Lismore City Council Mayor Isaac Smith yesterday withdrew council support over the newly formed Northern Rivers Times newspaper following a front page story that appeared to slam General Manager Shelley Oldham.

Ms Oldham had recently been nominated in this year's NSW Government Minister's Awards for Women in Local Government.

The Northern Rivers Times newspaper then ran this front page.

In a statement from LCC, Mayor Smith said "The Northern Rivers Times must immediately apologise to the General Manager of Lismore City Council Shelley Oldham, the Lismore community and their own readers for the very personal hatchet job they did on its front page this week."

"The attack on our General Manager is totally without substance. It is cheap lousy “journalism” and our community deserves better."

"The Casino-based paper appears to have a personal vendetta against Ms Oldham and Lismore City Council. It is the second time they have personally attacked our General Manager. Last time they were forced to print a retraction for its factually incorrect story."

"The current article, which was mostly a lazy cut and paste from social media, claims that “more than 3000 readers made comments (on Facebook)” or contacted its office following Ms Oldham’s nomination for a NSW Government Ministers Award for Women." 

"This not only reflects badly on Council but on all the great women nominated for these awards and the Minister’s office who promoted it."

"In fact, just over 50 people made a comment across a number of Facebook pages."

"Many of us in the community were very keen to support this new paper and were prepared to accept early missteps, but it has gone from bad to worse and has now lost our trust."

"Newspapers and the media have great power in our society, but with it comes great responsibility."

"The Northern Rivers Times has failed the responsibility test and must apologise."

"Lismore City Council will no longer support the paper or assist its “journalists” as the paper has shown it is has no journalistic integrity and does not even attempt to provide fair, accurate and balanced reporting."

Director and Co-founder of the Northern Rivers Times Jeff Gibbs had this reply.

"This was not false journalism, it was simply voicing the frustrations of the community of Lismore CC and its GM, they put out the Media Release. We have heard these sorts of frustrations before aimed at the GM, not only from the community but from her own staff and councillors and on social media."

"Isaac Smith is acting very let's say ‘Trump-ish” in his rebuttals by LCC. These are bully tactics by the Mayor."

"Then there is the gender narrative, these opinions of the people of Lismore aren’t based on the GM’s gender, these are attempts at deflecting away from the performance of the GM."

"The Northern Rivers Times simply posted a Media Release that came from the LCC, did the LCC not think there would be backlash?"

"As far as not talking to our Journalists, this would be perfect for the LCC to keep it all hush hush and nothing more be questioned about their running of LCC."

"It was only weeks ago that LCC and the GM named and shamed rate payers, Why? What was the benefit of doing this to people going through a Pandemic and harsh times. These are the type of questions that need to be asked."

This war on words between Lismore City Council and the Northern Rivers Times doesn't appear to be done quite yet.

Watch this space.