By June Speakman On Aug. 5, Brian Stelter, anchor of CNN’s Reliable Sources, shared with viewers an audiotape of a call to a CSPAN political show in which the caller said that if he ran into Stelter and CNN correspondent Don Lemon, he would “shoot” them. Earlier in the week, MSNBC’s Katy Tur read an […]
Have a public records story you would like to share? Email justin@nefac.org with your experience trying to obtain information through a state public records law. By David Kassel The Massachusetts supervisor of public records ruled in April that the state’s Disabled Persons Protection Commission (DPPC) can keep all investigative reports on the sudden death of […]
By Edward Fitzpatrick Perhaps it comes as no surprise that prosecutors in President Donald Trump’s Justice Department secretly seized years’ worth of a New York Times reporters’ phone and email records as part of a leak investigation. But no one appreciates the danger of such a step more than James Risen, the former New York […]
By Michael J. Yelnosky On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME. The majority held that the First Amendment prohibited the enforcement of ubiquitous provisions in collective bargaining agreements between public sector labor unions and government employers requiring all employees represented by the union to pay their share […]
By Justin Silverman A gunman harboring a grudge against the Capital Gazette, a community newspaper outside Annapolis, Md., opened fire in its newsroom last week killing five staff members and injuring several others. Those killed include the editorial page editor, an editor and features columnist, a longtime sports reporter and editor and a local news […]
By Edward Fitzpatrick It is our Watergate. The 38 Studios debacle might not have produced a constitutional crisis or a legal battle (over the Nixon White House tapes) that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. But Curt Schilling’s ill-fated video-game venture certainly produced a monumental crisis here in Rhode […]
By Edward Fitzpatrick The bad news is that local TV news anchors from coast to coast stared into the camera and read from a script, parroting the “fake” news mantra of a press-bashing president. The good news, such as it is, is that perhaps there was no better way to vividly illustrate a largely academic […]
By Colman Herman In an effort to shield information from the public, it is not uncommon for government officials in Massachusetts to play word games when responding to public records requests. Here’s a prime example. I recently made a public records request for certain communications made by the secretary of the Executive Office of Administration […]
By Erinn Cawthon and Jeffrey Pyle On April 5, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that members of a board of selectmen violated the Open Meeting Law by using email to secretly share their opinions about the performance of a town administrator in advance of a public meeting. The opinion provides important guidance on […]
By David A. Logan Our country loves its myths, and one is that our newspapers exist to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” This romantic notion of the independent commentator may never have been accurate, as for many years the political bent of media outlets was transparent (indeed, sometimes even paid for!). And you don’t need to have […]