Journalists aren’t perfect. But it’s hard to cover something completely if we’re denied access.
I’m going to start this column by telling you about a new responsibility I’ve taken on recently.
In January, I became the president of the Society of Professional Journalists Keystone Chapter. SPJ is dedicated to a free press and is the creator of the Code of Ethics that all of us journalists are supposed to live by as we do our job. The organization has about 6,000 members and serves as a watchdog for the First Amendment and for those of us that it covers as we do our jobs.
Now, the reason I bring this up is because it became kind of relevant as City Council ended its meeting on Thursday. During the speeches from the majority part of the session, Councilmember Quetcy Lozada gave a speech in which she criticized the press coverage of Wednesday’s encampment resolution in Kensington on Wednesday.
And it’s for that reason that there are Councilmembers that know about my new gig now.
You see, the press isn’t perfect. We’re human and we make mistakes. But what you’re not going to do is blame us for not getting something right when roadblocks are being put in front of us to keep us from getting the information at all.
If you watched or listened to this week’s edition of Philadelphia Hall Monitor, you know that we talked about the situation in Kensington and how the city handled the cleanout of people who have, literally, been living on the streets there.
Hall Monitor contributor Vanessa Maria Graber talked about the fate of the encampment and what neighbors, harm reduction workers and legal observers were telling her. According to Graber, by the time that outreach workers arrived to help people, sanitation workers had cleaned the streets and the few people who remained there had been told to disperse by police.
While people who came after the initial visit from the police and sanitation departments were able to connect with outreach workers, there weren’t that many, Graber said.
When the press release from Mayor Cherelle Parker’s office was disseminated, it said that the press wasn’t allowed to be at the encampment site and would be given a briefing at 1pm at a site nearby. However, the press briefing was canceled.
Now, it’s possible that during that press briefing we would have found out about all of the people that Councilmember Lozada says were helped by outreach workers on Wednesday. But guess what? It didn’t happen. We weren’t told. And people weren’t allowed to ask because, you guessed it, there was no press conference.
After the meeting, I tried to catch Councilmember Lozada to talk to her about the press coverage and why it turned out the way it did, but I couldn’t.
That said, it appears to me that this is yet another example of the lack of communication between the Mayor’s office and City Council.
When you’re in someone’s district — and Kensington is in Councilmember Lozada’s district — and they don’t know all of the details of what you’re doing there, that lack of knowledge could lead to them meeting the president of the Keystone Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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