A regional Victorian council's plan to give its chief executive the power to quash media requests has been labelled "fundamentally undemocratic" by the Centre for Advancing Journalism.
The West Wimmera Shire, which includes the small towns of Edenhope and Kaniva, has proposed changing its media policy to give the CEO extensive powers to refuse journalists' requests for comment or interviews.
The proposed changes include a clause allowing the CEO to reject media enquiries if they decide it meets specific criteria, including the risk of embarrassing a councillor or member of staff.
Media enquiries relating to personnel matters, personal hardship of any resident or ratepayer and industrial matters could also be rejected under the plan.
Mayor Tim Meyer said the changes were necessary.
"It's basically to prevent misuse," Cr Meyer said.
"You don't want people just requesting information just for their own personal gain, just to attack people."
As part of the proposal, the shire's CEO would also have the ability to reject any proposal they consider could prejudice council in any way.
"The media is quite often capable of attacking people," Cr Meyer said.
'Never seen anything like it'
Denis Muller is a senior research fellow at Melbourne University's Centre for Advancing Journalism, and a former associate editor of Melbourne's Age newspaper.
He said the shire's draft policy was "fundamentally undemocratic".
"It empowers the CEO to basically decide what questions — if any — he or officers of the council will answer," Dr Muller said.
"It allows the CEO not to answer if he thinks the motive of the media in asking the question is to embarrass the council.
"That is simply ludicrous. He is in no position to know what the motives of the media might be."
Dr Muller said the phrasing of the policy was similar to the exemptions granted to Victorian governments under the Freedom of Information Act 1982, and similar federal legislation from the '80s.
"These are exceptionally broad reasons why the council can refuse to answer questions," he said.
"I haven't [seen] anything remotely like this from any other councils [in Victoria]."
Dr Muller said it had become common practice for Australian councils to create in-house newsrooms, putting out media releases and updates other than public service announcements on their own website.
Council critical of media coverage
Mr Meyer is the son of Bruce Meyer, who also serves as a West Wimmera Shire councillor and was himself mayor until last month.
In April, Bruce Meyer came under fire for comments he made in an ABC Radio interview comparing the campaign to fly the rainbow flag to efforts to legalise paedophilia.
At a council meeting five months later, Bruce Meyer criticised the ABC's media coverage.
"The ABC have distorted too often what has been said to them and they take a snippet from here, one from there, and turn it into something entirely different," he told the meeting.
"A lot of local newspapers have taken that then as fact ,which is highly libellous ... if it wasn't for the fact they are protected by the government there probably would be legal action taken against them.
"The safest way for us is to put out press releases so they cannot mix the stories up and print something entirely different because it suits their agenda, so that's the end of the matter."
Tim Meyer told the ABC the council's draft media policy was unrelated to the incident with the rainbow flag.
Rural Councils Victoria declined to comment.
