Florida press access

By: Jim Moscou to prisons in question
Complaints by Victims an impetus for Review

Florida officials won't say exactly why they put the issue on the table. But, on Sept. 17, the state's Department of Corrections lobbed a small bombshell into Sunshine newsrooms when it announced that its "liberal" policies giving media access to prison interviews will be reconsidered.
The state's decision to open the issue to debate ? a policy that hasn't been visited since 1980 ? comes on the heels of a "top to bottom" review of the organization, according to state officials.
"With criminals committing notorious crimes, with the media eager to publicize them, and with more attention being given to the plight and rights of victims, we are obliged to review our policies," Moore said, in a written press release. But the "straw the broke the camel's back," according to one official, was complaints by victims who's perpetrators were becoming media celebrities.
"I defy anyone to prove that's there more than a handful of excesses. Frankly, (that argument) is insulting," said William Hirschman, president of the South Florida Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and an education writer at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. "There are too many horror stories for taking this lightly." The announcement has sent Hirschman and much of Florida's press scrambling, eyeing the state's reconsideration with deep suspicion.
Hirschman said Florida papers ? like the Sun Sentinel, the St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald ? have been criticizing the state's department of corrections for some time, including coverage of the July 17 beating death of death-row inmate Frank Valdes at the Florida State Prison. That incident led to an investigation of nine guards by the FBI, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and a state grand jury.
Correctional officials say there is no connection between the rule changes and the media's coverage, adding they have been pondering the issue for months. That, in turn, has led to a list of questions which it posted on its web site two weeks ago (http://www.dc.state.fl.us.secretary/press/rules/html).
Some of the key issues the state wants reexamined include, whether victims and law enforcement agencies should be consulted before an inmate can do an interview; whether interviews are too burdensome to the prison staff and if the media should reimburse for those labor costs; and whether the media's access should be different from that afforded to other members of the public.
While answers to those questions are still weeks away, the tone and timing of the state's posting left Hirschman and Florida press a bit pessimistic that it'll continue to have easy access to the state's 70,000 prisoners.
"My hope was that we try not to even have the rules proposed, because once we start down that path, it will get very messy and there will be no winners," Hirschman said. "But I think we've lost that battle already."

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(copyright: Editor & Publisher October 9, 1999) [Caption]