City’s media policy captures attention in Oregon

By Lee van der Voo

The Lake Oswego Review, Oct 9, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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A trend-setting effort to decide who is a journalist in Lake Oswego has media and government advocates scrapping to find new meaning in an Oregon law.

The state’s unique public meetings law hands watchdog powers to the press when government groups meet behind closed doors.

The closed-door meetings — called executive sessions — are allowed in Oregon when city, school and county boards discuss limited topics defined by state law.

The executive sessions protect a government’s ability to strategize out of the public eye in select cases, such as when crafting a legal strategy, making personnel decisions or hunting for land.

Governments cannot take action in the executive sessions but instead use them to arrive at decisions later made official in public.

Though executive sessions are closed to citizens, journalists in Oregon can attend most — but not all — of them.

Journalists are not allowed to report on what occurs in executive sessions but are trusted to monitor whether the talks abide by state law. Information obtained in the sessions is considered “background” and helps journalists stay aware of sensitive civic issues.

The privilege carves out a unique role for the press in Oregon. The state’s open meeting law was approved by the Legislature in 1973 when Watergate was raging in Washington, D.C. At the time, Oregon lawmakers put heavy emphasis on journalists’ role to keep politics clean.

But the emergence of new technology has thrown a wrench into a once-simple Oregon concept.

In Lake Oswego, city councilors unexpectedly encountered troubles when Mark Bunster, who writes as Torrid Joe for the political blog Loaded Orygun, tried to attend an executive session.

Unsure whether a blogger would mind the state’s no-reporting rule, the city council asked Bunster to leave. They said his lack of institutional affiliation made it impossible to penalize him if he failed to respect or understand the law.

But the city council also asked for direction on a media policy, telling city attorney David Powell they needed to know who meets the definition of a “journalist” according to the state’s rules.

As other cities and counties grapple with the question, a lack of clarity about whether bloggers and journalists are one in the same in Oregon has press associations and government groups scratching their heads across the state.

“I don’t think these occasions will be lessoning in the future. For the purposes of the executive session statute, what does (the law) mean in this new world?” said Powell.

His attempt to answer that question borrowed from a media policy approved last year in Columbia County.

In that county, where at least one blogger sought to attend executive sessions, a media policy requires journalists to prove newsgathering credentials. The county asks reporters to carry press badges, recently published articles, proof of identity and a letter on letterhead defining their job.

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