InkBlots

Leslie Criss, features editor at the Daily Journal, reminisces about starting her career and the indelible mark longtime Carthaginian executive editor Mildred Dearman made in it.

Jeanni Atkins, executive director of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information: Revelations about the failure to properly take care of soldiers returning from Iraq and unfolding stories about problems in other veterans’ facilities remind us that access to information is essential to accountability.

Writes FOI attorney Leonard Van Slyke: “The basic premise of a democracy is an informed citizenry. Armed with the necessary information, we believe that citizens can and will exercise the right to vote in a thoughtful way and come to correct decisions. To do so, citizens must have necessary information about their government at their disposal.”

Hinds County Emergency Management Agency Chief Bonehead Director Larry Fisher threatened Clarion-Ledger reporter Chris Joyner with jail for not identifying himself as a journalist and for pressing the issue of trying to obtain a copy of the county’s emergency preparedness plan, which is a public document. Fisher even went as far as to run a criminal background check and contact the FBI over the Joyner’s inquiries.

Writes the C-L’s editorial board: “A basic tenet of the American model of democracy is that individual civil liberties are worth protecting. One of the most precious civil liberties is the right of the public to have open access to public records and public meetings.”

One reason the Hinds authorities might be a little prickly when it comes to the plan: It hasn’t been updated in seven years – since before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Trying to dig up information these days - from alleged beatings in a county jail to crime statistics for the capital city - is increasingly forcing news organizations to go to court, reports The Associated Press’ Holbrook Mohr, who interviewed FOI attorney Leonard Van Slyke for a weekend piece on Sunshine Week.