Fight for elected officials' emails continues

A recent ruling by a Missouri judge this week will force outgoing Gov. Matt Blunt to give 60,000 pages of e-mail records to investigators but did not specify if his office broke open records laws by deleting some emails that critics say should be a part of the public record.

From the Associated Press:

"A bipartisan pair of court-appointed assistant attorneys general said at a Jan. 5 hearing that they believed Blunt's office broke Missouri law by deleting e-mails that should have been saved as public records.

"Clearly, based upon the evidence that was presented, there were violations" of the document-retention and public-records laws, one of those attorneys, former Democratic Lt. Gov. Joe Maxwell, said after a court hearing.

But Maxwell and Republican attorney Louis Leonatti both said it would have been almost impossible to prove Blunt's office committed a knowing and purposeful violation, which are required elements under Missouri law for imposing civil fines.

That's because they said Blunt and his top deputies were relying on in-house legal advice — albeit wrong — when they asserted in 2007 that e-mails were not public records and did not have to be kept.

Leonatti said there was nothing to indicate any criminal conduct occurred, and he praised Blunt's former legal counsel, Henry Herschel, for eventually correcting his wrong interpretation of public-records laws.

The on-going court case could help put an end to the controversy that has followed Blunt for almost two years but will probably bring more uncertainty to First Amendment advocates who argue all email and cell phone records of elected officials conducting the people's business should be made public.

A similar battle over cell phone records is playing out in many states across the country including in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and in Colorado.

Under Missouri law, e-mails sent and received by elected officials can be considered public and are subject to open-records laws, but an ongoing debate on the length of time a government record must be kept is determined on a case-by-case basis and is subject to state employee judgement.

It will be important for First Amendment fans and the journalism industry to continue fighting this battle and others like it. As technology brings forth many new forms of communication, from cell phones to email to Twitter accounts, the nation's open records laws are becoming more outdated by the year.

Gannett Blog continues First Amendment duty

As I have noted before, there are some bloggers in today's new age of journalism who are doing good First Amendment journalism. Case in point is the former USA Today reporter Jim Hopkins who publishes Gannett Blog. 

Hopkins started Gannett Blog anonymously while still employed at the USA Today, which is owned by Gannett, but has since come out from the shadows after he took a buyout in January of 2008. Since his departure, Hopkins has served as a watchdog over Gannett and provided employees with a place to air concerns, frustrations and sometimes mean-spirited remarks about their company. There is some debate about how much of the old journalistic standards Hopkins has left in the wake with his blog, as he allows people to post defaming remarks about individuals anonymously on his comments section, but there is no doubt that his is one of the best industry blogs online. 

Recently, Hopkins began scrutinizing former Gannett CEO Al Neuharth who founded the Freedom Forum after retiring from the company. By searching more than 9,000 pages of IRS tax returns filed by the Freedom Forum, a non-profit with a mission to serve journalism and the First Amendment, Hopkins reveals many questionable donations including money given to an adoption agency run by Neuharth's wife. 

From Gannett Blog:

Public documents show Freedom Forum in Washington, D.C., made $65,700 in donations to Home At Last between 2000 and 2007. This was when the private foundation should have been reining in its famously undisciplined spending. After all, administrators were about to tap the endowment, an investment fund that helps pay salaries and other expenses, in order to build a new home for the foundation's signature project -- a museum about news called the Newseum.

Freedom Forum disclosed the gifts in public Internal Revenue Service documents that do not explain why a journalism foundation would underwrite an adoption agency. The documents certainly don't disclose one likely reason: Fornes is the wife of Freedom Forum's multimillionaire founder, Al Neuharth (left).

The Home At Last grants are among hundreds of gifts Freedom Forum made in 2000-2007 to non-profits that seem to share little in common with the foundation's mission, a Gannett Blog review of more than 9,000 pages of IRS documents found. In other cases, money went to causes that appeared to benefit foundation officials more than the foundation itself. For example, Freedom Forum has given:

$15,000 to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, a leading political lobby.

$34,500 to the United States Equestrian Team in Gladstone, N.J., to promote competitive horseback riding events.

$23,000 to the 30-year-old Whale Museum, housed in a former Odd Fellows fraternal hall on an island near Seattle.

$35,500 to the Montessori Parent Organization in Indian Harbour Beach, Fla.

$46,500 to Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne, Fla.

$5 million to the University of Mississippi for a journalism center not honoring Gannett or the foundation -- but the foundation’s chairman and CEO, Charles Overby, an Ole Miss grad, and long-time Neuharth aide.

Welcome to the First Amendment Fan Blog

My name is Jason Kosena. I am a government and investigative reporter who has worked for both family-owned and corporate newspapers, as well as for an online non-profit daily Web publication. I am starting this blog out of a concern that the demise of traditional media will inevitably lead to an erosion of the First Amendment duty to serve as a watchdog over government, business and the politicians who we trust to run our country and communities. 

The bottom line is that it comes down to the bottom line. Investigative reporting is expensive. Ensuring that First Amendment duty, which includes open records requests, employment of highly-trained professionals and time and energy, costs money -- a lot of it. New media bloggers lack the funding and the training to do serious investigations. Trending data, following endless paper trails and preparing easy to understand graphics is the expensive part of good journalism. Linking to and commenting on it after the fact -- as most bloggers do -- is the easy part.

The intent of this blog is not to take over the First Amendment duty that traditional media are leaving in the wake as the industry continues to shed staff, resources, paper editions and purpose. It is more to provide insight and to compile and pay tribute to the First Amendment journalism still being done by the over-worked and under-paid reporters and editors around the country. It is through their blood, sweat and dedication that our democracy functions properly under the microscope of truth and transparency.