Beware the Flying Cuisinart

     Once Upon a Time when there existed small towns with Main Streets and businesses on Main Streets, (like banks with tellers for humans, not cars, and hardware stores with nail bins and actual five and dimes) there also existed the home town newspapers, generally  weeklies.

     Even more amazing, the weekly newspaper generally had a lawyer. Not in-house counsel like those big, fancy, city newspapers, but a small-town lawyer with an office on Main Street.  He handled house closings and wills and the day to day stuff of people and businesses, including the local paper. So should there be an unfortunate altercation at a library board meeting resulting in a board member hauled out of the meeting room screaming to the chair, “Margaret, you’re not a lady.” And should the local newspaper have an actual reporter actually in the room, covering the library board meeting. And should the aforementioned Margaret not be happy with the coverage, the paper would have an attorney on Main Street. In this particular case, the paper’s attorney was also Margaret’s attorney, at least until she told him and story and he laughed so hard she hung up on him.

     It was a simpler time.

     Times are not simple anymore.

     The first Right-to-Know law, which later morphed into the Open Public Records Law, was supposed to make some things easier. It delineates what records may be kept private, very few, and how citizens can access the public ones. Like many things designed to make things easier, it doesn’t. It is overall a wonderful law because it does keep towns from hiding the many, many things they would love to hide, but it doesn’t always make things easy. Towns try to hide stuff, papers sue (requiring lawyers, again). Often they win. Towns appeal. . . .

     In an attempt to shed some light on the complications, Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law, the New Jersey News Commons, NJPA and SPJ held a session called “What’s New in Media Law” on Friday, Feb. 19, at Rutgers Law School in Newark.  It was originally to be held in New Brunswick, but nobody registered, proving once again if there was a pot of gold at the end of Route 287, it would be left to the Leprechauns because nobody with any sense will drive there.

     The panel was arranged by Ellen Goodman, a professor at Rutgers Law in Camden. The first session featured three lawyers:  Jennifer Borg, general counsel to North Jersey Media Group/The Record (a verifiable endangered species), Thomas J. Cafferty, NJPA general counsel, and Eli Segal of Pepper Hamilton, LLP.

     Borg spoke about the Open Public Records Act and how to get past intransigent officials. “Reach out to the municipal attorney,” she said, adding, “honey works better than vinegar.” She urged reporters to help educate the officials and work with them, adding, “for every police chief who doesn’t want to tell you are two that do.”

     Cafferty reminded the group that the feisty and formidable Loretta Weinberg is trying yet again to tighten the laws with the League of Municipalities once again opposing her. Stuck in the middle are the municipal clerks who just want to stop commercial users from data mining and making money on the hard work of municipal clerical workers.

     Another concern of the press is the Shield Law, which is absolute from a civil standpoint and nearly so from a criminal standpoint, but that “nearly” is a little nerve-wracking for reporters trying to do a good job, get all the facts and protect their sources.

    The second panel of the day got away from academic language and into the practical, with Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, discussing drones, which he described as “flying Cuisinarts.”  He pointed out that just because someone registers a drone doesn’t mean he’s going to operate it safety. Besides the problem of accidentally decapitating someone is the problem of invading that person’s privacy. He advocated using drones in cases where it is impossible to photograph from the ground and advised anyone who operates one to do so only within the line of site, during the day, under 400 feet in altitude and making sure the drone is less than 4.4 pounds. He also reminded photographers they cannot operate within five miles from an airport without notifying the airport.

    Katherine M. Bolger of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, LLP, explained that hacking into people’s communications has caused judges to perceive privacy differently. Osterreicher pointed out it was George Eastman’s invention of the Brownie, which first make photography portable, that led to Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren to write “The Right to Privacy.”

    The panel all agreed the law moves glacially.

     Josh Stearns, director of journalism and sustainability at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, summed it up by saying, “at a time when laws are being written, don’t do anything stupid.”

     Good advice.