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City council is getting serious about social media.
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Following controversies, Sudbury councillors to craft social media policy – The Sudbury Star
‘We’re elected representatives, but we have to play by the same rules’
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During Tuesday’s council meeting, Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti and Ward 6 Coun. Rene Lapierre introduced a motion to have staff develop a report that will guide the way forward on a social media policy for councillors.
As they noted, “social media is a prevalent form of communication for many elected officials;” however, there is currently no policy in place to guide councillors.
As a result, there is a lack of consistency and confusion around proper protocol – not all members of council maintain a presence on social media and those who do use the tools in different ways.
The two councillors introduced the motion to encourage “openness, transparency and proper conduct” from their peers.
In their motion, Signoretti and Lapierre asked that council direct staff to develop a report, to be presented during the second quarter of 2022, “with recommendations for a social media policy for members of council and local boards.”
Lapierre said the motion simply asks staff to develop a report for more information. He said his intention was to direct staff to go out and find the required information, and then to report back to council. It will be councillors who will mold the final policy, Lapierre said.
Signoretti said the policy would level the playing field.
“We’re elected representatives, but we have to play by the same rules,” he said. “We all get comments from constituents that may not be favourable or may seem unfair, but we put ourselves in this position. You take the good, the bad and the ugly.”
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Signoretti said a policy would ensure council members are not abusing the power of social media or misrepresenting themselves while online.
Eric Labelle, the city solicitor, said were a policy to be developed, it would be an appendix of the Code of Conduct and would be overseen by Robert Swayze, the city’s integrity commissioner.
Swayze has weighed in previously regarding the use of social media by Greater Sudbury councillors. He has recommended twice Ward 5 Coun. Robert Kirwan be reprimanded for his behaviour online; council agreed both times and issued the reprimands.
Most recently, it was discovered Kirwan and his wife, Valerie, were using a fake Facebook account under the name Jessie Timmons to administer their Valley East group, which boasts more than 18,000 members, and to engage members. They had not made it clear Jessie Timmons was an extension of the Kirwan household.
In 2019, Swayze delivered a report to council in which he said Kirwan had gone too far over the line of acceptability. He pointed to three specific statements Kirwan made in the Valley East group – one against David Robinson, an economics professor at Laurentian University; another against Tom Price, an adviser to Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini and an outspoken critic of many city decisions; and a third against an unnamed individual who participated in the Greater Sudbury Politics Facebook group. Swayze accused the councillor of being rude and harassing towards the three individuals.
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It is also known that Kirwan has profited financially from the Valley East group. Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier also commented on Tuesday that he maintains Facebook pages for his various enterprises, which include maritime surveying and appraisal, motor sports and fancy cars.
While Signoretti and Lapierre said they do not have a problem with councillors earning money from social media, both said they should not marry the personal and political.
“When the content of that social media relies on their councillor’s position, it has crossed into a grey zone,” Signoretti said in October, when the motion was first added to the meeting agenda. “We need to eliminate that grey zone by not allowing councillors to post content about their positions on sites from which they profit.”
Ward 4 Coun. Geoff McCausland wondered whether social media pages should belong to the city. That would allow the group or page to continue after the official leaves politics and it would put “banning and blocking” into the hands of city staff – “based on clear guidelines,” McCausland said. Staff may also be more neutral than an elected representative.
“This is about setting a standard we can all adhere to so that we don’t have ambiguous rules,” McCausland said, noting social media sites are often mired in chaos and misinformation. “This is about making sure we can engage with our constituents without needing to be social media managers.”
Councillors passed the motion by a vote of 12-1.
mkkeown@postmedia.com
Twitter: @marykkeown
Facebook: @mkkeown
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Sometimes, you just have to return to the classics.
That’s especially true as Halloween approaches. While you queue up your spooky movie marathon, here are 10 iconic horror movies from the past 70 years for inspiration, and what AP writers had to say about them when they were first released.
We resurrected excerpts from these reviews, edited for clarity, from the dead — did they stand the test of time?
“Rear Window” (1954)
“Rear Window” is a wonderful trick pulled off by Alfred Hitchcock. He breaks his hero’s leg, sets him up at an apartment window where he can observe, among other things, a murder across the court. The panorama of other people’s lives is laid out before you, as seen through the eyes of a Peeping Tom.
James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and others make it good fun.
— Bob Thomas
“Halloween” (1978)
At 19, Jamie Lee Curtis is starring in a creepy little thriller film called “Halloween.”
Until now, Jamie’s main achievement has been as a regular on the “Operation Petticoat” TV series. Jamie is much prouder of “Halloween,” though it is obviously an exploitation picture aimed at the thrill market.
The idea for “Halloween” sprang from independent producer-distributor Irwin Yablans, who wanted a terror-tale involving a babysitter. John Carpenter and Debra Hill fashioned a script about a madman who kills his sister, escapes from an asylum and returns to his hometown intending to murder his sister’s friends.
— Bob Thomas
“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
“The Silence of the Lambs” moves from one nail-biting sequence to another. Jonathan Demme spares the audience nothing, including closeups of skinned corpses. The squeamish had best stay home and watch “The Cosby Show.”
Ted Tally adapted the Thomas Harris novel with great skill, and Demme twists the suspense almost to the breaking point. The climactic confrontation between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is carried a tad too far, though it is undeniably exciting with well-edited sequences.
Such a tale as “The Silence of the Lambs” requires accomplished actors to pull it off. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are highly qualified. She provides steely intelligence, with enough vulnerability to sustain the suspense. He delivers a classic portrayal of pure, brilliant evil.
— Bob Thomas
“Scream” (1996)
In this smart, witty homage to the genre, students at a suburban California high school are being killed in the same gruesome fashion as the victims in the slasher films they know by heart.
If it sounds like the script of every other horror movie to come and go at the local movie theater, it’s not.
By turns terrifying and funny, “Scream” — written by newcomer David Williamson — is as taut as a thriller, intelligent without being self-congratulatory, and generous in its references to Wes Craven’s competitors in gore.
— Ned Kilkelly
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
Imaginative, intense and stunning are a few words that come to mind with “The Blair Witch Project.”
“Blair Witch” is the supposed footage found after three student filmmakers disappear in the woods of western Maryland while shooting a documentary about a legendary witch.
The filmmakers want us to believe the footage is real, the story is real, that three young people died and we are witnessing the final days of their lives. It isn’t. It’s all fiction.
But Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, take us to the edge of belief, squirming in our seats the whole way. It’s an ambitious and well-executed concept.
— Christy Lemire
“Saw” (2004)
The fright flick “Saw” is consistent, if nothing else.
This serial-killer tale is inanely plotted, badly written, poorly acted, coarsely directed, hideously photographed and clumsily edited, all these ingredients leading to a yawner of a surprise ending. To top it off, the music’s bad, too.
You could forgive all (well, not all, or even, fractionally, much) of the movie’s flaws if there were any chills or scares to this sordid little horror affair.
But “Saw” director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell, who developed the story together, have come up with nothing more than an exercise in unpleasantry and ugliness.
— David Germain
Germain gave “Saw” one star out of four.
“Paranormal Activity” (2009)
The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.
The entire film takes place at the couple’s cookie-cutter dwelling, its layout and furnishings indistinguishable from just about any other readymade home constructed in the past 20 years. Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads.
The thinness of the premise is laid bare toward the end, but not enough to erase the horror of those silent, nighttime images seen through Micah’s bedroom camera. “Paranormal Activity” owns a raw, primal potency, proving again that, to the mind, suggestion has as much power as a sledgehammer to the skull.
— Glenn Whipp
Whipp gave “Paranormal Activity” three stars out of four.
“The Conjuring” (2013)
As sympathetic, methodical ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson make the old-fashioned haunted-house horror film “The Conjuring” something more than your average fright fest.
“The Conjuring,” which boasts incredulously of being their most fearsome, previously unknown case, is built very in the ’70s-style mold of “Amityville” and, if one is kind, “The Exorcist.” The film opens with a majestic, foreboding title card that announces its aspirations to such a lineage.
But as effectively crafted as “The Conjuring” is, it’s lacking the raw, haunting power of the models it falls shy of. “The Exorcist” is a high standard, though; “The Conjuring” is an unusually sturdy piece of haunted-house genre filmmaking.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “The Conjuring” two and half stars out of four.
“Get Out” (2017)
Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his white date’s liberal family in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” writer-director Jordan Peele has crafted a similar confrontation with altogether more combustible results in “Get Out.”
In Peele’s directorial debut, the former “Key and Peele” star has — as he often did on that satirical sketch series — turned inside out even supposedly progressive assumptions about race. But Peele has largely left comedy behind in a more chilling portrait of the racism that lurks beneath smiling white faces and defensive, paper-thin protestations like, “But I voted for Obama!” and “Isn’t Tiger Woods amazing?”
It’s long been a lamentable joke that in horror films — never the most inclusive of genres — the Black dude is always the first to go. In this way, “Get Out” is radical and refreshing in its perspective.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Get Out” three stars out of four.
“Hereditary” (2018)
In Ari Aster’s intensely nightmarish feature-film debut “Hereditary,” when Annie (Toni Collette), an artist and mother of two teenagers, sneaks out to a grief-support group following the death of her mother, she lies to her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) that she’s “going to the movies.”
A night out with “Hereditary” is many things, but you won’t confuse it for an evening of healing and therapy. It’s more like the opposite.
Aster’s film, relentlessly unsettling and pitilessly gripping, has carried with it an ominous air of danger and dread: a movie so horrifying and good that you have to see it, even if you shouldn’t want to, even if you might never sleep peacefully again.
The hype is mostly justified.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Hereditary” three stars out of four.
Read the full review here. ___
Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.
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