in the newspaper was what I consider to be a piece of pretty excellent 

 journalism. And I'm not saying that because I wrote the story. I feel 

 thai, way because I think that the public was very, very well served. 

 Nc^ only by the news media, but more importantly, by the state agency 

 that's in charge of managing wildlife in Utah. That's a very unusual 

 situation. You don't often have people walk into your office and say "I 

 made a mistake. Can you get it in the paper?" I think that you can 

 probably see in the long-run what kind of attitude that that action 

 might spawn as far as we're concerned. That man has an incredible 

 amount of credibility with me now and with most other people at the 

 Herald Journal. 



We trust people more who are willing to go to those kinds of ends 

 to let the public know what's happening. As far as I can remember, 

 the Division of Wildlife Resourc had absolutely nothing, really, to gain, 

 other than some public good will by doing that. 



Along the same lines as far as sources of outdoors and 

 environmental information, let me talk about trying to keep things 

 under the surface, trying to over-manage information. I don't know 

 how many people use these tools in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, but 

 we have available to us, for example, the Freedom of Information Act. 

 And I'll try to simplify that situation a little bit by saying that it is 

 simply a federal law which allows access--access to anybody in the 

 public--to information about something that's going on in government. 

 And, if they can't get a straightforward answer, which is very 

 frequently the case--you can go to the Freedom of Information Act and 

 you can demand it. And, most of the itme you're going to have to be 

 willing to spend a couple of months dealing with reams and piles of 

 paper, but you can get to the information by use of that particular act. 



Utah, three years ago, amazingly, passed not a Freedom of 

 Information Act, but a Sunshine Law, an open meeting law. The 

 legislature passed a law which allows journalists much, much more 

 access to what's going on in government then they've ever had before. 

 Colorado has what I consider to be an amazing open meeting law in that 

 it permits the press into legislative caucus rooms. Now we all know 

 that's where all the work gets done. That's where the decisions are 

 made. And in most states, those caucuses are closed to the public. 

 We have absolutely no access to them. What we have to do is stand 

 outside the door and plead with these people when they come out, to 

 tell us what's going on. Colorado I applaud very heartily for that 

 particular law. But those kinds of sunshine laws are another tool that 

 we can use. And we find people more and more getting very defensive 

 when they're approaced by a reporter. After he's told, "I have no 

 comment. You don't need to know about that." A reporter frequently 

 responds, "Okay, maybe we won't get it today sir, but we'll go to the 

 Freedom of Information Act or we'll get an attorney and deal with you 

 through our open meeting laws. We'll get it." This kind of activity, 

 as far as I'm concerned, creates enmity between journalists and their 

 sources of news that we don't really need. 



