Press Access At The Capitol Get's Some Attention

Saint Paul, Minnesota
March 9, 2009
By Marty Owings

Today, I joined many members of the Capitol Press Corps at a meeting with Andrew Whittenborg, Director of Public Affairs for the DFL. The meeting began with Mr. Whittenborg stating the new proposed rules for public hearings and committee meetings were not being implemented and that he was holding the meeting to collect feedback, which he would be bringing back to the House Leadership.

The rules stated in part that members of the media could not record audience members nor could they record individual House members and that no recording could take place before or after meetings.

Most of the Capitol media was in attendance because these rules changes would have impacted their access and ability to record public meetings and House sessions. For those of us who are strictly online media, this has been a continuing battle since we applied for Press credentials. We've been asked not to record public meetings and even removed from those meetings for recording them.

Mr. Whittenborg said that credentialed media would be allowed to continue to record on the floor, but that no policies have been worked out. He added that who was and wasn't credentialed "was another issue." He added that "I don't see the rules for recording on the floor changing."

Mr. Whittenborg mentioned that space was one concern, but Tom Scheck from MPR said that he was concerned this was even being brought up as an issue, because two or three years ago there were "many more media on the House floor." Mr. Whittenborg reiterated that the policy for the House floor was not changing.

We then moved on to the issue causing all the controversy, the "proposed" media rules for access to public meetings and hearings at the Capitol.

Mr. Whittenborg mentioned that various people had "touched the Meeting/Hearing policy proposal from house attorneys, the Sergeant At Arms Office, House Leadership, Republicans and members of the media." and quickly added that "Your feedback to this has been sharp and instantaneous and nothing on this is going forward."

Mary Lahammer of TPT's Almanac suggested that any lawyer who proposed these rules should be "disbarred". Tom Hauser from KSTP agreed and added that it was "absurd" that any Law Maker would even propose these rules. Jason Barnett of the Uptake.org asked what the real issue was. Mr. Whittenborg said it ran the gamut from "space concerns" to "security issues." He said some concerns were raised about who was filming Law Makers and that some of them were "weirded out" while others welcomed the cameras.

Mr. Whittenborg pointed out that Leadership was aware that there were cameras every where now and that they were looking at these issues. Everyone in the room, including Mr. Whittenborg agreed that restricting cameras was not a solution. What about space issues? Mr. Whittenborg mentioned that this could be a concern. Noah Kunin from the UpTake.org suggested that space be allocated on a first come, first serve basis.

Some media in the room pointed to the recent canvasing board recount press conferences which were jammed with media, but said that everyone cooperated and it went off "great." It was pointed out the for 98% of the public meetings there weren't a large number of media clamouring to get into those, Mr. Whittenborg agreed.

Andy Driscoll of Civic Media MN and KFAI's Truth To Tell asked if we could meet directly with House Leadership in an effort to resolve the issue. Mr. Whittenborg said he would look into it. When it was suggested that credentials be issued uniformly for both House Floor and public Committee hearings, Mr. Whittenborg nodded his head in agreement. It was also suggested that the House and Senate should get together on credentialing so there would be a uniform policy.

With regard to credentialing, Mr. Whittenborg said he did not decide these things, but would take and share input. He was asked by a number of those in the meeting for help in finding out where the credential requests were at? When asked if there was even a process for credentialing, Mr. Whittenborg said "I don't think there was."

When asked about next steps, Mr. Whittenborg said that he would take the feedback he'd heard back to leadership and that he'd "get back to us." Is there a timeline for a resolution to these issues? Mr. Whittenborg responded by saying "we'll let know what progress we make on this."

Mr. Whittenborg seemed genuinely interested in getting the issues resolved and said he would make recommendations that allowed media the access they needed to do their jobs.

In the meantime, I hate to seem impatient, but we still don't have proper access. Stay tuned for more on this.

For additional context here are some references.

Scroll down to Truth To Tell -
Online Journalists - They Get No Respect - Play The Archive
http://www.kfai.org/archive/03/4/2009
Story in the Minnesota Independent:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/28517/new-rules-on-recording-at-state-house-wont-go-forward
Related stories:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/27331/online-media-in-the-minnesota-house http://minnesotaindependent.com/28455/new-minnesota-house-form-limits-what-would-be-tapers-can-capture
Story in the Twin City Daily Planet:
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2009/03/07/freedom-press-not-mn-house-representatives.html
Minnpost Story on this:
http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2009/02/24/6940/you_decide_the_legislatures_online-media_access_policy
CBS affiliate WCCO runs Story today on this issue:
http://wcco.com/local/house.media.restrictions.2.954613.html
More CBS Exposure:
http://cbslocalblogs.prospero.com/n/blogs/blog.aspx?webtag=WCCO_esmeblog