Madison Taylor

Yesterday I pondered this deep philosophical question which has taxed the minds of man for centuries — or at least a minute or two. The question is this: Just what does Cary Allred know about being a reporter anyway?

I latched onto this particular idea because Alamance County’s longtime state GOP representative made a comment in a story about a law proposed by Allred and his Democratic colleague Alice Bordsen that would close a selected part of a public record in order to “protect children” playing in government sponsored-recreation leagues. The more jaded person might quip that the law is more geared toward getting votes — but that’s not me today.

Try me on another day and another issue. The emotions of parents have been manipulated enough by opportunistic politicians already on this matter of recreation league names and addresses available for public inspection for the asking. I fully understand why parents have concerns about the information being available to predators even though those predators — who generally lurk in the shadows or online — would actually have to summon the gall to show up at a government building, show their faces to a public official and ask for the names. But the larger question is what’s next, will like-minded or needful lawmakers build a moat around government owned parks and require not only an ID and prison record but blood samples and a get out of jail free card for entry to anyone over the age of 12. And then, of course, they’ll take on the Internet.

Sorry, I digress.

Anyway in a story by reporter Barry Smith from a House subcommittee meeting on the proposal — a meeting by the way where some legislators actually posed intelligent points on the issue — Allred was cited in a paraphrase saying, in effect that he didn’t see how the bill would interfere with the work of newspaper reporters. 

 OK, on the surface it’s hard to fault Allred too much. That point of view is fairly typical for people who never went to a government office as a private citizen or reporter — most especially a small town police office — and asked for a public record. If anything it highlights that even the people we cover lack a basic understanding of what reporters actually do. In our business public records are like gold. Without them, the paper is emptier than a football. By sad coincidence, there are handfuls of folks who stand at the gate for these records who actually enjoy withholding them. Now I’m not talking about responsible people like JonDeen Terry at the City of Burlington. But for every JonDeen Terry there’s a person like county manager David Smith. They relish telling a reporter no. As a result, anytime even a seemingly minor record is snapped shut for any reason, somebody in charge takes it to the nth degree. What I mean by that is they often try to use it as an excuse to hold on to documents not impacted by a new law or take a law not meant for that agency to obey and use it to keep things closed.

Here’s an example: A few years back when the federal HIPPA regulations went into place the goal was to protect the rights of patients at hospitals. Seems noble enough. Immediately newspapers couldn’t get conditions of patients involved in wrecks, shootings and stabbings. Hell, we can’t even run birth announcements anymore without a parent-supplied birth certificate and an Act of Congress. Hospitals used to send it along as a service. OK, that stopped a flow of information our readers expected us to provide. That was bad enough. BUT, what also happened is that small town police and rescue agencies not bound by HIPPA used it as a reason not to give out reports on incidents in their towns like drownings, wrecks, assaults or any mishap. Reporters argued in vain on deadline that this wasn’t part of the law. By the time an attorney sorted it out for newspapers days had passed and the incident was old news. Worse, the next weekend some new person would be in charge and the same thing would happen all over again.

In the case of the recreation rosters proposal the stakes for newspapers in theory don’t seem nearly so high. But we will be unable to investigate the possible use of an illegal player – such as the famous Danny Almonte Little League incident a few years back. And left to the discretion of coaches, who knows if photographers will be allowed to do their jobs or even get correct identities of players.

But it’s this selective exclusion of records that’s the rub. It’s why millions in incentives go out to major corporations from taxpayers without prior knowledge. It’s why the relative of a politician has a new street put near his or her business. It’s why corporate polluters are placed near residential areas without prior warning. The list goes on and on.

So Allred doesn’t see how closing public records will interfere with the work of reporters.

He doesn’t know the first thing about it.

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