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Here’s the full story of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s attempt to exact revenge on the newspaper industry for negative press coverage.
This report is from Public Notice Resource Center, an industry group that focuses on helping keeping public notices in print. The Nevada Press Association is a member, and PNRC has supported us in the past with our own legislative issues.
The New Jersey battle was not typical, in the sense that the governor clearly wanted to punish the press for being critical — which is, under our First Amendment responsibility, a fundamental watchdog function. And the backroom deal, while it may be the norm in politics, was particularly offensive in this case. It would have benefited Christie directly, and that’s unethical.
But it was typical, also, in some respects. Governments occasionally question the value of public notices and, as some in New Jersey did, suggest this is somehow a “subsidy” for newspapers.
Is it a subsidy to the oil industry that government vehicles use gas? Is it a subsidy to the textile industry that police officers wear uniforms? No, public notices are paid space in newspapers (and, in New Jersey, at government-set rates that haven’t changed since 1983.)
Removing the political arguments, though, the question often comes up: Wouldn’t it be better to publish notices on the internet than in newspapers?
This is the central fallacy of the argument, and one that New Jersey elected officials seemed unable to grasp, at least initially.
It’s not a question of either/or. Publication in newspapers means you get both.
Nevada, New Jersey and almost every other state provide web sites where we compile the notices that appear in print. We do it at no extra charge because we are promoting the essential premise of the public notice: They contain information so important that, by law, they must be distributed to the public.
These are not the same as “public records,” which are available to everybody — if you know where to look (and sometimes pay a fee to copy). They are public notices, which must be pushed to the public. They concern your property values, your water rights, your custody rights, changes in your schools, your zoning. They are ballot issues and ordinances and, in some cases, notification that something belonging to you is about to be turned over to somebody else.
We know were to look for them: the local newspaper. And, for most of the past decade, they can also be found on those newspapers’ web sites and the statewide compilation sites like publicnoticeads.com.
Yes, the government could publish them. In many cases, the government does publish them. But where? In Nevada, there are 400-some agencies, boards, commissions, cities and counties. How routinely do you visit their web sites? Have you ever visited them to browse for public notices that might affect you?
Studies show, including our own in Nevada, that people do read public notices in newspapers, they expect to find them there and they don’t favor moving them exclusively to government web sites.
One good reason: Publishing the notice in a newspaper produces a hard copy that can’t be altered. It is admissible in court. It exists, well, a long time. Most weeks, you can visit the Nevada State Library and Archives and find somebody poring over microfilm of a newspaper from decades ago to read a notice of, say, a mining claim. On the other hand, I have floppy disks in my desk drawer from 1998 that my computer no longer can read.
Yes, there is a monetary relationship between government and newspapers to run the notices. I don’t necessarily like that — you can see, in the New Jersey politicking, how it can be used as a hammer — but there is a benefit.
When left to their own devices, governments tend to slack over time on their responsibilities to be transparent. It might be on purpose, it might be neglect. But there are plenty of examples in Nevada and across the country of state and local governments who just couldn’t be bothered to comply with open-meeting and open-records laws.
When they do, there are seldom consequences. Newspapers have been the watchdogs who insist government play by its own rules.