I’ll try to post something about government transparency daily for the next two weeks. Every week, really, should be open government week, because while everyone in government isn’t a bad actor, too many are.
Can’t Trust the Trustees
In this case, we have a hospital board of trustees that decided to take revenge on the local paper by pulling its ads when the newspaper pointed out that the board wasn’t following the state’s open meetings statute.
Full piece here in the Columbia Journalism Review.
The Valdosta Daily Times reported in mid-February that the board of South Georgia Medical Center had met in an executive session prior to the regularly scheduled meeting. Georgia law allows public boards to meet in closed session in limited circumstances, and only after the boards have met in public.
… Jim Zachary, the paper’s editor … went to meet with hospital officials to urge them to follow the law. He even gave them the name of a contact at the state Attorney General’s Office … When he learned that no one from the hospital reached out to the AG’s office, Zachary ran a sharply-worded editorial that condemned the hospital’s clandestine meetings and noted that the Times had notified the AG’s office of the violation.
At which point the hospital board decided to throw its weight around.
The Times reported that the paper was no longer being sold on hospital grounds and all advertising had been cut off.
The comments are interesting — no one leaping to the hospital’s defense, it seems.
Zachary has fought this battle before. He’s been at the Valdosta paper for about a year, and his pressure has already prompted the Valdosta and Lowndes County school boards to follow the open meetings law. He fought similar battles when he edited the Henry Daily Herald and the Clayton News Daily, community newspapers outside of Atlanta. He runs the Transparency Project of Georgia and sits on the board of directors of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.
“This is a drum I’ll keep beating as long as I’m in this business,” he said. “The government belongs to the governed, not to the governors.”