Oregon officials want local reporters investigated for emailing them on weekends

Fox News ^ | 20 August 2019 | Ronn Blitzer

[Magnatron]

Officials in Oregon reportedly are seeking to have local journalists investigated for contacting government workers on their personal emails and phone numbers after hours.

Given that the allegations describe relatively routine functions of a reporter's job, the newspaper is not backing down.

Les Zaitz, publisher and editor of the Malheur Enterprise, denied any wrongdoing from his staff, after an attorney for Malheur County went to Sheriff Brian Wolfe with the allegations that reporters may have broken the law by using officials’ personal contact information to call and email them outside of business hours.

“Suggesting that professional journalists are behaving as criminals in gathering vital information for the community appears to be an effort to silence and intimidate the Enterprise,” Zaitz said.

The Enterprise had been investigating Greg Smith -- a Republican state legislator and director of the Malheur County Economic Development Department -- over potential conflicts of interest concerning government contracts.

Smith apparently had asked the newspaper to limit requests “to office hours,” and to only email at a designated county address. “It is not appropriate that you are sending emails to employees using their personal email accounts on the weekends,” Smith told the newspaper.

Amid those objections, county Counsel Stephanie Williams told the Enterprise that she reached out to Sheriff Wolfe to see “if there is a violation to investigate when a county employee’s phone numbers and email addresses are being used when we’ve asked someone to stop calling or communicating on county business on a personal phone or email.”

[Magnatron]

One thing you can always count on with the left is that once they tire of chasing the right (or worse, can't make headway), they turn on themselves and chase each other...

It's all about purity.

And you can never be too pure for a leftist...

[Lopeover]

If you are an elected official you job doesn’t end at 5 p.m. on Friday.

[Scrambler Bob]

If you are an elected official you job doesn’t end at 5 p.m. on Friday.
= = =

Who works on Friday?

Or other days ending in “y”?

[LukeL]

So instead of punishing government workers from communicating outside proper channels you go after the reporters? That would be like arresting a person for being treated by a doctor in a state he isn’t licensed to practice in and letting the doctor go free.

[catnipman]

“Oregon officials want local reporters investigated for emailing them on weekends”

while they’re at it, i wonder if i could get those officials to also investigate all of those Nigerian princes that keep emailing me on weekends?

[lee martell]

They sound like Big Babies. Just don’t respond till Monday.
In France, this resentment to being contacted with work calls is taken quite seriously, and named :”Le droit a’la deconnexion” the right to disconnect.

[pas]

It is impossible to not read an email or answer the phone.

[Pearls Before Swine]

And, you can wait till Monday to process your emails. What is the problem here?

[TexasGurl24]

Reporters are scum. They aren’t the good guys. I don’t care what happens to them.

[Rebelbase]

This is one case where I support doxing. These officials need to be reminded who they serve. Remind them 24/7.

[webheart]

Hello! Don’t read your emails on the weekend.

[Seruzawa]

Reporters vs Govt Tome Servers. It would be nice to see both lose this battle.

[Svartalfiar]

It is impossible to not read an email or answer the phone.

How so? If I was a fulltime gov employee, I wouldn't want my personal phone being used as my official business one, and certainly wouldn't have my gov email on it. Emails can wait until Monday at 0930, after coffee is drunk and balls are scratched.

Phone calls are harder to ignore, especially when mixed in with your own calls, but you shouldn't be giving out your personal number as a government contact. What would you expect to happen?

A lot of gov positions have a gov-issued cell phone for the position. That is incredibly easy to not touch all weekend, unless your job requires you to be available at off-hours, in which case this whole thing is rather moot, I would think.