August 16, 2007

Paris, Mel -- and me

The Times reports here on a bill by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley to prohibit law enforcement and court personnel from profitting by "releasing confidential information gathered in criminal investigations or unauthorized photographs of people in custody."

Since I am in the news business I guess I am supposed to be outraged by this proposal, which was in part a reaction to the frenzy over the recent Paris Hilton jailing. But I'm not.

Public employees should not be selling confidential information gathered by the government in the course of an investigation or while holding someone against their will. I wouldn't want a government employee selling that information if it involved me. And I don't think they should sell it to my newspaper, or a Web site, or to anyone else. I see it as little different from DMV employees selling my private information to a database company, or the Franchise Tax Board selling my tax returns.

My friend Tom Newton at the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. says the bill is an attempt to "regulate news gathering and criminalize it." But as far as I can tell, the bill only regulates what public employees do, and it does not even apply if they simply leak the information and do not profit from it. That in no way "criminalizes" news gathering.

The Times' story compares the bill to one passed after the OJ Simpson trial that prohibited jurors and witnesses from selling their stories to the media. That law was overturned a short time later.

But there is a major distinction. Jurors and witnesses don't work for the government, and the stories they were selling were their own. Law enforcement and court personnel are public employees, and the information they are trying to sell belongs to all of us, and, in some cases, should be confidential.

I am a radical advocate for open government and public records. I might even argue that some or all of the material involved here ought to be public. But as long as it's not, I don't want public employees making a buck by selling it, to anyone.

Posted by dweintraub on August 16, 2007 7:01 AM