Comments on: New rules on recording at state House won’t ‘go forward’

By: George Hayduke

George Hayduke — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:49:47 +0000

The proposed rules were the product of the House attorneys and leadership, the Sergeant-at-Arms office, Republicans and individual members of the media, Wittenborg said.

How about some names, please? What morons signed off on this besides Sgt-at-Arms Sandy Dicke and Tony Sertich? Who are the attorneys? Who else in House leadership? And exactly who are the “individual members of the media” who approved of this? This has got to be one of the dumbest, most assinine proposals to ever come out of the capitol dome. The upside is, maybe this will fire up the MSM reporters to actually do some critical reporting again instead of playing stenographer for politicans’ press statements. If they don’t, the bloggers and “new media” will eat them alive. They probably will anyway.

By: Mark Bannick

Mark Bannick — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:07:32 +0000

I’d have to agree with Jason & Marty on this one. There is no stopping the “new media” and the desire of the concerned, interested, citizens of MN to access, in real time, what is happening at the State Capital. The only other choice is the 30 seconds we get on the TV news (Almanac & AATC excluded of course), sound bites with interspersed in-depth [Radio Free Nation] on the radio (usually only NPR, MPR, or KFAI mind you) or the paragraph or two on page 6 of the local or metro sections of the newspapers. There are some of us who enjoy the uneditted “raw” version of the proceedings, ala C-SPAN. We get some MN proceedings on TPT-Life (raw, without commentary), but it’s not enough. More!! We want more!!

By: News Day: 89 ballots / Unfree press in MN House / Around the world in 90 seconds / Out with the old regime / more « Mary Turck

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:19:30 +0000

[...] The on-line media has been debating and denouncing the policy for weeks: a sampling includes MnIndy, KFAI, TC Daily Planet, The Uptake, Radio Free Nation, Checks & Balances, and MinnPost. The [...]

By: Marty Owings

Marty Owings — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:01:35 +0000

Spooky Marty here. I think “weirded out” is subjective. I’ve been an irritant because I won’t go away. Bad quitter and all, I’d like to see some real transparency. I thought this problem would be resolved by bringing it to their attention, but I learned quickly that it was not going anywhere partly because they weren’t being motivated to do anything.

That isn’t to say that people hadn’t tried or weren’t pushing for greater access, they certainly were. I wasn’t getting anywhere until I just kept showing up everyday, day after day at the offices of Leadership, Sgt At Arms and the House Chambers. I’ve been called “irritating”, but I don’t take it too personal because this is more important than that.

In the end, what really brought this to a head was getting the rest of the Capitol madia to pay attention. I think the House Leadership did that when they put out the new “recording” rule. I’m glad there were so many journalists at the meeting, it really drove home the point.

I hope they sort this out soon. I want to report the news, not how we can’t get the news.