Access to Courts

Highlights from the Legal Guide: Access to Courts and Court Records

CMLP Staff — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:28:00 -0400

This is the eighth in a series of posts calling attention to topics we cover in the Citizen Media Legal Guide. In this post, we highlight the section on Access to Courts and Court Records, which provides an overview of federal and state laws that grant you the right to access federal and state court records and court proceedings. We also provide some practical tips for getting useful information out of your local courthouse.

Access to Courts and Court Records

If you’re hunting for information, consider a visit to the courthouse, where you can sift through resource-rich court records or attend (sometimes colorful) court proceedings.

Courts are centers for dispute resolution. They are public forums in which societal norms and values, as reflected in laws, are used to address and correct wrongs. While a number of laws govern the court system, none is so deeply-ingrained as the presumption that court proceedings should be open to the public.

If you are wondering how attending court proceedings or combing through court records might be valuable to you, here are several great reasons to consider acquiring -- and publishing -- information available from the courts:

You’re interested in reporting on justice or the functioning of the court system

Some believe that courts dispense justice; others believe that the law is divorced from justice. One good way to explore this issue is by attending a trial. Non-traditional journalists have already had highly visible success in covering court proceedings, as seen in the 2007 trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby. A blogger from Firedoglake.com gained press credentials, live-blogged the trial, and provided the public with what the New York Times described as the “fullest, fastest public report” that traditional reporters used to fact check their stories. Salon applauded Firedoglake for producing “insightful” and “superb” coverage “that simply never is, and perhaps cannot be, matched by even our largest national media outlets.” In this case press credentials were necessary due to the intense public interest, but usually they’re not needed for courtroom access.

If you are interested in reporting on justice or the functioning of the court system, you should review the sections on access to federal court and state court proceedings for guidance on how to attend court proceedings. You may want to consult court records to get a better understanding of what is happening in court. For details, see State Court Records and Federal Court Records.

You enjoy publishing a good story

Attorneys engage in storytelling to win the case for their clients. Conflicts are inherently interesting, and the stories presented at trial tend to offer different interpretations of the truth. Tensions run high, and you may find yourself caring deeply about a previously unknown issue. As a result, courtroom dramas can make compelling subjects for blog posts and other website content. You need merely look at the Citizen Media Law Project Blog for evidence of this and the many fascinating "stories" we cover in the Legal Threats Database.

If you enjoy publishing a good story, you should visit the page on Access to the Jury and Trial Participants to find out how to properly contact court participants such as judges, lawyers, parties, witnesses, and jurors to get the juicy details that will bring your story to life.

You have a pre-existing interest in one of the parties in a court proceeding

If a certain person or institution interests you, following their footprints in court often yields a wealth of information. For example, as part of their coverage of the 1972 election, the Washington Post sent a young journalist on a low level assignment to attend the arraignment of five men who had been arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. As the journalist paid close attention to the proceedings, he quickly realized that there were more questions that needed investigating. If Bob Woodward hadn’t attended that seemingly minor court proceeding, the Watergate story might never have been broken.

Besides the obvious value of attending court proceedings, there is a wealth of information available in court records about individuals, corporations, and other organizations that can further aid your investigations. See the sections on access to federal and state court records for guidance on how to access this information.

You enjoy historical research

Court records can be immensely helpful to historians in two major ways: specific court cases can illuminate a certain aspect of history, and court records in aggregate can show statistical trends that highlight social, cultural, or structural changes. For genealogists, court records can also reveal family relationships, places of residence, occupations, physical or personality descriptions, or naturalization dates. Refer to Genealogy.com and Ancestry.com for more information on how mine court records for information on your family.

If you enjoy historical research, you will find a wealth of information in court files, a growing percentage of which are now available electronically. The sections on access to federal and state court records should help you find the right place to look for the information you need.

Where to Begin

Now that we've whetted your interest in court proceedings and records, it's time to do some research so that you will be able to get access to what you need. Before you jump into the materials in this guide, however, you should first determine whether the documents and/or proceedings you are interested in are associated with the federal court system or a state court system. The the page on Identifying Federal, State, and Local Government Bodies should help, as will a preliminary visit to the courthouse.

Once you've figured out what information you want and where it is located, you should browse the following sections to get a full understanding of your right to access court records and court proceedings:

Access to Federal Courts: Describes your right to attend federal court proceedings and access federal court records.

Access to State Courts: Describes your right to attend state court proceedings and access state court records.

Access to Jury and Trial Participants: Explains how to properly contact court participants such as judges, lawyers, parties, witnesses, and jurors.

Remedies if You Are Denied Access to Court Proceedings: Outlines the procedures you should follow if a judge closes a court proceeding you wish to attend.

Practical Tips for Accessing Courts and Court Records: While we can't guarantee that you will get every court record or attend every court proceeding you desire, the tips listed on this page will help ensure that you take full advantage of the wealth of information available through state and federal courts.

The Smoking Gun Does the Dirty Work, Finds the Gems Others Miss

David Ardia — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:44:20 -0400

The New York Times just ran a fascinating article on The Smoking Gun, a website dedicated to providing "documents--cool, confidential, quirky--that can't be found elsewhere on the Web." The three-person investigative shop in mid-town Manhattan consistently finds -- and publishes -- court documents, government records, and other esoterica that it finds through Freedom of Information requests, court files, and good old-fashioned investigative journalism. As we explain in our legal guide, you don't need the resources of a big media organization to use these information gathering tools effectively.

According to the Times:

The Smoking Gun has demonstrated that if you obey the metabolism of the Web, not the journalist, you can land with significant impact in a hurry.

“I think one of the keys is that we are three people,” said Mr. Bastone, who founded the site with Daniel Green, another Voice alumnus who has since moved on to truTV at Turner, and Barbara Glauber, Mr. Bastone’s wife and the designer of the site. . . .

“Their secret sauce is the ability to source documents that no one else can get,” said Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, which inherited the site when it bought Court TV. “It’s not a big business, but it’s profitable, and one of the things we are diligent about is the care and feeding of brands. Young people respond to this brand on TV and on the Web.”

Read the whole article. It's worth your time.

CMLP Launches New Legal Guide Section on Access to Government Information

David Ardia — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:42:27 -0400

Back in January, we began rolling out the Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Guide. So far, we've published major sections of the guide covering Forming a Business and Getting Online, Dealing with Online Legal Risks, and Newsgathering and Privacy. This week we published the section on Access to Government Information, which highlights the extensive amount of information available through government sources and explains how both traditional and non-traditional journalists can use various public access laws to gather and make effective use of this information.

To whet your appetite, I've pasted the overview to this new section below:

Access to Government Information

This section of the legal guide outlines the wide-array of information available to you from government sources. These sources range from your local city council all the way up to the largest agencies in the federal government. In fact, you might be quite surprised at how much information is available to you. And the best part is that you generally don't need to hire a lawyer or file any complicated forms -- you can access most of this information simply by showing up or filing a relatively simple request. Moreover, you don't need to be a professional journalist to share what you find with others who are interested in these issues; with nothing more than an Internet connection, you can make the information available to anyone in the world. For an impressive example of how some people are using the power of new information technologies in conjunction with government information, check out Adrian Holovaty's Chicagocrime.org, a browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago.

Regardless of what you publish online, it is likely that at least one (if not many) of the information sources we discuss in this section will be valuable to you. For example, you might want to find out whether the drinking water coming out of your faucet contains pollutants (information that is likely contained in documents held by the Environmental Protection Agency or one of its state counterparts). Perhaps you'd like to know more about how your local school board makes decisions (information that you can get by attending school board meetings). Or perhaps you are concerned that a real estate developer may have been sued for fraud (information that is available by visiting the courthouse in person or accessing the court's electronic docketing system).

Information from these government sources will be especially useful to you if you want to take your publishing activities beyond merely commenting on material posted by others. These sources can help you move into original reporting and enable you to comment in an informed fashion on local and national debates. You might even do a periodic post or column on subjects of particular interest to your website or blog. For example, the Gotham Gazette, an independent news site that covers "New York City News and Policy," has an entire section focusing on city government, which is largely based on meetings of the New York City Council.

We should point out, however, that the information you gather from these government sources doesn't have to be limited to the actions of the government itself. Government bodies collect extensive information on individuals, corporations, and other organizations. Much of this information is available to the public. You just have to know where to look.

The first thing you will need to consider is which government entity likely has the information you are seeking. Public access to government information extends to a broad range of government sources, including federal and state agencies, Congress and state legislatures, government boards and committees, and the courts. In fact, it might be the case that the information you are interested in is located in more than one place. A little advanced research on your part can go a long way when dealing with the government. Because different laws apply to different government entities, you will want to review each section of this guide that might apply to your situation. If you are not sure whether the information you seek is associated with a federal, state, or local government body, refer to the page on Federal, State, and Local Government Bodies for some helpful information.

It is also worth bearing in mind that laws granting access to government information are only one of many important fact-finding tools in your information gathering toolbox. These laws can be very powerful, but their scope is limited to records and information available through government sources. For a broad overview of how you can investigate a full range of actors, including government, individuals, and corporations, see the Newsgathering section of this guide and check out the Center for Investigative Reporting's entertaining and inspirational guide, Raising Hell: A Citizens Guide to the Fine Art of Investigation.

Information Held by the Federal Government

The federal government is a sprawling and far reaching entity headquartered in Washington, D.C., but with agencies and offices in almost every part of the country. A number of important laws govern your access to information associated with the federal government.

The most well known of these laws is the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), which provides access to the public records of most departments, agencies, and offices of the federal government. But several lesser known laws are also important, including the Government in the Sunshine Act which gives you the right to attend the meetings of many federal agencies, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which allows you to attend the meetings of boards and committees that advise agencies of the federal government, and the Presidential Records Act, which sets out the procedures you must follow to request records from the president and his or her close advisers.

If you are seeking records held by a federal government agency, you should review the section on Access to Records from the Federal Government which describes FOIA and provides some practical advice on how to use the law to acquire government records. Keep in mind, however, that FOIA does not cover the President himself/herself, Congress, or the federal judiciary. For information on accessing information from these sources, see the Access to Presidential Records, Access to Congress, and Access to Courts and Court Records sections of this guide, respectively.

The federal government often acts through boards, committees, and other government "bodies." Examples include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Housing Finance Board. A common feature of these agencies, boards, commissions, and other government bodies is that they meet as groups to deliberate or take action on public business. If you wish to attend these meetings, you will need to become familiar with a category of laws called open meetings laws. These important laws give anyone, including members of the traditional and non-traditional press, the ability to attend the meetings of many federal government bodies and to receive reasonable notice of those meetings. In many instances, they also entitle you to obtain copies of minutes, transcripts, or recordings at low cost. See the section on Access to Government Meetings for more information and practical advice.

There are basically two types of federal government meetings you may wish to attend and each is governed by a different set of legal requirements. Federal agency meetings are governed by the Government in the Sunshine Act which gives you the right to attend the meetings of many federal agencies, such as the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Federal advisory committee meetings, which are a strange hybrid type of meeting involving outside advisers tasked with giving advice to the federal government, are governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Information Held by State and Local Governments

Just as with the federal government, a number of important laws govern your ability to access information associated with state and local governments.

Every state has some version of a "Freedom of Information" (FOI) law — sometimes called a "sunshine law" — that governs the public’s right to access state government records. These FOI laws help the public keep track of its government’s actions, from the expenditures of school boards to the governor's decision to pardon prison inmates. For example, in 2003, a parent of a student in Texas, Dianna Pharr, spurred by the financial crisis in her local school district, began filing requests under the Texas Public Information Act to investigate the district's spending and operations. She and other parent volunteers established an online repository for the documents and made them available on a local community website, Keep Eanes Informed. Pharr's efforts received coverage in the local press, and have enabled her community to make informed decisions when dealing with school board proposals.

If the information you are seeking is contained in records held by your state or local government, you will need to review the section on Access to Records from State Governments in order to understand how to make a request under the relevant state law. For example, the California Public Records Act and the New York Freedom of Information Law govern access to records in California and New York, respectively. In many states, local government records can also be requested under the state open records law. Unfortunately, public officials sometimes deny that they are required to turn over information, deny that the public has any right to information, or fail to provide information in a timely way. To ensure that you get the information you need, you should review the section on Practical Tips for Getting Government Records.

If you are interested in attending the meetings of state or local government bodies, you should review the section on Access to State and Local Government Meetings. The most familiar examples of these kinds of government bodies at the local level include school boards, city councils, boards of county commissioners, zoning and planning commissions, police review boards, and boards of library trustees. At the state level, examples include state environmental commissions, labor boards, housing boards, and tax commissions, to name a few.

Courts and Court Information

The court system is yet another resource-rich place for you to access information. Your right to access the court system stems from the First Amendment, and has been expanded to give you the ability to attend almost all court proceedings and inspect public court records. The law provides important tools that you can use to help you understand the intricacies of a particular case, or watch how the court system performs. For example, you can use court records to check whether a doctor has previously been sued for malpractice, or to find the outcome of a criminal case.

You should first determine whether you need to access the information at the state or federal level. Once you’re armed with that knowledge, visit the pages that discuss access to court proceedings in federal court or state court, for information on your right to attend trials and other court proceedings. If, on the other hand, you want to review court records, such as legal complaints, motions, and other filings, visit the page on Federal Court Records or State Court Records, which describes your right to access court records and provides information on why your request may be denied, and how to appeal a denial. While there is no guarantee that you will get every court record or attend every court proceeding you desire, we've put together some tips that will help ensure that you take full advantage of the wealth of information available through state and federal courts. See the page discussing Practical Tips for Accessing Courts and Court Records for more information.

You may also wish to talk with the individuals associated with a court case. Visit the page on Access to Jury and Trial Participants to understand your ability to contact those who participated in the court proceeding such as the judge, lawyers, parties, witnesses, and jurors.

Getting Started

If, after reviewing the information in this section, you are still not sure where to start, you can always just browse one of the topics listed below:

Access to Government Records: Describes federal and state freedom of information laws and provides practical advice on how to use these laws to acquire government records.

Access to Government Meetings: Provides an overview of federal and state open meetings laws and explains how to assert your right to attend meetings held by federal, state, and local agencies, boards, committees, and other government bodies.

Access to Congress and the President: Outlines the special set of rules that govern access to Congress and Presidential records.

Access to Courts and Court Records: Provides an overview of federal and state laws that grant you the right to access federal and state court records and court proceedings.

It's Sunshine Week!

Tuna Chatterjee — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:54:49 -0400

It’s March and it’s Sunshine Week. This year, from March 16 - 22, the American Society of Newspaper Editors is holding its annual national initiative to raise public consciousness on the need for open government. The name “Sunshine Week” is derived from the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s admonition that “[s]unlight is the best disinfectant,” describing his belief that an open government is more accountable to its people and thus less easily corrupted. As I write this post, various participants in the media community are similarly calling attention to the public’s right to know what their government is doing and why in order to improve their lives and better inform their communities. (See the Student Press Law Center, the Massachusetts Newspapers Publishers Association, and the Society for Professional Journalists for examples.)

Using freedom of information laws is a simple, and potentially powerful, way of obtaining information about the activities of federal, state and many local governments. You don't need to hire a lawyer, and no complicated forms are involved—requests can be made in a simple letter. And you don't need to be a journalist to share what you find with others who are interested in these issues; with nothing more than an Internet connection, you can post the information and make it available to anyone in the world.

Your request can yield information that has a real impact on your community. For example, in 2003, a parent of a student in Texas, Dianna Pharr, spurred by the financial crisis in her local school district, began filing multiple requests under the Texas Public Information Act to investigate the district's spending and operations. She and other parent volunteers established an online repository for the documents she received and made them available on a local community website, Keep Eanes Informed. Pharr's efforts received coverage in the local press, and have enabled her community to make informed decisions when dealing with school board proposals. Similarly, in 2006, the nonprofit organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility used the federal Freedom of Information Act to get documents that revealed that genetically-modified crops had been sown on thousands of acres in a federal wildlife refuge. A coalition of nonprofits used this information to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for violating federal environmental law. For other examples of the benefits of sunshine laws, see the National Security Archive's 40 Noteworthy Headlines Made Possible by FOIA, 2004-2006.

Unfortunately, since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the government has whittled away at the public’s access to government information in the name of security. According to the Associated Press, legislatures around the country have passed more than 600 laws restricting public access to government information. As a result, you cannot access a variety of information such as the safety plan at your child’s school in Iowa, medication errors at your grandparent’s nursing home in North Carolina, or disciplinary actions against state employees in Indiana.

These access restrictions highlight the importance of Sunshine Week and its focus on the need for the public to resist the current trend of secrecy and direct legislative efforts towards a presumption of openness. For our part, we at the CMLP intend to spread some sunshine by publishing the next section of our Legal Guide on Access to Government Information at the end of this month. The guide will not only include information on federal and state freedom of information laws, but also information on how to access government meetings, the courts, and Congress.

Oklahoma Curtails Online Access to Court Records

David Ardia — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:12:55 -0400

Earlier this week, the Oklahoma Supreme Court adopted new rules governing public access to court records, cutting off all public access to court records via the Internet and limiting public access to other information that has been available in the past.

When the rules go into effect on June 10, online access to court documents in the Oklahoma Supreme Court and district courts would be limited to court dockets only and parties will be required to redact certain personal information before submitting a filing to the court clerk.

According to the order signed by Chief Justice James Winchester and four other justices, "individual pleadings and other recorded documents filed of record in state court actions shall not be publicly displayed on the Internet." The order, released on March 11, describes the new rules as an effort to balance the rights of privacy of individuals and public access.

"What I disagree with is the instantaneous restriction of public access to current public court documents on line," Justice Yvonne Kaugerin wrote in a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part from the new rules. Kauger went on to note:

The court made this decision with input only from the court clerks. Others directly affected by the decision - the bar, the bench, the Legislature, the public - were not consulted. . . . [A]s a result of this order, not only is the court taking a giant, 30-year leap backwards to a time when the personal computer was nonexistent, the public is now paying for access to a system which is made inaccessible by the order.

The Norman Transcript has a bit more on the new rules here.

A.P. Request for Access to Search Warrant Affidavit Denied in Baseball Steroids Case

Sam Bayard — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:19:48 -0400

Written by Tom Casazzone, CMLP Intern

A federal district court in Arizona has denied a request filed by the Associated Press to reveal the names of Major League Baseball players allegedly implicated in the use of performance-enhancing drugs. In this case, which has received extensive coverage in the New York Times and elsewhere, Jason Grimsley, a former major league pitcher, supplied a federal agent with the names of ballplayers that he said used performance-enhancing drugs in the past. A federal agent used these names in an affidavit to support a warrant to search Grimsley's home last year. When the affidavit and warrant were made public in June 2006, the players' names had been blacked out. The A.P. then requested access to the entire affidavit, asking the court to reveal the names that were blacked out.

The A.P. claimed a First Amendment and common law right of access to the original affidavit. According to the Supreme Court, there is a general presumption of access to court filings, and the presumption "may be overcome only by an overriding interest based on findings that closure is essential to preserve higher values and is narrowly tailored to serve that interest." Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, 464 U.S. 501, 511 (1986). Courts therefore must apply a balancing test to determine whether the government's interest in secrecy outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

The A.P. argued that the privacy interests of the individuals named in the affidavit were insufficient to overcome the right of the public to access court filings. Additionally, the news agency claimed that the government shared the original affidavit (without blacked-out names) to former Senator George Mitchell, who is leading Major League Baseball's steroid investigation. The A.P. maintained that the court should consider this prior disclosure as diminishing the government's claim to maintain secrecy.

In his opinion, Magistrate Judge Edward C. Voss III concluded that Mitchell did not see the original affidavit and that it would therefore not consider this alleged disclosure in its balancing test. What remained in support of the A.P.'s argument was that knowledge of the players' names was newsworthy and in the public interest.

Judge Voss rejected the A.P.'s claim, citing the government's interest in the pending investigation and the named players' privacy interests as outweighing the public interest in disclosure of their identity. The court relied heavily on a Ninth Circuit case, Times Mirror Co. v. United States, 873 F.2d 1210 (9th Cir. 1989), which similarly dealt with access to affidavits supporting the issuance of search warrants in ongoing investigations. Judge Voss indicated that there is no historical tradition of open search warrant proceedings and materials. He also emphasized the damage to the criminal investigatory process that could result from open warrant proceedings:

This court believes that the most important factor driving the Times Mirror decision was the conclusion that the investigation was ongoing. The court observed that openness would potentially "frustrate the criminal investigation" and "jeopardize the integrity of the search for truth." . . . This court believes the fact that some indictments have issued in this investigation does not act to obviate the need to preserve the redacted material. The indictments thus far relate to the "supply" side of the problem. What remains for possible prosecution is the alleged illegal possession and use of these substances. In this area, no indictments have issued and the investigation continues.

The court maintained, without specific findings of fact, that disclosure of the redacted names could adversely affect cooperation, lead to the compromise of investigations of the named individuals, cut off leads that might be developed from the undisclosed information, and result in the destruction of evidence.

Admittedly, the court was constrained by 9th Circuit precedent, but Judge Voss made no effort to analyze whether the specific facts in this case triggered similar practical concerns as those implicated by the facts in Times Mirror. The court's strong emphasis on the ongoing status of the investigation and the abstract quality of Judge Voss's reasoning create the impression that a First Amendment or common law right of access to sensitive materials might never be applicable during the course of an ongoing investigation.

This result is clearly bad for the A.P. in this case. But this kind of blanket rule, if adopted by other courts, also would unnecessarily frustrate the efforts of mainstream and citizen journalist to uncover the truth about important matters of public concern and to monitor government functions prone to abuse.

Bloggers Are Not Journalists, Illinois Juvenile Court Judge Declares

David Ardia — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:19:30 -0400

An Illinois juvenile court judge refused to allow blogger Elaine Hopkins from Peoriastory.com to observe and cover a July 25 juvenile court hearing in Peoria, IL. In excluding Hopkins from the courtroom, Judge Albert Purham, Jr. ruled that bloggers are not journalists under Illinois law. Hopkins, who covered her ouster on her website, reported:

Operating a "so-called blog" doesn't make the person a journalist, Purham said. Before the ruling he consulted the lawyers in the courtroom. A lawyer for the parent in this child welfare case had no objection, and her client, Lorraine Singleton who lost her children in 2003 and is trying to get them back, also had no objection. But assistant state's attorney Susan Lucas objected, as did an unidentified female lawyer apparently representing the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. An explanation that Peoriastory.com has operated since February 2007, has business cards, and is run by Hopkins, a former newspaper reporter known to court personnel, did not sway the judge.

Unlike adult criminal proceedings, which are presumed to be open to the public, juvenile proceedings have traditionally been closed. See In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 25 (1967). Under Illinois' Juvenile Court Act, the general public, except for the "news media," are excluded from juvenile proceedings. The provision addressing access, 705 ILCS 405/1-5, states:

The general public except for the news media and the crime victim, as defined in Section 3 of the Rights of Crime Victims and Witnesses Act, shall be excluded from any hearing and, except for the persons specified in this Section only persons, including representatives of agencies and associations, who in the opinion of the court have a direct interest in the case or in the work of the court shall be admitted to the hearing. However, the court may, for the minor's safety and protection and for good cause shown, prohibit any person or agency present in court from further disclosing the minor's identity.

The Illinois Act does not define "news media" for purposes of this provision and I couldn't find any reported cases where this issue has come up. It appears that the judge, relying on his own intuition, simply determined that Hopkins and Peoriastory.com did not meet the definition of "news media."

This is somewhat surprising in that Hopkins is a former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and, according to her site, has won awards for investigative reporting. In the About Me section of her site, Hopkins states that

PeoriaStory is a project of Downstate Story, Inc., an Illinois not-for-profit corporation since 1992. PeoriaStory uses mainstream journalism standards to report news and provide analysis and advocacy journalism with fairness, accuracy and comprehensiveness.

I was interviewed by the local ABC affiliate in Peoria about this story, and stated that I believed the judge had taken a very narrow-minded view of what journalism is. The focus should be on the type of work someone does, not on whether they have a traditional media organization listed on their business card. From all appearances, Hopkins and Peoriastory.com fit anyone's definition of journalist and "news media," respectively, just not Illinois' definition.

This is an issue that is not going away. As non-traditional journalists go out and cover these kinds of stories, judges in Illinois and elsewhere will be forced to rethink established definitions of news media. The best approach is to have traditional media organizations and citizen journalists sit down with judges and court personnel to discuss what is best for the public, the juvenile court system, and the juveniles themselves.

It is in the public's best interest to have more voices covering news stories, especially stories involving the juvenile justice system, which surely needs more public attention.

Whosarat.com

David Ardia — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:37:23 -0400

Interesting article in today's New York Times about Whosarat.com, which says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from electronic court records. According to a Justice Department official quoted in the piece:

We are witnessing the rise of a new cottage industry engaged in republishing court filings about cooperators on Web sites such as www.whosarat.com for the clear purpose of witness intimidation, retaliation and harassment.

Well worth a read as it touches on many interesting -- and difficult -- issues concerning privacy, access to court records, and free speech.