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Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Indiana Law - Is There a Time When Public Information is Too Public?

This question has come up before, in the case, for instance, of making public court records available on the internet. But the issue may have been taken to a new level last month by the Muncie Star-Press, as reported today in this AP story in the Indianapolis Star headlined: "Debate swirls over paper's use of photos: Some sex offenders have lost jobs since Muncie newspaper ran pictures on front page." Some quotes:

At least five of the 63 Muncie-area men and women pictured in The Star Press on Feb. 15 have lost their jobs, some of them because they had not revealed their past to their employers, said sheriff's Deputy Steve Case.

What the newspaper did has divided this city of 66,000 and stirred debate among journalists. Other papers around the country have run photos of sex offenders. But The Star Press may have gone further than most, devoting half of the front page of the Sunday paper to the photos. Inside, it also listed the offenders' crimes and home addresses. * * *

The information on the 60 men and three women was drawn from Indiana's sex offender registry, established in 1994 to give people a way of learning whether neighbors, coaches and others are released rapists or child molesters.

Star Press Executive Editor Evan Miller said the newspaper realized that some of the 63 could suffer, but "we made a decision that the information was more valuable than the potential for fallout." The newspaper's aim was to help publicize the sex-offender registry, Miller said.

The Feb. 15th Star-Press front page is no longer available, but this quote from the paper indicates the derivation of the information:
Sixty-five convicted sex offenders were listed on the Indiana Sheriff's Association Web site as living in Delaware County as of Thursday. The 63 with photos on the Web site are pictured on 1A of today's paper and can be identified using this list and the accompanying key.
The twist. Rather than taking public information from public files and making it more available by placing it on the internet, the Star-Press arguably went one step further by taking that public information from the internet and publishing it on the front page of its Sunday paper. The issue: Is "public" public, or are there (or should there be) gradiations?

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 16, 2004 09:46 AM
Posted to Indiana Law