On the surface, it was a petty dispute, a fight between a local news outlet and a council official in the English county of Nottinghamshire, a region of rolling green fields and tangled forests best known as home to Robin Hood.
Council leader Mick Barton of the right-wing Reform UK party took umbrage with the Nottingham Post over an article in August that suggested a split in his party’s ranks. Barton froze out the Post: The council stopped sending press releases to the paper’s reporters or inviting them to events, and Reform councilors were banned from talking to the ...