Easley to staff: Cooperate with press

I'm not following your logic. Because the press frequently forces the government to follow its own laws, that does not mean it is acting as some sort of "custodian" of public records.

— RTB

But the two houses of Congress are the legislative representatives of the people at the federal level of government. This government, as Madison described it, is neither wholly "national" nor wholly "federal." So for the American ideals of republican democracy to be actualized in the practical workings of government, the people must communicate their concerns about all important issues both to their members of Congress in the legislative branch and to the President as the constitutional head of the executive branch.

Meanwhile, the press enjoys free access to all information which existing statutes or constitutional history oblige the branches of government to make public. But the press does not intercept the right of the people to receive this information from government but serves as a sort of custodian of the public interest in seeing to it that information peoperly in the public domain is forthcoming in a reasonable prompt manner.

These special trusts on behalf of the public notwithstanding, the press, however, is not an additional branch of the government. It is popularly known as "The Fourth Estate," but this does not make it a fourth branch of the government.

David McKnight

Show me when the N&O or the Charlotte Observer or the Carolina Journal for that matter have said that government is "answerable exclusively" to them.

— RTB 

There's no prohibition about bringing literary and historical erudition to blogspots. The days of a few Beltway insiders belittling our North Carolina political culture to levels unworthy of comparison with Virginia are numbered. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe may have been from across the Virginia-North Carolina line to the north, but that's no reason we in the Tar Heel State must absolutely abjure any historical, political or philosophical connections with the constitutional heritage of this country.

There are people all across North Carolina who are very knowledgeable about the fundamental principles and practical applications of the constitutional framework of our federal, state and local government, so it's time for concerned citizens to speak up against the continual effort by a few opportunists to hijack the Constitution and turn Raleigh into some kind of Jacobin political directorate.

Conservatives and liberals can join together to keep a handful of press organizations from substituting themselves for one or more of the branches of government and trying to build a wall between the workings of the government and its constitutional service to the people of North Carolina.

We should no longer have to defer to certain members of the press who characterize themselves as the only true "supervisors" of how the business of the people is conducted in Raleigh and Washington. The press is but one of many beneficiaries of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Rights in the North Carolina Constitution, for freedom of assembly, religion and other forms of expression are also equally important, and the freedom of the press is for all individuals in society who wish to communnicate their views and opinions about government and other subjects in writing or other forms of contemporary communication.

So it is presumptuous for a few major newspapers to take the position that the government is answerable exclusively to them and not to the people at large.

David McKnight

Easley's comment about not wanting to be distracted by pettiness explains very well his attitude about matters that are important to the taxpayers.

Oh GEEZ, Easley is to be commended for acknowledging that public records shouldn't be destroyed! Give me a break!
And this essay on the freakin' constitution? Wake up, David, this is a danged blog, not an essay contest for a college entrance application.

The issue just isn't that complicated. Easley knowingly directed that emails to and from his office be routinely destroyed. This wasn't a matter of someone fretting about whether or not the niceties exchanged by staffers over the weather or the upcoming weekend were to be preserved. The state employees who are exchanging emails with the governor's office, in this case, Public Information Officers, aren't that stupid.

This was about the way Easley regards the public records law of the state that he swore he would uphold. And this was part of a larger pattern of his way of handing the media -- and state employees, for that matter.

Jefferson on Executive Privilege and Executive Papers:

"With respect to papers, there is certainly a public and a private side to our offices. To the former belong grants of land, patents for inventions, certain commissions, proclamations, and other papers patent in their nature. To the other belong mere executive proceedings. All nations have found it necessary, that for the advantageous conduct of their affairs, some of these proceedings, at least, should remain known to their executive functionary only. He, of course, from the nature of the case, must be the sole judge of which of them the public interest will permit publication. Hence, under our Constitution, in requests of papers, from the legislative to the executive branch, an exception is carefully expressed, as to those which he may deem the public welfare may require not to be disclosed." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hay, 1807. ME 11:232

"The Executive ought to communicate [to the House] such papers as the public good would permit, and ought to refuse those, the disclosure of which would injure the public." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1792. ME 1:304

Of course, Jefferson was talking about the president's relationship with Congress, not the government's relationship with the public.

Also, here in 2008, we're not talking about U.S. Constitutional rights, but rather the sovereign people of North Carolina and their N.C. Constitution, with its own history and very specific set of guarantees of freedom from tyranny.

There's a difference between not sharing a record immediately and destroying it.

As you say, there might be times when because of impending action, the government has some claim to withhold a document temporarily. We in the press routinely wait for records of closed-door sessions to discuss land deals or incentive offers, but we get them once the deal is done.

— RTB

The Easley administration is to be commended for making this effort to improve communications with members of the press. However, the people of North Carolina deserve a vigorous political, academic and constitutional debate over the premise advanced recently by the editor of The Charlotte Observer to the effect that the press is entitled to access to every single email sent or received by any person serving in state government.

Scholars of U.S. political and constitutional history should re-examine the views of the close Virginia associates Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on the rights of confidentiality in communications among officers of the executive branch of government, whether at the federal or state level. Jefferson expressed strong views in favor of the right of executive branch officers to have confidentiality in discussing prospective actions of their departments among themselves and with the President.

The emphasis on public accountability and public records ought to be not on the conferences but rather the actions by the executive branch of federal or state government in accordance with relevant statutory requirements and the provisions of the U.S. and North Carolina constitutions. The press is not on solid constitutional ground in insisting that it is virtually an extension of government and therefore is entitled to know of every conversation or discussion taking place within executive branch departments of government in Washington or Raleigh. Executive branch officers are charged constitutionally with the responsibilities of performing certain administration functions of government and therefore they should not have to surrender the means, i.e., the internal procedures, by which they are to dispatch their legal and constitutional duties in behalf of the people.

The people need to hear a thorough debate on the premises advanced recently by the editor of the Charlotte newspaper and by others in the press. And this debate cannot be waged only by lawyers, who often compete in courts of law to have the judiciary pass favorably on their respective claims of propriety in seeking to extract certain information from governmental offices and departments for the benefit of the press and other groups.

Indeed, there needs to be more attention given to the original structural philosophical and constitutional intent of the Founders on the operations and powers of the various branches of government at each level.

David McKnight