By DIANE BRODERICK
Alumni News reporter
Reporters’ livelihoods often hinge on information contained in government records and produced in court proceedings.
Without the availability of such bread-and-butter facts, a journalist’s task as a government watchdog would be highly compromised.
One Nebraska organization, Media of Nebraska, has helped protect the watchdog role by proposing laws in the Legislature and going to court to make sure the state press has access to the information it needs.
The group was formed in the 1970s after one court case rallied Nebraska news organizations, said Alan Peterson, Media of Nebraska’s attorney and a lobbyist for the group. The case was the Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, and it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.
The case arose when the judge in a trial at Sutherland issued a gag order on the press. Erwin Charles Simants was charged with the murders of the members of the Henry Kellie family. It was a gory case, Peterson said, that included the murder of children and the suggestion of improper sexual activity.
The judge in the original case ordered the press not to publish some sensational facts about the case even if they were revealed in open court. The case went to district court, and that judge reiterated the gag order.
The appeal of the gag order was successful, said Peterson, who represented the North Platte and Lincoln newspapers. The U.S. Supreme Court found that in almost no cases could reporters be prohibited from using information obtained in open court.
The case also signaled a need for Nebraska’s media to band together to make sure they could protect themselves from any similar cases in the future, Peterson said.
Media of Nebraska was formed soon thereafter. The group unites five organizations: the Omaha World-Herald, the Lincoln Journal Star, the Nebraska Press Association, Nebraska Broadcasters Association and Nebraska Daily Publishers.
The group’s main work lies in the Legislature where bills are proposed and addressed, but at times court work is also necessary, Peterson said. Certain agencies, such as school boards, can attempt to implement policies that are contradictory to bills’ rules.
Media of Nebraska also employs a full-time lobbyist, Walter Radcliffe. The group’s current chairman is David Stoeffler, editor of the Lincoln Journal Star.
The group has been influential in seeing to it that the Legislature passed a public records law, which says all interested people have the right to inspect public records and take notes from them free of charge. The group also successfully promoted a state shield law, which protects journalists from being forced to reveal their sources or disclose any unpublished information.
And though Media of Nebraska did not work on passing an open meetings law, which requires that all regular and special meetings of public bodies be open to the public, the group has gone to court to enforce the law, Peterson said.
Peterson said the group was successful in about 90 percent of its endeavors.
In the 1999 legislative session, the group worked on a bill — LB 628 — that would require that copies of public records be provided at their actual cost. Public officials sometimes try to make it costly and difficult for reporters and others to get copies of records, Peterson said. The bill would require record-holders to provide copies at cost. In addition, the bill aims to open up access to electronic or computerized records, the format in which increasing amounts of government information are being kept.
Former steering committee chairman Gary Seacrest, who works with the Nebraska Press Association, said another benefit of the group is the way it has unified the state’s media toward a common goal.
“It gets both the broadcasting and print media together, working on common issues — presenting a united front to the Legislature,” Seacrest said.