Hamilton’s CHCH News has filed a complaint with the city’s integrity commissioner against Councillor Sam Merulla.
This comes after the Ward 4 councillor criticized TV reporter Diana Weeks on Twitter after a group of people protested outside Mayor Fred Eisenberger’s home last Friday.
Merulla tweeted, “Thanks to your incompetence and incomplete reporting, my daughter, wife, and assistant were threatened. You are a poor excuse for a reporter. Next time provide my comments rather than cut and paste —“, ending the tweet with with a profanity.
The tweet was in reference to media reports about last week’s council meeting in which Merulla and members of the LGBTQ community engaged in a heated argument over violence at the Hamilton Pride event on June 15.
Merulla agitated those in the audience by criticizing a group of Pride supporters in pink masks who blocked far-right extremists holding inflammatory signs during the celebration at Gage Park.
“He chose to publicly berate and bully one of our reporters which is completely unacceptable to us and also to the code of conduct that city councillors are supposed to abide by and apparently even Twitter,” said Mike Katrycz, Vice President of News at CHCH.
“We’re here to do a job. Our reporter was doing a job. If Sam Merulla had a problem with it he could have easily contacted me or anybody else at the station and we could have dealt with it then,” said Katrycz.
In turn, Merulla tells CHML News that he not only “looks forward” to the integrity commissioner’s investigation, he is going to file a complaint with the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) against CHCH for airing an “incomplete and inaccurate story.”
Merulla says the CHCH story, in which he was not interviewed by the reporter, led to death threats against him, his family, and his assistant.
WATCH: (June 28, 2019) Protestors plant signs on Mayor Fred Eisenberger’s front lawn
He calls the integrity complaint “a joke” and “an embarrassment,” adding that he “would be surprised if the integrity commissioner takes it.”
Merulla has since deactivated both of his Twitter accounts, but says it is not related to the tweet at the centre of the integrity commissioner complaint.
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