Each year, the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists recognizes those who fight for First Amendment rights with the chapter’s Peter S. Popovich Award.

This year, the award goes to a citizens group in Victoria, Minnesota, for their five-year effort to legally compel their City Council to open meetings, follow the law and provide public information to the public.

Ken Goulart, Larry Gubbe, Tom Funk, Alan Kildow, Sonya Braunschweig and a handful of citizens fought City Hall for basic public records like council meeting minutes and email communications. They were challenged and threatened, but they stood their ground and exercised their First Amendment right to speak out, holding the government accountable for its modus operandi of secrecy.

Read a Star Tribune story on the court case.

The group spent upwards of $20,000 of their own money, filed 21 Data Practices Act requests and spent thousands of hours researching records, filing requests for information, issuing correspondence and attending council meetings. When they were met with continued resistance from City Hall, the Victoria citizens took their battle to court and won a resounding victory with an order that showed four council members intentionally violated the Open Meeting Law 38 times.

In her ruling, Judge Janet Barke Cain said of the city officials: “The defendants express their ignorance of the OML to a degree this court finds shameful with regard to their duty to the public.”

The case will help journalists in Minnesota in that it serves as a warning to those who would flout the Open Meeting Law that violations will be taken seriously and that those who break the law will face consequences.

The group will accept the award and speak at this year’s MNSPJ Page One Awards banquet on June 14.

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists supports the Minnesota Supreme Court in its efforts to bring the sound and pictures of the courtroom into the homes of all Minnesotans.

On April 25, the court will take public testimony on an advisory committee’s proposal it make permanent a pilot program allowing cameras to cover some sentencings in courtrooms. Until the pilot program, the public had little or no access via pictures and sound to one of the most important branches of government — the one that can give or take away a citizen’s freedom.

The pilot program has proven to not only shed light on the taxpayer-funded justice system, but shown that transparency does no harm to the administration of justice or victims of crime. It has only given the people more insight into the emotions, complications and humanity that plays out in Minnesota courtrooms every day.

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists supports this hard-fought First Amendment right and opposes those at the Minnesota Legislature who would favor restricting how public audiences can see court proceedings.

We oppose ill-advised legislation that would shut down access to information that shows how the justice system works and return to a blackout system in Minnesota courtrooms.

We strongly disagree with DFL and GOP members of the House of Representatives Public Safety Committee who favored including the bill in final omnibus legislation that would also be problematic to the Minnesota Constitutional separation of powers, as outlined by the objections of the Minnesota State Bar Association.

Testimony at the public safety committee hearing on this bill was flawed, suggesting victims would no longer come forward should cameras be allowed. Those testifying provided no evidence to back up their claims. Under the current pilot program and the one proposed, victims cannot be photographed or recorded without their written consent.

Minnesota is far behind the transparency in government curve compared to our neighboring states, who all allow cameras in nearly all court proceedings while Minnesota’s plan allows cameras only after a verdict has been rendered.

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists holds the belief that camera access in courts equates to public access.

Newspaper editorial boards are speaking out against a bill that would ban cameras in courtrooms. 

“Let courts decide on rules on cameras in Minnesota courtrooms,” the Star Tribune’s editorial board argued this week. While the bill’s author touted the legislation as necessary to spare the victims of crimes, the board pointed out that “Minnesota’s rules governing use of cameras in the courtroom already bar video recording and photography of all but the sentencing and post-guilty plea proceedings in criminal cases. Recording of witness testimony is disallowed.”

“Those rules,” the board argued, “have been painstakingly developed by the courts with much testing and public input.”

Another excerpt:

Minnesota’s courts have been uncommonly cautious about cameras in the courtroom. The Pew Charitable Trusts reported that as of 2012, all 50 states allowed recording of at least some courtroom proceedings. Minnesota then was still limiting cameras to civil proceedings, and then only with a judge’s consent.

It’s telling that supporters of the bill at Wednesday’s hearing offered no evidence of ill effects from the 35-some other states that have fewer restrictions than Minnesota. (The Minnesota Newspaper Association, of which the Star Tribune is a member, testified in opposition to Knoblach’s bill.)

Read the full editorial here.

The Mankato Free Press, too, cautioned against the bill, showing how having cameras in the courtrooms allowed the paper to get to the “truth narrative” of several stories.

“These were powerful images,” the board said, “that allow the public to judge how justice was delivered in a public court of law funded by taxpayers. That taxpayers should be denied this information runs contrary to the rules of self-governance.”

The editorial continues:

[Rep. Jim] Knoblach argued if cameras are allowed in courts, victims of sex trafficking would forever have to see their testimony replayed on the Internet. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. The rules don’t allow victims to be photographed or filmed. It’s prohibited.

It’s troubling that Knoblach continues to give credence to these false premises when they are so far removed from reality.

We believe photographs, as they say, are worth a thousand words and create a more complete picture of a different kind of truth that comes once a verdict has been rendered.

Any attempt to deny citizens a method for evaluating how their government works is a strike against self-governance and should be fought with vigor.