Council keeps local media in the dark during flooding emergency

While businesses in Newry have been critical of the lack of information from the council in advance of the flooding emergency, questions need to be asked why, in the time of a District wide crisis, before, during and in the immediate aftermath, the council failed to engage with the public via local media’s social media platforms.

From Monday (October 30) - when there was an Amber weather warning in place and fears of flooding were rising with the water level in the Clanrye River - until a press release on Thursday evening (November 2) when the clean-up had begun in Newry, there was no direct communication from the council with local media regarding the incident.

It is recognised that in the time of an emergency, the media can serve as an emergency broadcast system - particularly via social media - to get vital information to the people who need it most but in this crisis, the council bypassed local news providers preferring instead to use its own social media accounts.

Outnumbered

A check of the council’s Facebook page by Newry.ie found that the first post regarding sandbags came too late. It was at 11.33pm on the Monday night, when the water had already begun to overwhelm Basin Walk, Sugarhouse Quay and Sugar Island. The first Tweet arrived some 15 minutes later.

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council has 32k Facebook followers and 9k on Twitter however, between Newry.ie (31k), the Newry Reporter (18k), Newry Democrat (9k), Newry LN (10k) and Clanrye News & Sport (9k), local Newry news providers reach out to up to 77k people via Facebook. Newry.ie, the Newry Reporter and Newry Democrat can also reach out to 20k followers on Twitter. 

On the east side of the District, the Down Recorder in Downpatrick (18k), the Mourne Observer in Newcastle (20k) and online news service Down News (12k) reach 50k on Facebook and 10k on Twitter

Between local media that’s 157k followers compared to the council’s 41k.

During that week, flood related posts on the Newry.ie Facebook page were viewed more than 1.3 million times!

Newry.ie Editor Columba O’Hare on Monday (November 6) raised this issue with Newry City Sinn Féin councillors, Council Chairperson Valeria Harte, Aidan Mathers, Cathal King and Geraldine Kearns and SDLP councillor Doire Finn.

Letter sent 6/11/23

Dear Aidan, Cathal, Doire, Geraldine and Valerie,

I think it’s important that I highlight the fact, that the entire way through the Newry flooding catastrophe, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council never sent one message/ press release or other correspondence relating to the flooding to Newry.ie or as far as we are aware to any other media organisations in the city. (Apart from a 3 line reply to a media query from Newry.ie on Victoria Lock gates). 

I would like to emphasise that I am not blaming the media department or staff but rather what I fear was a systematic failure of the entire council machine.

A collective readership of over 100,000 local residents and locally connected people were left completely in the dark regarding councils plans, announcements etc during one of the worst periods in the city in recent years. 

 Incredibly the first media release concerning flooding was at 18.49 on 2nd of November entitled “Flooding Recovery Process” 

In recent months Newry, Mourne and Down District Council have tended to publish announcements on their own Facebook and Twitter feeds but NOT share them with the local media. It is an attempt presumably to gain support for their own ‘media’ outlets. It should be noted that Council have an obligation to inform the public of their decisions and announcements - and that is what local media is there for and what it excels at, but we can’t pass the message on if we do not get the information ourselves.

Even on council platforms there appeared to be no idea what was going on on the ground, or that Newry had actually flooded  around 7pm when the first post concerning how sandbags could be obtained was put up nearly 4 hrs later on 30/10/23 at 11.33pm on Facebook and 11.44pm on Twitter. A query put on another post from a Newry businessman looking how to obtain sandbags at 5.48pm on the 30th October still remains unanswered. 

If there is an enquiry into how the incident was handled please feel free to use this. 

Many thanks,

Columba O’Hare

Editor

Newry.ie