A prominent national association of journalists recently gave Massachusetts the "Black Hole Award"—a sarcastically and annually bestowed dishonor calling out governments that lack transparency.
That's according to Jack Styler of the Provincetown Independent. CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with Jack recently to learn more.
Gilda Geist So let's take this opportunity to give listeners a peek at the fundamentals of American journalism. What is the Society of Professional Journalists?
Jack Styler The Society of Professional Journalists is a nationwide advocacy organization that bills itself as champions for journalists' and everyone's First Amendment rights. And so that means that they're monitoring fights against efforts to violate the First Amendment against the free press, and they also help defend and protect journalists when they're doing their work.
GG And just to add for listeners, the SPJ Code of Ethics is behind probably most of the journalism you read—well, hopefully it is. So, what kind of rights do we have in Massachusetts when it comes to accessing public records?
JS So, under Massachusetts public records law, any citizen in Massachusetts is allowed to make record requests of most state agencies as well as their local municipal government. The local public records access officer or the state agency's public access officer has 10 days under the law to provide a response to that request. And if you're unsatisfied with the government's response or non-response, you are also allowed to appeal that to the state supervisor of public records. However, it's worth noting that Massachusetts public records law is one of the more restrictive public records laws in the whole country. The state legislature, the governor's office and the Massachusetts judiciary all claim to be exempt from the public records law. So while you can submit public records requests to most state agencies and your local town or city officials, the main three branches of government are not going to be responding to public records requests in Massachusetts.
GG What was the SPJ's reasoning for giving Massachusetts the Black Hole Award?
JS The Society of Professional Journalists gave Massachusetts the Black Hole Award because they found that Massachusetts demonstrated a troubling lack of transparency and a disregard for the public's right to know. And they said that that was specifically because of the broad exemptions, weak enforcement mechanisms and persistent delays in the public records law that limited the access of government information that should be public to the people.
GG As journalists, the lack of transparency in Massachusetts obviously makes our job harder. But what about people listening who aren't journalists? How can a lack of government transparency in the state affect them?
JS I think that's a really great point. This is certainly one thing that journalists across the state talk about a lot and are often frustrated by is the lack of transparency. But Justin Silverman of the New England First Amendment Coalition told me that it's important to remember that public records law and government transparency really does affect anyone and everyone across the state. When public officials are not doing their duty under the law to provide information transparently and instead are playing games, delaying, creating large fees for public records requests or flat out ignoring their obligations, he said that it's really a problem for every citizen across the Commonwealth. At various points in your life, you might find yourself doing public records request even if you are not a journalist. People will need to do public records requests often when they've gotten into an accident or even when they just want to find out more information about how their local government is conducting business regarding certain projects in their community. And because of the weak enforcement mechanisms in the public records law in Massachusetts, often those requests from everyday, regular citizens are also not being fulfilled, just like many journalists' requests as well.
