Christine Auger, a Thompson property owner and former owner of Speedpro Signs on Hayes Road, who now lives in my hometown of Oshawa, Ontario, started the closed Facebook group Thompson Taxpayers on April 8, 2016, and serves as its administrator. As of this writing, it has 309 members, not a large number even by various Thompson Facebook group comparisons, some of which have 10 or even more times members, but Thompson Taxpayers is starting to punch above its weight in numbers, to use an old boxing metaphor.

The Thompson Citizen, which I edited between 2007 and 2014, still does a pretty decent paper-of-record sort of coverage of actual city council meetings, as does Shaw Cable TV through its local community access channel in its TV coverage of same. But Thompson Taxpayers on Facebook is mining rich material – some of it surely news material – in city council correspondence.

Earlier this year, Coun. Duncan Wong, a first-term councillor best known as a local restaurateur who owns Wongs Asian Bistro, opined at a council meeting that “in Thompson we have a lot of snow usually and to buy a two-wheel drive especially, I’m going to do a comparison about the weight. The half-ton truck we’re talking about 5,000-plus pounds. The three-quarter ton truck we’re talking about 6,000-plus pounds, a thousand pounds more for people to get unstuck is pretty hard especially we do have a female employee working for the public works so they do drive the half-ton or three-quarter ton. Imagine if they got stuck it would cost so much time and effort to get it out.”

Whether some of us are becoming too oversensitive and easily hurt is a debate being thrashed out perhaps a bit too nastily by both sides for my own personal taste on Thompson Taxpayers right now, but what is not debatable is that Wong’s last two sentences touched off a firestorm with very real repercussions. Kate Whitton, president of the board of directors of YWCA Thompson, wrote to Mayor Dennis Fenske on May 25 – just two days before the annual YWCA Women of Distinction awards dinner – asking that Coun. Judy Kolada, scheduled to bring official greetings to the event on behalf of the City of Thompson, be replaced by another councillor who shared the YWCA gender equality values, both for allegedly associating herself with Wong’s “sexist” remarks, and making her own “sexist, discriminatory and inappropriate” at the May 8 council meeting. Heavy stuff, serious allegations. And with several added elements that Thompson Taxpayers have picked up on, unlike the mainstream media, including Kate Whitton being formerly known as Kate Fenske. On May 25, she was writing in her official capacity as president of the board of directors of YWCA Thompson to her father Dennis Fenske, in his official capacity as mayor of the City of Thompson, about Coun. Judy Kolada, who  – wait for it  –  happened to work on a three-year contract as the executive director for YWCA Thompson YWCA after she retired from working as a provincial civil servant in 2008.

A second letter was written May 30 by Emily Pruder, addressed to Mayor Fenske and councillors, requesting “a public apology at the next regular meeting of council from Councillor Wong for his comments. I would also like to request that Councillor Wong undertake sensitivity training specifically focused on sexism in the workplace. His comments were not merely a poor choice of words; they are reflective of his beliefs about the capabilities of women employed by the Public Works Department and working women in Thompson.”

Emily Pruder won the YWCA Chantelle Chornoby Memorial Award in 2016 for Young Woman of Distinction, an award given for “an exceptional young woman aged 30 or under who demonstrates leadership, maturity and compassion. Through her commitment to a cause or pursuit of a personal dream, this young woman has shown perseverance, innovation and a keen understanding of community issues.” Pruder, 22 at the time of her win, was described by Whitton at the time as “a community leader, a trailblazer for human rights, advocating for equality of marginalized groups and dedicated to the empowerment of young women and girls.”

Pruder began her volunteering with the R.D. Parker Collegiate Music Students Association, and helping to clean up a selected neighbourhood every spring. Pruder had also been both a leader and active recruiter for Thompson’s Girl Guides, tripling the program’s participation over the course of three years. She had also quickly stepped in to co-ordinate Thompson’s Community Christmas Dinner, and is a founding member of Thompson’s LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer) advocacy group, Pride 55, the first of its kind in the region.While I think Pruder’s May 30 letter, as a matter of public record, is absolutely newsworthy, I would not associate myself with some of the outraged and uncharitable posts about it in the Thompson Taxpayers Facebook group. Same for the Whitton letter, too. Why? While the comments are legally well within the libel definition of fair comment, every journalist knows you don’t publish something just because you can. There should always be other considerations to be weighed and balanced. This is something the mainstream media usually, though not always, still does better than social media.

This is a small community. Most of us after a time know each other, if not directly, indirectly. So I ask myself? How do I speak the truth yet not be unkind in my words? While I don’t know Emily Pruder much personally, I have always had great admiration for her stepping up to the plate to co-ordinate the Thompson Community Christmas Dinner at a time when no one else was volunteering. I know her mom and dad, especially her dad. I ran into Nelson just a couple of weeks ago for the first time in a long time at Wal-Mart near the sporting goods department and we chatted about snow clearing, grass cutting, fishing and archery (ask Nelson about the latter). Ironically, we also chatted a bit about the decline of civility in politics, and while we’re both a bit farther to the left ourselves, lamented the passing into history of the Progressive Conservative “Red Tories” we remembered from our youth.

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