Newspapers Audit Iowa Open Records Compliance

[Blue Gardener]

http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050320/NEWS01/503200305/1079

"Employees from 15 newspapers, led by The Des Moines Register and Cedar Rapids Gazette, and senior journalism students from Drake University traveled last month to Iowa's 99 counties to ask to see a variety of public documents held by counties, cities and school districts. Organizers told participants to avoid volunteering information about their profession in order to gauge whether the average Iowan has access to public records."

Has anyone else been following this? The link is to the article in the Iowa City Press Citizen, but there is more information in other Iowa newspapers. Sounds like compliance is pretty good in some areas, not so good in others. There's really too much info in the article to summarize it all here.

[Bluzmann57]

1. The QC Times has a pretty good article about that this AM

Of course, they focused in mainly on Scott, Clinton, and Muscatine counties. Scott County is abysmal, Davenport is pretty good.

[pstans]

2. It was front page of the Sunday DM Register

I think it is great that someone is looking out for our freedoms. It is especially exciting that it was a whole state wide effort. I wasn't surprised that most the counties that didn't grant access were in Western and Iowa, the part of the state that is the most Republican.

[Counciltucky]

3. I was involved in this study.

I'm employed by The Daily Nonpareil and they had me go around and take care of Pottawattamie County. Everyone tried to give me the runaround, but for the most part I got the information.

[CornField]

4. This was an interesting study

It was no surprise to me that law enforcement agencies were the worst to deal with for public information. In my experience as a journalist, Iowa law enforcement agencies are extremely suspicious of anyone wanting public information -- including members of the press.