Reporter Teresa Benns has endured verbal attacks and threats of physical violence while documenting and commenting on the workings and failings of government in Saguache County and the small town of Center. She perseveres because it’s her duty, she said, accepting the CFOIC’s Jean Otto Friend of Freedom Award.
El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa should make a sequel to his sex-scandal apology video. I’ll be happy to write the script and direct. Let’s title it: Game of Denials.
The CFOIC presented William Dean Singleton, chairman of The Denver Post, with the Jean Otto Friend of Freedom Award for his sustained and significant record of fighting for open government in Colorado.
Fees for public records, protecting the confidential sources of journalists, the Open Meetings Law. These weren’t the topics that grabbed the biggest headlines during the during the 2014 legislative session. But that doesn’t diminish their importance.
On her lawyers’ advice, Fox News reporter Jana Winter turned down an invitation to speak in person at the Colorado Press Association’s annual Capitol Hill luncheon in Denver. But that didn’t prevent her from using technology to implore state lawmakers to reconsider now-dead legislation that would have strengthened Colorado’s journalist shield law.
For now, journalists working for The Colorado Independent still won’t be given access to the floor of the Colorado House or Senate when the General Assembly is in session. But legislative leaders encouraged the online newspaper to ask again after the credentialing criteria have been “updated.”
The staff of The Colorado Independent features some of the state’s most accomplished journalists, including Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe and columnist Mike Littwin. Why can’t the online newspaper get press credentials from the Colorado General Assembly and the Colorado Capitol Press Association?
A Colorado legislative committee advanced a bill aimed at stopping Internet sites from publishing mug shots and then charging fees to take them down.
A bill to increase legal protections for Colorado journalists and their sources died in a state Senate committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee also killed another measure that would have opened records kept by private associations of elected officials that get some of their money from public sources.
Journalists in Colorado would have stronger, but not absolute, protections against being compelled to reveal confidential sources and unreported information under an amendment to a reporter’s shield measure proposed by the bill’s sponsor.
