April 02, 2003

News Conference Access, Continued

Slowly, the elements of just what transpired on March 27 appear to be coming together into some sort of cohesive picture.

At this point, it would appear (although I'm still slightly apart from total confirmation of this, since I'm getting some of this information via a third party who has been looking into all of this) that the Portland Police Bureau has a new protocol in place for news conference access, requiring press credentials be shown in order to gain entrance. This would mean, presumably, that the "open" policy over at City Hall remains in place.

Thing is, while bits and pieces of this explanation are scattered through the recent exchanges of emails I've had with the Mayor's communications director, it was never simply spelled out in so many words. It doesn't seem, if the above explanation is correct, that it would be too terribly difficult a thing to clearly indicate.

What remains at this point, then, is to obtain a copy of these new protocols over at the Portland Police Bureau, and then determine the proper course of action for independent media to be considered properly credentialed for PPB news conference purposes.

It would help if the City would simply maintain some sort of central and comprehensive list of the news access policies of all the different City bureaus.

It would also help if the PPB ever bothered to answer inquiries sent to their public information email address. Over the past month or so, I've sent several of differing levels of importance, and never received a single reply. That sort of defeats the purpose of having an email address through which the public can contact them.

Something else to pass along to the Public Involvement Standards Task Force.

Posted at 11:45 AM | PermalinkComments (0) | TrackBacks (1)
More In Media, Metro-Area Politics

« Previous Next »

Trackbacks (1)

  1. Press Conference Access Redux on 02 Apr 2003

    Bix has more on his press conference woes, as do I: A mail toSarah Bott, in the mayor's press office, didn't yield a lot to explain why they would have bounced an uncredentialed reporter from a press conference. In fact, she said the policy for access ...