| Update, 1pm--I just got my hands on the short KEX report that aired yesterday, featuring a couple of quick snippets from our interview. Listen to it here {mp3, about 1 min worth) The O now has a more comprehensive "reader forum/feedback" setup, with something called "The Stump" that also pulls in editorial commentary from the staff at the paper. Following up on the story in Sunday's print edition, they ran a somewhat more in-depth version online Sunday night, written by a different reporter. (Ironically, the print edition has nearly a dozen comments; the online version just one). As I said, the story obviously covers much of the same ground as the print edition, but offers more analysis and less quoting of subject experts, and gives some ink to David Powell's characterization of the situation: David Powell, the Lake Oswego city attorney, is right when he suggests that the problem from the city's perspective is finding a responsible party who will be accountable for the actions of the reporter. If the reporter breaks a promise not to publish an account of a properly conducted executive session, to whom does the city complain? And complain is about all it can do because there is no legal sanction for breaking the pledge. It is, as Powell said to The Oregonian's Yuxing Zheng in August, a transaction "based largely on good faith and almost an honor system." In other words, one that works until it doesn't. And of course, there are plenty of questions from the press perspective, the chief one being what's up with a pre-meeting promise not to publish something? But none of the alternatives to the present law is especially appealing, either. Issuing press credentials might solve the matter at a practical level even if it leaves most of the theoretical problems unresolved. Changing the law to keep everyone out of closed meetings meets a theoretical standard but serves up immense practical problems. and I don't mean just for the news media. Ask anyone who has ended up on the receiving end of coverage jihad about secret meetings. And, in any case, the public does have the right generally to know what its local governments are up to. Powell, who plans to report back to his city council meeting this week about how to proceed, thinks that the city (and other governments, for that matter) and other interested parties - a number of press organizations and freedom-of-information groups - should sit down and talk some more. Then, maybe, the legislature ought to reexamine the law.
I think the Council's worries revolve around trust issues, and it's very true that the Exec Session laws in Oregon lack teeth in terms of enforceability. However, what LO is doing is giving faith to organizations they know well--Powell's original proposal actually pre-cleared anyone from The O and the Lake Oswego Review--with no more enforcement or verification of trustworthiness than we have now. Jayson Blair, anyone? The key problem with their concept is that it favors corporate, institutionalized media essentially on faith, and by comparison views independent sources skeptically. More on this as we go forward, of course...but even if you already read the print version on this story, this one is worth a read for delving a little bit more into the theoretical issues, which is IMO where we need to be right now as interested parties work on a viable solution. |
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