PENDLETON — The Pendleton City Council at a special meeting Tuesday, Feb. 25, decides whether a man who operates a local news and opinion website is a media representative who can attend executive sessions.

Executive sessions are meetings of a governing body that most members of the public cannot attend. Oregon’s public meetings law allows members of the press to attend most executive sessions and report on their general nature but not specifics. Governing bodies cannot vote in the closed-door meetings, which are limited to certain topics such as real estate and labor contract negotiations, and meeting with an attorney.

The council at its meeting starting at 6:30 p.m. at city hall, 500 SW Dorion Ave., considers whether James Tibbets qualifies for media representative credentials and can attend the council’s executive sessions.

Tibbets operates the website Pendletonian Times, which on its homepage claims it is “Pendleton’s Premier Source of Local News Since 1871,” although previously the date was 2017. Tibbets uses the pseudonym James Hehn for this reporting. The use of a fake name by a reporter, however, is not a practice most news organizations would allow.

Tibbets’ website also does not show evidence of editorial oversight. 

City attorney Nancy Kerns in her report to the city council provided a discussion on Oregon law regarding news media, including the problem with an outdated definition in the law.

“‘News media’ is not statutorily defined, because it was a different concept in the 1970s when this law was created,” according to Kerns. “Today there are unlimited mechanisms for dissemination of information by media and journalists, as opposed to ‘non-traditional information disseminators’ such as bloggers, social media pundits, advertising agents and social medial engineers.”

Kerns also provided a background on the city’s interactions with Tibbets, including the complaint he filed with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission after the city on Feb. 18 did not allow him to attend an executive session because the council had not had time to review and act upon Tibbets’ media application.

Tibbets on Feb. 24 gave the East Oregonian a document asserting the commission’s executive director, Susan V. Myers, replied “while this was definitely a case for the commission,” Pendletonian Times first needs to file a grievance with the Pendleton City Council before submitting the grievance to the commission.

Kerns explained to the council that, in order to permit Tibbets to serve as a media representative in executive sessions, the council must find the following:

• Tibbets is a “news gatherer.”

• He reports for a news medium “formally organized for the purpose of gathering and disseminating news.”

• He is a representative of a website maintained by a traditional media company (e.g., cnn.com).

• And that “Tibbets is a credible journalist with professional journalistic integrity that can be trusted not to disclose the content of executive session discussions.”

The council also announced it plans to meet in executive session Tuesday to discuss property and litigation.