Image taken from: (YouTube Channel — Ben Durham)
Councillor Susie Stevenson’s town hall meeting on homelessness is under fire after a vlogger was asked to stop filming.
This is the first time Stevenson has had to address this sort of issue, “Lots of my colleagues do town halls, and this is the first time anything like that has happened,” said Stevenson. She added that her concern was that residents feel at ease and safe to speak out.
She said she told the man to stop recording. “I believed that the person was of good will and I simply respectfully asked them to turn the camera off, and they said okay,” said Stevenson.
The man in question, vlogger Ben Durham, said he had a different perspective on the meeting.
Photo Taken: (Evan Frederiksen — XFM News)
“I just want to really stress transparency in politics,” Durham said. He said he had recorded other council meetings with no problem and felt the public setting made him entitled to record.
The incident has also brought into question whether or not the meeting was technically “public” and under what procedures. Stevenson said that perhaps procedures need to be updated. “It’s a matter of how we go forward so that it goes a little more smoothly,” said Stevenson.
