Public Access - Blog #5

I was unable to attend class on Thursday due to illness but through the reading and the notes provided by Carissa Marsh I was able to catch-up on some of the things I missed.

The class involved an access workshop, when Dr. J advised us on how to get access to public records. There is nothing inherently written in the Constitution that gives reporter access to government or private documents. The 1st Amendment does give reporters the right to access all materials pertaining to the criminal process.

While I worked the cop beat in Panama City, Fla. I was responsible for going through the police logs, editing them and then making any follow-up calls for more information. Panama City, Fla. has an illustrious legal history with the creator of Girls Gone Wild having his plane seized at the airport and the prosecutors of Bay County charging the founder with criminal charges. The majority of the stories I covered were breaking news and did not require too much harassing for documents.

When there was a fire I would get the official reporter from the fire departments investigator or go to the courthouse to see the arraignments for the day. A lot of the stories I was covering were routine and the departments I worked with were fair with their information sharing.

The Brown Act is an interesting law that hopefully keeps city and county commissions humble and efficient. The act requires that public agencies conduct their meetings and therefore business in an open setting. I have sat through many city council meetings as an intern and young journalist. The meeting are pretty boring but like my editors before me the exposure allows a reporter to get good and figuring out what items on an agenda would make good stories and how to interpret the proceeds of the meeting.

reply on a politician for all their information. The city council members have a vest interested in the information they My experience with city council meetings is that the commissioners tend to get along really well and work together to form a barrier to keep themselves from asking tough questions of each other and to keep the press away from stories. The other, and more common type of council is that members do not get along and they try to manipulate the press to get what they want. I would get calls from city council members before the meetings to give their side of a particular story and to try to mold the story before the meeting even starts. With experience a journalist walks the line to cultivate these sources to get good information but does not solelydivulge so it is important to talk to everyone to make sure you get the whole story.

Note: In the state of California, crime reports and police reports are not public documents. But reporters, by law, are allowed to enter crime scenes, which many police officers do not know. The way I was able to get into crime scenes was to find the officers I have worked with in the past to be as gracious as possible. I had police officers and firemen that knew me and helped me in search of the truth. The worst I have ever been treated in my journalism career was not covering a murder case, or trying to get a story about a man who fell into a well. The worst I was treated while trying to get a story was at Pepperdine's Malibu campus by a lieutenant that we did a nice feature on the week before in the news section.

The story was that a man worked out on campus and while driving home he had a heart attack on campus and passed away. When we heard there was a dead body on campus I went down to the gym parking lot near the scene of the accident with two other reporter. Public Safety meet us with extreme resistance and told us we were not allowed to be on campus, and I the officer in charge of the scene took down my information and threatened to bring me up on disciplinary action through the university for disturbing the peace and talking back to the officer when I asked him where we were allowed to be.

In the end I was never called to the disciplinary review board and we got the story.