West Nipissing Releases List of "Recognized" News Sources

In unprecedented fashion, municipal staff attempt to discredit inconvenient voices.

On Friday, staff at the municipality of West Nipissing issued a press release advising residents on how to consume local news.

Their release titled “Friendly Reminder to Residents Regarding Local News” tells residents to “be mindful when consuming information online” and to get their news from “recognized sources”.

They then listed and provided links to 14 of these “recognized sources”.

Among the names were out of town publishers and small radio stations. The Sudbury Star which has not published a news story related to West Nipissing in over a month is on the list.

Notably absent is The West Nip Voice.

Even though this website is quickly becoming the most read political news source in the region someone at the municipality did not deem it worthy of being on their list.

This latest news release comes the same week as I published the full story of the mayor’s ongoing dispute with her neighbour which led to the unprecedented illegal use of drone surveillance. Although I have inquired many times with staff and the mayor, they have refused to discuss this topic publicly. The story has now reached over 5,000 residents (nearly half the adult population of West Nipissing) across multiple platforms.

It appears that their strategy is to simply discredit the source rather than address the facts. The municipality has never had a list with links of approved news in the past. I inquired with municipal staff as to their method for choosing who would be on the list but I have not received an answer.

This latest release is not appropriate and should be quickly condemned by all councillors.

No other municipality including North Bay, Sudbury or Toronto offers such a list of their government websites.

Even if someone disagrees with my reporting, no democratic institution should ever get into the business of deciding which news source is “approved” and which isn’t. Unless they strive to mimic Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping.

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