By: Mark Fitzgerald Column About Bathroom Phone Started It All
By any standard, the feud between the Memphis (Tenn.) City Council and The
Commercial Appeal is one for the records: It started with a columnist for the
Memphis daily revealing that the council chairwoman had had a phone installed
in her office bathroom, continued with an accusation a Commercial
Appeal reporter was illegally opening mail - and now is resulting in a
proposed public records policy the paper says is unconstitutional.
"This all actually started a while back with a very funny column," said Deputy
Managing Editor Otis Sanford. The April column by Susan Thorp not only
reported on the bathroom phone installation by City Council chairwoman Barbara
Swearengen Holt - it gave the number. In retaliation, Sanford said, the
council tried to make it harder for the Commercial Appeal to get public
documents. Last month, reporter Blake Fontenay was told that if he wanted to see
the mail received by council members (all public records in Tennessee, Sanford
said) he would have to sort through it himself. After Fontenay did, Council
Attorney Allan Wade suggested he was violating federal law.
Wade then came up with a public records access policy that may prove too much
even for angry council members: Among other restrictive provisions, it charges
$1.50 per page for copying and requires anyone asking for documents to provide
"proof of Tennessee citizenship". The council tabled the issue until Tuesday. "We
certainly are strongly opposed to this policy because we believe it is
unconstitutional," Deputy Managing Editor Sanford said.
Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is editor at large for E&P.
Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher.
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