A group of 50 media companies and organizations, including AAN, sent a letter yesterday urging Congress to take up a pair of federal shield law bills and enact them as soon as possible. Both bills (S.2035 and H.R. 2102) have passed through committees, with the House version receiving a full House approval months ago. The letter follows a federal judge's recent decision requiring a former USA Today reporter to personally pay contempt fines for refusing to reveal her confidential sources. UPDATE: USA Today is reporting that a federal appeals court yesterday temporarily blocked the judge's order on the fines.
"All sides claimed victory" yesterday when the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI) dropped 18 charges against the Weekly, which in turn agreed to stop running adult ads and pay the MBI $10,000 for its investigation, the Orlando Sentinel reports. In addition, the paper's three employees who were personally charged agreed to perform 100 hours of community service within nine months to have their charges dismissed. "There's no need to proceed to a jury trial ... when everything that needed to be done is being done," MBI director Bill Lutz says. "They have stepped up. They've actually done more than we asked." But the Weekly says the MBI settled because it knew it was going to lose the case. "It is no coincidence that the MBI entered into settlement talks a week before today's scheduled motion-to-dismiss hearing, in which the Weekly was prepared to argue, essentially, that the MBI was making up the law as it went along," the paper says in an initial report. The Weekly promises to have a full account of the investigation and settlement on its website soon.
A federal judge on Wednesday granted a request for a preliminary injunction in a case brought in January by the ACLU of Michigan on behalf of Metro Times, three political parties, and a political consulting firm, the Associated Press reports. The suit seeks information about who voted in the state's primary and whether they took a Republican or Democratic ballot -- records that are currently available only to those two political parties. Under current law, the secretary of state is required to provide this information to the parties within 71 days of the primary, which was held this year on Jan. 15. But the plaintiffs argue that violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The ruling yesterday prevents the information from being disseminated before the judge can make a definitive decision. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for March 26.
"There’s no end to President Bush’s slyness in subverting new Congressional law and clinging to the secrecy that has been the administration’s executive cloak," says the New York Times today in an editorial decrying the budgetary legerdemain Bush used to gut a key provision of the recently passed OPEN Government Act. The Washington Examiner editorial page weighs in on the controversy as well.
In its FY09 budget proposal released earlier this week, the Bush Administration transfered to the Justice Department the Freedom of Information Act ombudsman position recently created by an act of Congress. The Bureau of National Affairs (subscription only) reports today that Justice failed to meet its own FOIA backlog reduction goal of 15 percent for 2007. "This should never happen, especially at the department that is responsible for reviewing other agency annual FOIA reports for accuracy," a former Justice official told BNA. The Justice Department currently provides guidance to federal agencies on FOIA compliance and also has a role in defending agencies against challenges to FOIA denials. Critics of the administration's proposal contend that because of its role in defending FOIA challenges, Justice lacks the neutrality to handle the new ombudsman function. More on the controversy from the Washington Post, the Ocala Star-Banner and Scripps Howard News Service.
Only 35 days after signing the OPEN Government Act into law, President Bush wants to kill a key provision of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reform bill via a budgetary maneuver, reports Cox Newspapers' Washington Bureau. Bush's proposal would eliminate funding for an ombudsman at the National Archive and Records Administration and transfer the role of settling FOIA disputes to the Justice Department. Open government advocates believe Justice has a conflict of interest that would inevitably lead the department to defend federal agencies seeking to keep government records secret. "This proposal violates both the explicit text of the OPEN Government Act and its legislative intent," bill sponsors Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) wrote today in a letter expressing their opposition to Bush's spending plan.
The Court of Appeals has ruled against the Indy's appeal of contempt charges stemming from photographer Paul Wellman's refusal to turn over about 300 photographs taken in the aftermath of the murder, the paper reports.
The creation of an ombudsman to oversee disputes over the Freedom of Information Act was the centerpiece of the FOIA reform bill signed into law last month. Cox News reports that the Open Government Act placed the ombudsman at the National Archives because of criticism leveled at the Justice Department for failing to address chronic FOIA backlogs. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) are speaking out against the administration's attempt to move the position to Justice. "Such a move is not only contrary to the express intent of the Congress, but it is also contrary to the very purpose of this legislation -- to ensure the timely and fair resolution of American's FOIA requests," Leahy said in a floor speech on Wednesday.
In court this week, a Guardian witness disavowed a key piece of evidence -- AAN's financial standards report -- that the paper was using to prove its predatory pricing charge against SF Weekly, the East Bay Express and Village Voice Media. The witness backed away from the AAN report after the Weekly's attorney's produced an affidavit from the woman who had compiled it asserting that it was unaudited and self-reported, "rendering it meaningless as a measure of financial performance," the Weekly reports. After considering this and motions from both parties on Wednesday and Thursday, the Weekly says the judge "ultimately concluded that the Weekly deserved additional time to respond, a decision which could delay the long-awaited trial." Naturally, the Guardian sees this week's developments a little differently. "If this is how the SF Weekly and the VVM guys from Phoenix are going to cover the trial, we're going to have to spend a lot of time correcting the record," Guardian executive editor Tim Redmond writes. He says that the Weekly's attorneys had "tried desperately" to keep the Guardian's witness from taking the stand at all, and sees the disavowal of the AAN financial data as inconsequential. The witness had developed two scenarios to show how much money the Guardian had lost, and not being allowed to use the AAN data, he will just rely on the other standards instead, according to Redmond.
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