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 “Gorsuch focused only on an extreme narrowing of meaning of the word “confidential” in the original text of FOIA as written in 1966, basing this new restrictive definition on dictionaries of that era.”
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At 2:33 this afternoon, employees of The Virginian-Pilot and the Daily Press will join with our colleagues across the country in a moment of silence to remember the five people — Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters — killed one year ago at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md. One might have expected that a deadly attack such as that would have engendered some sympathy and compassion, that those who score cheap political points by using the press as a punching bag would pause to consider the dangerous atmosphere they helped to create. But, much like so many other mass-casualty shootings that take place in this country, the deaths of five people in a newspaper office did little to affect the political discourse or alter the nation’s trajectory. On Wednesday, federal lawmakers pledged their support for The Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation and its efforts to build a memorial in the National Mall to honor slain journalists.
Daily Press
The Argus Leader’s eight-year battle for transparency in government spending records reached its legal pinnacle this spring in front of the United States Supreme Court. On Monday, in a shattering blow to government transparency, that battle was lost. Our quest for public access to information about where federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars are spent in South Dakota was struck down. A 6-3 majority reversed nearly a half-century of judicial precedent, effectively prioritizing private industry’s desire for secrecy in government dealings over the public’s right to know how their tax money is spent. The majority opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch ignored that the records we requested were of government payments to businesses, information that is typically public record. Gorsuch focused only on an extreme narrowing of meaning of the word “confidential” in the original text of FOIA as written in 1966, basing this new restrictive definition on dictionaries of that era.
The Argus Leader
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“The unanimous ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court grew out of a lawsuit filed by the Boston Globe against the Department of Public Health for electronic copies of 4.6 million birth certificates . . . and 2.2 million marriage licenses.”