For decades, local newspapers took up court challenges when government bodies sought to keep the public out of meetings or documents secret. Legal experts fear that mission is being eroded with cutbacks to traditional media. By ataxin for SunshineWeek
In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020 photo, Shane Fitzgerald Regional Executive Editor for Gannett works at his computer in Langhorne, Pa.
“You really have to assess your risk there, and, do you really have a shot at getting it?” said Fitzgerald, executive editor for the Bucks County Courier Times, The Intelligencer and the Burlington County Times. “It used to be you could go and file for open records and fight it a little bit on a hunch or on a theory or on some premise. That doesn’t really happen that much anymore.”
“There’s a lot fewer instances where newspapers or anybody are willing to actually go to court and force an agency to comply,” Snyder said. “So what happens on a stretch of highway if the speed limit is 55 if everyone knows there’s never a cop on that stretch of road ever, or very rarely? They’re going to drive fast.”
“In some respects, it doesn’t matter what the law says if you can’t enforce it,” Townsend said. “There are lots and lots of stories that come out of public records that I think oftentimes required some form of a lawsuit.” Once the paper was sold to a series of media companies, he said it became tougher to make the case to spend money on these local court battles. Now, there are fewer journalists doing this kind of work at all, he said.
“A couple of years ago when the need to keep fighting these right-to-know cases came up, we started calling each other and saying, ’Hey, do you want to join my case?” she said.
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