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Panama City News Herald
Sunshine Sunday
Earlier this month, after almost one year of litigation, Circuit Judge Dedee Costello ruled that a county judge tarnished the judicial system’s integrity by closing off routine court documents from public inspection for no good reason. “The bright glare of sunlight should be focused on the Court’s records to insure that the respect enjoyed by the Courts will endure,” Costello said.
By the time Costello ruled, on March 3, the records sought by The News Herald had no immediacy. They involved April 2003 search warrants used in the Girls Gone Wild arrests and property confiscations.
However, blocking public inspection of records relating to court-issued search warrants was, from the outset, an alarming development that could not be allowed to stand. It raised the chilling specter of an even darker world in which names of those arrested as a result of court-approved search warrants also are kept from the public; in that world, people and property just disappear.
The court victory makes us all the more eager, and all the more proud, to participate today with other Florida newspapers and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors in “Sunshine Sunday,” a one-day, statewide public awareness campaign about the importance of open government in a democratic society. Newspapers whose editorial pages may differ violently on other subjects know too well their common burden as the people’s sentinel. On this day, we are all libertarians.
Importantly, newspapers do not ask for or expect more access than what’s available to any citizen. Newspapers help disseminate knowledge gleaned from public meetings and records. They are not, nor can they pretend to be, an adequate substitute for a curious mind.
In the Internet age especially, newspapers serve best to spark curiosity and not to satisfy it. Be wary of any government body or agency that doesn’t have a fertile Web site.
Judge Costello’s vigilance in maintaining the court system’s image of integrity is well placed. When public officials and public employees at any level of government do not respect the people’s right to know, the people have every right to suspect they have bartered for other ends the public’s confidence and their own credibility.
Less than two weeks into this year’s regular session of the Florida Legislature, almost 60 new exemptions to open-government laws are under consideration — twice as many as this time last year, according to the First Amendment Foundation. These come from men more concerned with maintaining their respect among lobbyists and campaign contributors, than among the people.