Bristol24/7 to boycott mayor’s press conferences

Bristol24/7 will not be attending Marvin Rees’ fortnightly mayoral press conferences while the city’s local democracy reporters are barred from taking part.

It is not a decision that we have taken lightly but it is one that we feel that we must take in solidarity after the BBC-funded reporters – who write stories that are published by organisations including Bristol24/7 – were banned following accusations of unfair bias from members of the mayor’s close-knit inner circle.

Local democracy reporter (LDR) Alex Seabrook questioned Rees at a press conference earlier this month about the irony of flying to Vancouver in April to deliver a 14-minute TED talk on climate change.

Seabrook’s right to ask that question was then openly challenged by the council’s head of communications, who said he was “not a newspaper journalist” despite everything that he writes being published by the Bristol Post.

The mayor’s office has now reiterated that LDRs are not welcome to attend Rees’ fortnightly media briefings, which have been held remotely since the start of the pandemic.

Bristol24/7 Editor, Martin Booth, said: “It is a slippery slope indeed if we allow Bristol City Council to choose which journalists they want to attend briefings and who they want to exclude.

“It is the role of all journalists from print, online and broadcast to ask tough questions to our elected officials, and I share the concerns of Bristol Post editor Pete Gavan about the long-term implications of the city council choosing to ban a reporter after he has simply done that job of asking tough questions.

“At Bristol24/7, we rely on the excellent work of our city’s two LDRs to cover stories that we would otherwise not be able to publish, and I have the upmost respect for the professionalism and integrity of Alex and his LDR colleague Adam Postans.

“Marvin Rees has previously said that his motto is ‘ask me anything’. I hope that he will live up to that motto and lift this ban on LDRs. Until that happens, Bristol24/7 will neither be attending nor covering any mayoral press conferences.”

At his press conference on June 9, Rees asked questions back to Seabrook – as is his prerogative – before Bristol City Council’s head of external communications & consultation, Saskia Konynenburg, asked Seabrook whether it should be in the Local Democracy Reporter Service (LDRS) brief to ask whether the mayor’s all-expenses paid trip to Canada “was ironic” in the face of the climate emergency.

The LDRS brief says that its core purpose “is to provide impartial coverage of the regular business and workings of local authorities in the UK, and other relevant democratic institutions such as mayoralties, combined authority areas, P&CCs, quangos, etc”.

It adds that LDRs “may provide other stories which are focused on local democracy and which are in the public interest so long as that does not detract from the core purpose of the service”.

A clip of Konynenburg was first uploaded to Twitter on Tuesday by freelance journalist Joanna Booth (the wife of Bristol24/7 Editor, Martin Booth) and has since been viewed more than 225,000 times:

A council spokesperson said that this clip “does not represent the full context of the exchange”, so here is the full exchange between Konynenburg, Rees and Seabrook:

Replying to a tweet from Martin Booth on Tuesday afternoon as the clip was starting to go viral, Konynenburg asked: “Was the question phrased impartially?” That tweet has since been deleted.

Head of the mayor’s office, Kevin Slocombe, also tweeted soon afterwards that Seabrook’s query “would be a fair question from a house journalist”.

This echoed the words of Konynenburg, who told Seabrook after he had asked his first question to Rees: “My question is that Marvin was fully funded by TED to attend that conference so I couldn’t quite understand what the role as an LDR would be in asking those questions… I think it is probably from a journalist from a newspaper etc but I can’t quite see the link to LDR.”

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Read more: Rees: ‘The buck stops with me in Bristol’

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Since the videos of the exchanges were first shared online, Seabrook has received hundreds of messages of support.

Matthew Barraclough, head of the BBC’s local news partnership, which oversees the LDRS, tweeted that Seabrook’s conduct in the meeting “makes the case for the Local Democracy Reporting Service in a nutshell”.

He said: “Without LDRs working hard on behalf of local news media and their audiences, these ‘comms bosses’ can control the narrative.”

A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “We welcome public discourse as part of a healthy local democracy and respect the vital role of local journalists within that.

“The mayor holds a regular press conference for news outlets in the city to provide for media scrutiny and transparency.

“Relationships with journalists involve two-way dialogue and we will sometimes ask questions ourselves.

“In this instance, the journalist’s question had already been answered by the mayor when an officer politely queried their remit, given the specific nature and focus of the LDR role, and the fact that the story had already been widely covered and responded to two weeks previously.

“The clip being shared online does not represent the full context of the exchange.”

Main photo: Bristol City Council

Read more:

• Rees scolds Bristol’s youngest councillor for asking ‘disappointing question’
• ‘No irony’ in flying 4,600 miles for TED talk on climate, says mayor
• Rees says he does not need negativity as he continues to block people who criticise him on Twitter
• YTL have paid for flights, a hotel and meals for Rees in last seven months

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