As reported by the Newspaper Society: Government Ministers listed the authorities which were potentially a threat to the independent local press, paid tribute to individual regional and local press titles and stressed again that the Bill was intended “to protect and help to defend independent local press.”
The Committee agreed the amendments on ‘filming, blogging, tweeting’ and similar extensions of public access to local government meetings and documents. These would empower the Communities Secretary to set the regulatory framework for any means of reporting and commentating upon local government and other public authority committee and sub- committee meetings, contemporaneously or otherwise.
They would also enable the public dissemination of anything available in any medium produced as a result. Regulations could also enable documents open to public inspection to be made available by electronic means.
Brandon Lewis, Under-Secretary of State at the Communities Department, said: “Transparency and openness can be achieved only when people, including citizens and professional journalists, have adequate rights to attend their local government bodies’ meetings. Public meetings of local government bodies should be fully accessible to those who cannot attend in person, so that the public can hold those bodies to account."
