March 12 2003

The SPJ's James Madison FOI Awards Dinner, honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to the cause of freedom of information, is open to the public and will be MCed by Dana King, anchorperson for KPIX, Channel 5 News. Tues/18, cocktails 6 p.m., dinner and awards ceremony 7 p.m., Jillian's (Billiard Room), Sony Metreon, 101 Fourth St., S.F. $55, $45 SPJ members, $40 students. To RSVP and for more information, call (415) 864-2772.

FOI winners
Presenting the winners of the 18th annual Society of Professional Journalists James Madison Freedom of Information Awards

PROTECTING THE FIRST Amendment has never been easy. In these days of looming war, when it can be harder than ever to get even basic government information, that struggle is increasingly crucial – and often increasingly lonely.

Here are the winners of this year's James Madison FOI Awards, given by the Society of Professional Journalists' Northern California Chapter to those who fight the hardest for our right to know.

Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award
Ronald M. George, chief justice, California Supreme Court

During his entire career as a California judge, Ronald M. George has been fighting to make California courts more transparent. Since becoming chief justice, he has pushed that agenda within the California Supreme Court and throughout the entire state justice system it oversees.

George is a conservative who as deputy attorney general has twice defended California's capital punishment law before the U.S. Supreme Court. But the dedication to public access he's demonstrated since becoming a Los Angeles Municipal Court judge in the early 1970s has pleased Californians of various political persuasions.

At the California Supreme Court he has pushed for better organization, extensive electronic access, and more-thorough docketing. He has rewritten the Rules of Court so that access to meetings and records is limited only by the rules established in the California Public Records Act. And he has made it much harder to seal court records. "There's a presumption things should be open," George told us.

One of the first things George did when he became chief justice was allow journalists to interview the staff attorneys who do the nitty-gritty research for the Supreme Court's opinions.

"I've always believed very much in keeping court work open," George said. "And we've made so much progress with electronic access. The court's self-help site has simplified forms written in plain English rather than legalese – and it got 1.5 million hits in its first six months." George was a driving force behind that site, which allows the public easier access to court records.

"I want to stress that I'm just the head of the parade here – we've got the whole judiciary turned around on this," he said. But it's worth mentioning that George makes himself much more accessible to the media than the average judge. He called us back within 24 hours and, when he did, mentioned that "the judicial branch and the press actually have similar roles in some ways." (Tali Woodward)

Journalist (TV)
Tom Vacar, consumer editor, KTVU, channel 2

"I thought I wanted to be an engineer until I got screwed on a car repair," said Tom Vacar, KTVU, channel 2's consumer editor for the past 12 years. The car – a blue Ford Fairlane convertible – had compression problems, or so the mechanic alleged before handing Vacar a scroll of dollar signs. "I was so incensed. I felt like, 'How can this be? What could I do?' "

It was that feeling, Vacar says, that lead him to pursue a career in consumer reporting. In college during the late 1960s, the native Ohioan helped run auto-defects investigations with Ralph Nader's legendary citizen activist team Nader's Raiders and managed to get more than 1 million Dodge vans recalled.

After receiving a law degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, in Cleveland, Vacar landed a broadcasting job in California, where, during the past three decades, he's won more than 40 major journalism awards, including 5 Emmys, 5 Golden Mikes, and the Society of Professional Journalists Medal for Distinguished Public Service for his work on insurance reform in the late 1980s.

Whether locking horns with the Department of Motor Vehicles over access to public records or coordinating an annual Great American Toy Test (where children play with thousands of toys to see which ones are keepers), Vacar has made a career of looking after the public interest.

"First you have to recognize when something isn't working," Vacar, 54, said. "Then you have to be persistent in finding out why it doesn't work." When it comes to procuring public records, Vacar added, "Some P.R. people will say that things aren't accessible when in fact they just don't want to get off their butts and get it. If I'm a reporter and I have trouble getting this information, then what happens to the average person who needs the information?" (Nino Padova)

Journalist (Radio)
Michael Krasny and the production staff, Forum, KQED-FM

For 10 years radio listeners have tuned in to Michael Krasny's morning Forum program to hear intelligent discussion of some pretty complicated issues, including the ins and outs of President George W. Bush's proposed 2004 budget and the San Francisco Police Department scandal.

And over the past year several of those programs have focused on the growing attacks on the First Amendment and access to public information. Krasny has focused on the White House's moves to clamp down on journalists' ability to get information about war efforts and the Bush administration's restriction of access to records of the Energy Task Force and historical presidential documents.

With the air of a gentle but prodding professor, Krasny treats his guests with respect, allowing them time to make their points without the usual bombastic cutoff expected of so many radio hosts. And he's able to keep even the driest of wonks on topic while distilling their insight in a way that's meaningful for the average listener – without oversimplifying their comments.

"He's one of a kind in Bay Area journalism," said John Burks, journalism department chair at San Francisco State University. "He can have people on who are looking at something like water issues, and they can be fiercely boring. But that's OK. Because as a listener, you are getting what you need. I think we're extraordinarily lucky to have Michael Krasny around."

Both Burks and Krasny say Forum's shows dealing with access issues are particularly critical right now.

"If the rights of the press are being blocked, then why even bother with the First Amendment?" Burks asked. "You don't have an informed public. As journalists, we haven't made as near as big of a howl as we should in these times. But at least we have Krasny. In terms of the big media, he's the only one dealing with this. And he's really informed and is pretty fearless."

"I'm very pleased and happy and honored to receive this award," Krasny said. "At this time, it's vital for public radio to get information [about the restriction of press rights] to the public and provide the public with as much as we can of that content and the struggle behind it." (Savannah Blackwell)

Journalist (Print)
Matt Marshall, San Jose Mercury News

In 2000 the nation's largest public pension fund, the $130 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), posted information about its investment returns on its Web site and then immediately took it down. Some at the San Jose Mercury News speculated that the flip-flop was caused by embarrassment over negative performance results.

Two years later Mercury News venture capital reporter Matt Marshall lit a fire under the secretive and high-risk world of V.C. funds by taking CalPERS to court after the state agency denied his request for the internal rates of return (IRR) for the 250 private equity funds in its $20 billion portfolio.

Marshall said that, in the past, CalPERS was more than happy to release information about how the state invests its employees' retirement funds – when its returns were hefty. When they weren't, the agency would claim the documents were confidential.

When lawyers for the Mercury News argued in court that CalPERS should be compelled under the California Public Records Act to release its performance data, 14 venture capitalists from around the country filed letters arguing that IRRs are trade secrets and should be kept private. In November, Judge James Robertson tentatively ruled that the IRRs should be made public. The case was settled out of court in December 2002, with CalPERS agreeing to release more than 100 IRRs.

Later this month the state agency will deliberate on how to proceed with future requests. Marshall said the decision will impact institutions such as the University of California, whose officials have said they are waiting to see what CalPERS does before complying with the Mercury News's public information requests for private equity investment reports.

The Merc's action has sparked a national debate within the entire venture capital industry. Since the settlement, agencies such as the California State Teachers' Retirement System and institutions such as the University of Michigan have complied with similar public information requests.

"The entire industry has been forced to open up," Marshall told us. (Shadi Rahimi)

Journalist (Bulldog)
Sanjiv Handa, East Bay News Service

Keeping public officials honest and in compliance with good-government laws is no small task, but Oakland's Sanjiv Handa has taken on the chore as his life's work. An activist reporter with a taste for rooting out corruption, Handa says he devotes nearly 100 hours each week to watchdogging Oakland officials and publishing a batch of newsletters on government activity for the press and public.

"He's like a one-man news service, activist organization, and law firm all rolled in one," said Randy Lyman, FOI Committee chair of the SPJ's Northern California Chapter. "He's sued the city a number of times to get records. He never seems to slow down."

Handa's crusades have so angered Oakland mayor Jerry Brown that about a year ago Brown severely limited access to the City Hall pressroom, which used to be available to reporters at nearly any hour of the day. Journalists can now only use the space during city council meetings.

Still, that hasn't seemed to deter Handa. He continues to stay on top of the "open meetings and public records aspect of things and files any number of complaints with the Public Ethics Commission," Lyman said. "He wins about half the time."

While most journalists won't speak publicly at City Hall meetings as a matter of principle, Handa ignores that convention. In the middle of a session, it's not uncommon for him to head up to the podium to scold officials for failing to give proper notice of agenda items or events.

Handa's East Bay News Service has put out many publications over the years (including the Six Minute Report, the Oakland Shadow, and the Oakland Digest) in which uncovered scandals at the Port Commission, unveiled juicy details of high-paid officials' contracts, and profiled the city's best and worst employees. (Rachel Brahinsky)

Student Journalist
Misha Osinovskiy, The Orion, Chico State University

When law enforcement challenged his right to take photographs on a Chico street, Misha Osinovskiy demonstrated unusual tenacity. Very early on the morning of Sept. 1, 2002, Osinovskiy, a student photographer working for the Orion, Chico State University's paper, was wandering around the city's student ghetto. The Orion was doing a story about the crackdown on student drinking, and it was the first weekend of the semester. Osinovskiy hit the jackpot: a plain-clothes officer of the State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control making an arrest for public urination. He quickly snapped the shutter on his camera, prompting protests from the officer.

The officer told him to go away, but instead Osinovskiy – who was under the (correct) impression that he could take photographs in any public setting other than a crime scene – refocused his camera and took another shot. He was handcuffed, arrested, and taken to the Butte County Jail, where he was held for six hours. Osinovskiy was first charged with providing false identification, as it was the beginning of the school year and he didn't yet have a press pass. Later the charge was changed to obstructing a police officer, since the ABC officer said Osinovskiy blinded him with his flash and interfered with his work.

Both the district attorney and the ABC opened investigations into the incident, and accounts differed substantially. The ABC officer said there had been a crowd of 500 students on the street; students witnesses denied that. The officer also maintained Osinovskiy had taken six photos; the photographer himself claimed fewer. Eventually it was the film itself, which showed just two shots of the initial arrest, that led the D.A. to close his inquiry three weeks later. (Woodward)

Advocacy
California First Amendment Coalition

Almost anyone who's ever tried to pry information out of a public agency knows that, despite all sorts of laws requiring sunshine, it's often a struggle. Fortunately, the California First Amendment Coalition can usually help.

Indeed, CFAC is the perfect source for any journalist or member of the public who wants to learn how to access government information or to ensure that a local city council, police commission, or school board is complying with open-government rules. All you need to do is log on to CFAC's Web site (www.cfac.org) for breakdowns of federal and state open-government laws and how they work. What's more, CFAC's staff attorneys provide valuable advice – free – on what to do when particularly intransigent public officials give you grief.

But CFAC is much more than a resource for the civic-minded. For 15 years the small, three-person operation has been on the forefront of safeguarding our right to know what our public officials are up to. CFAC general counsel Terry Francke helped draft San Francisco's Sunshine Ordinance. CFAC's staff also helped write legislation to close some loopholes in the Brown Act, the state's main open-meetings law.

Currently, CFAC (along with the California Newspaper Publishers Association) is supporting Senate Constitutional Amendment 1, a ballot measure that would strengthen the public's right to access government deliberations and records – a right that's been weakened by administrative interpretations, legislation, and court decisions. SCA 1 would guarantee the right to information and require that public agencies justify any exceptions to the rule. If passed, it would make it all the more difficult for government officials to conduct business behind closed doors.

With the most secretive federal government since the Nixon era at the helm and a governor who's more than willing to fall into step with restrictive policies of his own, CFAC's work is more important than ever. (Camille T. Taiara)

Legal counsel
Tom Newton, California Newspaper Publishers Association

Every year our esteemed lawmakers in Sacramento come up with new schemes to curb public access to government information, and every year Tom Newton does his best to thwart disaster.

As chief counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, Newton has spent the past 13 years monitoring pending bills, lobbying lawmakers and public officials, and tracking important court cases and lawsuits. With other members of the CNPA team, Newton compiles FOI Watch, a quarterly newsletter covering attacks on the First Amendment. It's pretty much a full-time job these days – what with Berkeley mayor Tom Bates stealing and deep-sixing copies of the Daily Californian, public high schools suspending teenagers for circulating underground newspapers, and law enforcement officials happily slapping "Confidential" or "National Security" on any unflattering documents.

"My marching orders," Newton said, "are to make government as transparent as possible."

Newton has also helped formulate key pieces of legislation aimed at bolstering the public's right to know, including SCA 1, a proposed amendment to the California constitution now being carried by state senator John Burton. The bill would stitch up dozens of loopholes in the state's key public access statute, the increasingly tattered California Public Records Act.

The bid to get SCA 1 passed, Newton told us, "is the mother of all freedom-of-information campaigns."

"Tom probably does more to protect and advocate for First Amendment rights than any other California lawyer," said Thomas Burke, a prominent media attorney who advises the Bay Guardian. (A.C. Thompson)

Special Citation
Joseph Lynn, San Francisco Ethics Commission

Late last November, when Joseph Lynn informed a campaign-reform advocate that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had failed to report nearly $1 million in campaign contributions against a public power initiative, he thought he was only doing his job.

Lynn, who works for the San Francisco Ethics Commission, had just received a filing from the private utility that revealed it had understated its donations to the anti-public power campaign. PG&E's filing was public record. It was also relevant: the documents showed the utility had failed to tell the public the truth about its spending in a timely fashion.

So when Charlie Marsteller, former head of the San Francisco chapter of Common Cause, a clean-government group, asked Lynn if anyone had filed late reports, Lynn told him about the PG&E money. Marsteller later filed a complaint against PG&E for failing to disclose the spending.

But the commission's director, Ginny Vida, took a dim view of Lynn's efforts to inform the public of PG&E's error. In mid December she put a letter of reprimand in Lynn's personnel file and accused him of encouraging Marsteller to file his complaint.

Lynn denied he had played any role in Marsteller's decision. Indeed, he said he had only answered a question Marsteller had posed to him. That is, after all, why the Ethics Commission exists.

The outrageousness of the retaliation against Lynn led Terry Francke, CFAC's general counsel, to nominate the dedicated staffer, who also holds a law degree from UC Hastings College of the Law, for a special FOI citation.

"If the government is saying that the very people who know the most and care the most and pay closest attention to how something works cannot be the ones to point out apparent flaws to the public, that's inviting the kind of disarray that has haunted the corporate world over the last couple of years," Francke told us. "To penalize somebody because they're the ones who know the most and say they are the very people who must not go public undermines the whole notion of ethics and makes it pretty risky to have them."

Lynn is well known to local journalists. He's developed an online system that helps reporters find out who donated how much to what campaign. And he took the initiative to make sure any soft money going toward a campaign is immediately posted.

"The job we've done with the electronic filing system is really the big story," said Lynn, who had to talk to us after work hours because Vida told him he could not even discuss the award while on the job. "Instead, I got the award for simply answering a question." (Blackwell)

Citizen
Richard Knee

Starting off as a freelance journalist and the former president of the SPJ's Northern California Chapter, Richard Knee has built a career out of actively pursuing public access to government documents. Knee said his passion for First Amendment and FOI rights began in the late 1980s while he was serving as a board member of the Press Club of San Francisco.

"I detected little interest within the club about things that effected media," he said. "It was really a good-old-boys club more interested in bringing in celebrities."

After broadening the Press Club's agenda to focus more on the issue of access to information, Knee turned his attention to creating and maintaining a network of people and organizations concerned with FOI and First Amendment issues. While he definitely had broader social justice concerns, Knee chose to direct his energies toward access because, as he explained, "(a) I'm most effective when it comes to FOI and First Amendment issues, and (b) that's where my passions lie."

That passion and dedication would eventually allow Knee to play a lead role in the 1999 campaign for Measure G, which strengthened San Francisco's groundbreaking Sunshine Ordinance. The measure was approved despite opposition from Mayor Willie Brown, 7 of the 11 San Francisco supervisors, the Democratic and Republican County Central Committees, the city's Chamber of Commerce, and other powerful interests.

"I would like to think I've made a contribution, but truthfully there are many others who have paved the way," Knee recalled.

Knee is currently an active member of the SPJ's FOI Committee and San Francisco's Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.

"Rick Knee is the consummate citizen journalist activist on public access issues," said Bruce B. Brugmann, Bay Guardian editor and publisher, who was the SPJ FOI chair when Knee was the SPJ president and has worked with him on endless public access battles. "He is quiet but effective, a stalwart, and he has done everything from collecting signatures for the sunshine initiative to sitting through years of task force meetings as a citizen advocate to serving as a highly capable current task force member." (Corbett Miller)

Electronic Access
Freedom Archives

Visiting the Mission District offices of the Freedom Archives is like stepping into a Terry Gilliam flick, where archaic, obsolete technologies exist in the same dimension as futuristic silicon-powered robo-gear. A shiny new Macintosh G4 loaded up with Pro Tools sound-recording software sits a few feet from an ancient Scully reel-to-reel tape deck and wooden shelves filled with spools of quarter-inch audiotape, while a young documentary filmmaker in the next room digitally cuts and pastes pixels on a top-flight editing console.

Given the mission of the three-year-old Freedom Archives – to pull radical voices out of the analog past and into the digital present – the hodgepodge of gear makes perfect sense.

"We're sitting on a very rich history, and it has relevance today," said Claude Marks, a former KPFA-FM reporter who maintains the collection with a crew of volunteers. The challenge "is how to make it an accessible resource."

The cache Marks and company are sitting on consists largely of audiotapes of leftist leaders and thinkers recorded over the past 30 years – some 5,000 hours worth. The tapes includes the last speech ever given by Chilean socialist Salvador Allende, vintage interviews with the Black Panthers and Assata Shakur, reportage from the International Hotel struggle, readings by author Maya Angelou, and audio from the Wounded Knee standoff of 1973.

To bring this history to the masses, the archivists are transforming the magnetic tapes into ones and zeros and posting them online, at www.freedomarchives.org, as free MP3s – 2 so far, with 50 more to come. Additionally, Marks and his colleagues have created a Web-based database of recordings (which sell for a pittance) and produced a pair of audio CDs (Prisons on Fire and The Roots of Resistance) and a series of short videos on forgotten revolutionaries.

Across the bay, librarians at UC Berkeley have built a Panther Web page (www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificapanthers.html) using RealAudio files supplied by the Freedom Archives and Pacifica Radio.

At a moment when a handful of tycoons are choking the flow of news and the spectrum of views aired by the mainstream media runs from the offensive (commentator Alan Dershowitz floating the idea of legalizing torture) to the extremely offensive (President George W. Bush boasting about assassinating foreign nationals), the archive crew is mounting a welcome counterattack. (Thompson)

Cartoonist
Justin DeFreitas

Sept. 11, 2001, transformed the way Americans see themselves in relation to the rest of the world. Many who were previously uninformed about international issues suddenly sat up and began to pay attention.

That was particularly true in the world of visual journalism, says political cartoonist Justin DeFreitas. "It woke people up," he told us. "There had been a kind of willful ignorance of international issues. We got to focus on President Clinton's sex scandals, things like that. But September 11 stunned people, and the Bush administration's response has been to push through a lot of their agenda in the guise of security."

DeFreitas's drawings are done in the classic style of daily newspaper cartoons, although so far they are mostly published in various Sonoma County weeklies, including the Anderson Valley Advertiser and the North Bay Progressive. His simple line drawings are direct and draw quick conclusions about abuses of power and government hypocrisy.

Before 9/11 he typically focused on local and state politics. Afterward, DeFreitas says, he began to critique the president and his Middle East policies, taking on topics such as homeland security surveillance and the moves to limit public access to government documents.

Not every one of DeFreitas's editors was pleased by the shift. Several papers cut his cartoons, particularly when he took on the United States' relationship with Israel, he said. In one image he drew President George W. Bush handing armaments and cash to Israel, represented by a soldier perched on a massive tank. Smiling, Bush offers these words of wisdom: "... and show some restraint!"

In another image DeFreitas took on Bush's decision to seal former president Ronald Reagan's papers, potentially cloaking George Bush Senior's participation in the Iran-Contra affair. The cartoon is again simple: a massive book labeled "FOIA" is sealed with a chunky padlock. The lock is imprinted with the American flag.

"It's our job to use and protect freedom of speech," DeFreitas said. "It's not something you can accept as a given." (Brahinsky)

Public Official
Sherry Kelly, city clerk, Berkeley

City politics can be a confusing labyrinth of paper trails for the typical citizen to navigate, one that public officials can make tougher or easier depending on their willingness to disclose illuminating records. That is why Berkeley city clerk Sherry Kelly's penchant for openness has won the respect and admiration of sunshine advocates.

During Kelly's nine years in Berkeley's city government, she has made a priority of working with the Berkeley Citizens Sunshine Coalition to come up with easier ways for the general public to access information. Among her initiatives are video-streaming committee meetings with captions and an expanded election Web site that includes financial contribution records within hours of their filing and City Council agendas that are complete with the entire staff reports available online. Such open-record innovations have made Kelly and the city of Berkeley forerunners in California sunshine laws.

"It's really been a departmental effort, making the Web sites accessible and understandable to the public," Kelly said.

Becky O'Malley, the owner and acting executive editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet, said, "Kelly has shown absolute response when it comes to adding public information onto the Web."

Kelly's embrace of openness in government does not stop with making information accessible online. She said that educating and training city staff to be helpful to information-seekers is a high priority.

"Educating the staff helps them help the public, especially with the listings of records and policies," Kelly said.