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Attorney's spokesman reassigned after bout with journalism professor
Professor wanted Arizona State students to cover press conferences
December 14, 2006
Professor Stephen Doig said he first contacted Public Information
Officer Bill FitzGerald after other faculty members raised concerns that the
county attorney’s press conferences were not open to their journalism
students. Doig said he wanted to send students from his honors class to cover
the press conferences.
In response to Doig’s inquiry about how
students could acquire the proper credentials, FitzGerald stated that because of
security, the office could not open media conferences to “folks who are
not credentialed representatives of ‘legit’ media.” FitzGerald
also said staff members of ASU’s student newspaper and television stations
were already allowed to cover news conferences.
“We are not a
teaching institution,” FitzGerald stated in the e-mail. “I am not
responsible for credentials ... that is your problem.”
But Barnett
Lotstein, special assistant to the county attorney, said there is no written
policy against student journalists covering the news conferences for class
assignments. Credentials, space availability and security concerns are what
determine access to the press conferences, Lotstein said.
Doig maintains
that a government official cannot decide who is or is not a member of
“legitimate media” under the First Amendment. He told FitzGerald in
their correspondence that journalists “who happened to be students”
should have access to a news conference.
FitzGerald stated in one of the
e-mails that he is “not compelled to admit” students despite
Doig’s “half-assed” attempts to threaten him. He also called
Doig a “condecending (sic) oaf” and told him to “get
lost.”
Doig described FitzGerald’s response as
“stupidly unprofessional.”
“I didn’t really care
what he was saying about me,” Doig said. “The thing that I
couldn’t accept was his apparent belief that it was wholly within the
right of public officials to be able to decide who is a
journalist.”
Doig said “willful exclusion” of reporters
is not unheard of, though quite rare, and in the past, public officials have
used their power to limit access and punish reporters for unfavorable
articles.
“Public officials should not have in their mind the
belief that a particular class of people or particular category of people are
not journalists,” Doig said.
Lotstein said FitzGerald has been
reassigned because the e-mails were “inappropriate” for a public
information officer. But Lotstein also said there was a misunderstanding in the
e-mail exchange in which FitzGerald seemed to be under the impression that Doig
was requesting to have his entire class attend the press conferences.
Doig’s request was actually only for a small number of students to attend
the media briefings.
“The job of a journalism school is to prepare
a student to join a media organization once they graduate,” Doig said.
“If you go through journalism training without having the opportunity to
go see a press conference situation ... then [students] wouldn’t be as
prepared as they should.”
Doig and Lotstein said they are currently
working on an agreement that will allow journalism students to cover the county
attorney’s news conferences.
By Marnette Federis, SPLC staff writer
© 2006 Student Press Law Center
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