When politicians threaten to take public notice out of newspapers, it’s dog bites man. But when they make the same threat and explicitly frame it as punishment for negative coverage, it’s man bites dog.

And what happened recently in Phillipsburg, N.J., was definitely man bites dog.

The Town Council in Phillipsburg introduced a proposal last month to move the city’s notices from The Express-Times of Lehigh Valley to other newspapers in nearby towns with lower circulations and different coverage areas.

Here’s how The Express-Times characterized the effort: