HouseGate: The logical mind asks - Is freedom of the press under attack from the Vancouver Mayor's Office?

Last Friday Frances Bula said:

Okay, this is Friday fluff, but whatever. I feel I must contribute to the ongoing deep investigations into Mayor Gregor Robertson’s change of abode... No one seems to see Robertson’s move, from a single-family house near Emily Carr elementary in central Vancouver to a smaller place in Kits near the beach, as symbolic of the prototypical Vancouver downsizing. Instead, it seems to have turned into massive theory-building about how it has something to do with the Point Grey bike lane. Or his federal-election ambitions. Or something.

This seemingly vacuous controversy spawned from our original post which simply made note of the fact that the Mayor's home was on the market.

It's important to note that in that post we only mused on whether our not his worship was cashing out of our City's massive housing bubble.

So how did this morph into a political controversy?

It was the Mayor's office who transformed this story into something to do with the Point Grey bike lane.  They responded the next morning with this press statement that directly tied the issue of the Mayor moving to the Point Grey bike lane:

  

Our post was made on Tuesday night.  The next morning, with lightening speed, the Mayor's office issues a press release confirming that the house was for sale and that the Mayor had already purchased a new house.

The Mayor's office then specifically linked the new purchase to the Point Grey/Cornwall bike corridor. So serious was this tie-in that the press statement came complete with a legal opinion from the City Solicitor and an admission that this announcement had been weeks in the making.

Then came the next domino.  The press release stated:

They recently purchased a new home in Kitsilano within a block of York Street. For security reasons we don’t disclose the specific location.

Security reasons? Naturally a media frenzy erupted trying to root out these reasons. Within hours Business in Vancouver newspaper was out with breaking news via this tweet:

BIV released a story which profiled the exact location of the Mayor's new house.

It was news because the location revealed that the Bike lane controversy was even greater than originally reported.  He wasn't moving "somewhere in Kits a block away from York Street." The Mayor was moving right next to the most contentious area of the Point Grey/Cornwall route - Point Grey Road - and it appears this info was known in advance of the public opeen house.

This was huge news.

News which the Mayor's office not only created, but compounded by waiting to reveal it.

Why had they waited to acknowledge what they themselves had deemed would be a potential conflict of interest weeks earlier?

Was this news held back so it wouldn't come out during the public information open houses meetings on the Point Grey/Cornwall Bike route proposal?

Was the news only acknowledged in response to our blog post because the Mayor's office hoped they would never have to actually acknowledge the moveuntil long after the fact?

The exact location of the Mayor's new residence has been transformed into an important component of the conflict-of-interest debate specifically because the Mayor's office was not forthcoming with the  news until they were forced to reveal it.

As such, the newsworthiness of the precise location of his new residence was deemed important enough by the media to outweigh any individual privacy concerns.

Thus BIV ran their story.

But then a curious thing happened to that BIV piece (hilighing a phenomenona that could never happen in the era of print of journalism).  

Did anyone notice?

On July 11th the online version of BIV's story was suddenly and quietly redacted.  All reference to the specific location of the Mayor's new residence eliminated.  Even reference to the general location was removed. 

Why redact the general location at the nexus of York/Stephens/Point Grey Road?  That's the heart of the whole story!

Was BIV pressured into censoring these details? Or did they remove that info of their own accord?

Curiously, despite the apparent censorship by BIV, the author of the article - Bob Mackin - published all pertinent details on his own blog: (see this screen shot taken on July 11th - we've blacked out the specific address)

This seems to indicate the censorship did not occur internally at BIV, at least due to any legal concerns.

If there had been legal concerns, presumably Mackin would have been advised of them and he wouldn't have posted those details on his own blog just as his own paper was censoring them.  

But then there's another twist, Mackin's article was updated July 15th and the specific details of the Mayor's residence removed:

So what gives? Several serious questions are raised here.  

The reasonable man/woman logically wonders what triggered BIV into censoring their original story.  It's also logical to wonder if the Mayor's office played any role.  

Before the move to Kits was even even announced by the Mayor's office (MO), the MO were citing 'security concerns.'  What security concerns?  There couldn't have been any documented issues prior to the press release because the news hadn't even been announced yet.

Was our Mayor was already receiving threats at his old residence at 912 West 23rd Avenue?

As we noted in our original post, the Mayor's home address is a matter of public record, available in online documents available from city hall. If there have been prior threats, why haven't we been told?  There is no place in our society for threats against our elected officials.  Whatever your position regarding our civic political debates, the idea that our Mayor may be at risk is totally unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. If there have been prior documented threats, was Chief of Police Chu notified? And what has he done to address them?

But there doesn't appear to be any record of prior threats, just concerns about what 'might be'.

And why wasn't just the specific address removed?  Why were all references to the general area of York/Stephens/Point Grey Road also pulled?

Various sources have suggested it might be extremely enlightening for the media to ask two specific questions:

• Why did BIV pull their story, and 
• Did the Mayor's office pressure a Vancouver news outlet to censor their reporting?

Anyone care to enquire with these two entities directly for the answers?

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