Phone bills listing calls made by former Gov. Bill Ritter on his personal cell phone are not public records under Colorado’s open-records law, the state’s Supreme Court ruled last week in a 4-2 decision that left ASNE on the losing end of a case it had joined via amicus. According to the Denver Post, which filed the original suit in 2008, Ritter used his personal cell phone for “nearly all” the cell phone calls he made for state business. “Whether or not disclosure of the governor’s personal cell phone bills might be desirable as a matter of public policy,” Justice Gregory Hobbs wrote for the majority (PDF), “the complaint simply fails to state a claim that is cognizable under the current governing statutes. ...” Like the amicus in which ASNE participated, the dissenting opinion noted that the majority ruling will allow public officials to circumvent the Colorado Open Records Act simply by using personal communication devices.

A federal judge’s ruling this week that two San Francisco Chronicle reporters must reveal their sources for leaked grand jury testimony is wrong and must not be allowed to stand, the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors said today.

Reston, Va. -- The American Society of Newspaper Editors has written to federal judge Jeffrey S. White in support of San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.

Should personnel records containing accusations of racial profiling remain hidden to protect the privacy rights of individual police officers? That's the question raised in a case pitting the NAACP against the Maryland Department of State Police in the state's highest court. ASNE joined several other media organizations on the amicus, which was filed earlier this week.

Milner v. U.S. Navy is the first high-court case in several years relating to the application of an exemption under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Although the issue it addresses is somewhat arcane, it has important implications for reporters and others who rely on FOIA to uncover information about the risks to local communities posed by government operations.

The Denver Post is seeking access to a list of nonpersonal phone calls made by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. The Ritter Administration claims the calls are exempt from the state's public records law since they were made on the governor's personal cell phone, and a lower court agreed. Earlier this month, ASNE joined 10 other media organizations in an amicus brief filed in the Colorado Supreme Court supporting the Post's position that the lower court ruling would open a huge hole in the state's Open Records Act.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors praised the decision of a federal district judge in South Carolina who declared the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act on 1994 unconstitutional.

RESTON, Va. — The president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors has expressed the ASNE’s opposition to a bill before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee that would tie federal education funds to pledges by schools and libraries to install filtering software.

ASNE yesterday joined other media organizations in demanding press access to federal investigations into the cause of the recent Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster that claimed 29 lives in West Virginia. A letter delivered to the Mine Safety and Health Administration strenuously objected to plans to bar the press and public as federal investigators begin speaking with miners about the deadly accident. ASNE and the other groups urged the agency to conduct open hearings so miners' eyewitness accounts can be heard by the public; if hearings are not held, the agency should allow members of the press to attend interviews with miners or, at the very least, make transcripts of the interviews available for public view. "A core mission of ASNE is to fight on behalf of its members for open access to government proceedings," said ASNE FOI committee co-chair Tim Franklin. "We won't waver in our battle for press access to events that are so clearly in the public interest."