Too many schools hide information that should be disclosed and get away with it. No more! Check out the new “Reporter’s Guide to FERPA” to find out your rights to school and university records. You’ll be surprised.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act has been twisted beyond recognition, but you can still get directory information, crime records, and basic budget stuff. You can also get ANY record held by a school, even grades, as long as a student isn’t identifiable.

Kudos to SPJ FOI Committee members for their hard work putting this together. Led by Carolyn Carlson, the guide was masterfully created by David Chartrand, Charles Davis, Sonny Albarado and Jodi Cleesattle. You’ll find FERPA tales of horror, story tips and a nuts-and-bolts breakdown of the law. Great job, folks!

The Dodge City Daily Globe fired reporter Claire O’Brien last week following a subpoena battle with the local county prosecutor. See a good summary by the Reporters Committee and an AP story.

O’Brien says the company fired her because she refused to give up the source and the company wanted her to. Stephen Wade, publisher for GateHouse Media Kansas, refused to comment to Reporters Committee, saying it’s a personnel issue. Wade told the AP:  “Out of respect to the employee and the law, we really can’t comment.”

This is an outrage on two levels. First, O’Brien suffered terribly during this process as she faced going to jail and felt that few people were on her side, based on my conversations with her. To fire her after such an ordeal is inhumane and unconscionable.

Second, I find it ironic that the company argued for the free flow of information in fighting the subpoena, yet now won’t explain itself. The company hides behind “personnel laws.” Poppycock. Tell the truth and be up front. Maybe they had good cause to fire her. Maybe not. We don’t know. The SPJ Code of Ethics urges journalists to be accountable – to “abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.” Their actions are newsworthy, and just as we would expect a city council to explain the firing of a police chief, we expect the newspaper to explain the firing of a reporter caught in a public event. In my opinion, to do otherwise is unethical and cowardly. Be upfront and explain your actions.

It’s a common story. Student newspaper prints story about popular campus figure getting busted, and the suspect’s buddies/teammates/fraternity brothers/sorority sisters steal the press run to keep the rest of campus in the dark.

But what happened at Texas A&M-Commerce was much different. As The Battalion newspaper reported, when two football players,Stephen DeGrate and Dakota Burch, were videotaped stealing copies of the East Texan reporting a teammate’s arrest for a drug bust, head coach Guy Morris not only told police his players did it — but he praised them for doing it.

“I am proud of my players for doing that,” Morris said. “This was the best team building exercise we have ever done.”

The coach reportedly said that taking a free newspaper is not theft. But only the first issue was free — subsequent copies are 25 cents a piece. But the crime goes beyond the monetary value of the papers or the advertising inside each paper. It was an attempt to withhold information from people. It flies in the face of the First Amendment guarantees of press freedom, and it definitely runs counter to a university being a place where information and ideas can be freely exchanged.

It is even more appalling that Morris, who is supposed to be a mentor and a role model for his players, to be supporting an illegal act. Sports are supposed to teach people character, and that includes obeying laws and rules, as well as respecting other people’s rights.

Morris said that if the police pursue the case, he would likely be the first led out in handcuffs.

We can only hope.

I’m flabbergasted at states like Alabama, Ohio and Wisconsin considering shutting down 911 tapes, saying they want to protect victims. I talked a little about it today on CNN with a victims rights advocate (clip).

I acknowledged that we have to mitigate harm to sources and victims – it’s an important ethical consideration. But then I failed to follow up with the most important point:

To minimize harm to victims we MUST keep 911 tapes public.

It seems counter-intuitive, but here’s the reason: 911 dispatchers will treat victims better if they know their actions might be broadcast on the local news. Transparency makes for better government. Dispatchers who can say whatever they want in secret are more likely to cut some corners and be rude. It’s human nature. When we are watched we work harder and better.

So if we really want to help victims, make sure 911 tapes are public. In the meantime, journalists need to continue to weigh the public good vs. the harm to victims when broadcasting 911 calls. Some journalists really goof, but I think most make good decisions every day.

WARNING – conflict of interest coming up! I’m about to plug a book that Charles Davis and I came out with this week. But I think it might be of interest to people who read this blog. It’s called “The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records,” by CQ Press (a division of Sage, $21.95, paperback, 236 pages, http://www.cqpress.com/product/Art-of-Access-Strategies.html).

We really loved doing this book, interviewing more than 70 experts (Woodward/Bernstein, Helen Thomas, Brant Houston, Steve Doig, Pete Weitzel, the new federal FOIA ombudsman, etc.) and pooling together our experience and knowledge of practical tips for acquiring public records. All that stuff we teach in our classes, in SPJ training sessions, and talk about with reporters daily. We hope it will help others to get fired up about access and be more effective in getting what they need. We have chapters on learning the law, finding records, effective requests, overcoming denials, dealing with data, understanding officials’ perspectives, and writing about FOI and FOI ethics. We think it can be a good supplementary textbook for reporting courses, or a deskguide for working journalists. We hope it can help citizens and others, too. Check out a companion blog for the book at www.theartofaccess.com.

We don’t plan to make a killing on the book – it’s not about the money ($1 each per book). But we do hope it spreads the gospel of FOI, good governance and an empowered electorate. Charles, a former SPJ FOI Committee chair, and myself (as current chair), can’t thank SPJ enough for its continued strong support of FOI issues. This organization is dedicated to good journalism – making the world a better place – and it feels good to be a part.

The American Society of News Editors is soliciting nominations for its Local FOI Heroes contest as part of this spring’s National Sunshine Week.

Anyone can nominate someone who made a difference last year fighting to make public institutions more open and accessible. This can be a citizen, blogger, journalist, or anyone who has worked hard for government transparency.

The first-place winner will be honored in Washington, D.C., at the 2010 ASNE convention April 11-14. The second- and third-place winners will receive $500 and $250, respectively.

More information, including the online nomination form, is available at: http://sunshineweek.org/

The deadline to enter is Friday, Feb. 26.

The National Freedom of Information Coalition has started its legal offense on overly secretive agencies. This week the group announced its first two cases to be litigated from its $2 million litigation fund, provided by the Knight Foundation.

One suit will fight for handwritten notes used by government officials during public meetings in Florida. The other will sue over the use of e-mails by officials to skirt the sunshine law in Florida. See the NFOIC press release and Knight FOI fund for more information.

If you have an issue in your state that needs legal resolution, check out the Knight fund and see if it  can help. This is particularly helpful if agencies are flagrantly violating the law or if the law is fuzzy and needs a little clarification by the courts.

Check out today’s great article by The New York Times outlining the battle Bloomberg News has waged to show the American people where its bailout money has gone.

Every journalist should read this and then follow their lead, challenging traditions of secrecy and efforts of corporations to hide their exploitation of taxpayers. That’s what journalism is all about.

Claire O’Brien, a reporter for the Dodge City Globe in Kansas, could be forced to reveal her confidential source and provide her notes after the Kansas Supreme Court this week rejected her appeal for a hearing and denied anyone (such as SPJ) from submitting friend-of-the-court amicus briefs.

O’Brien conducted a jail-house interview with a murder suspect, and the prosecutor wants all her notes and the identity of other sources included in her stories. She doesn’t have anything that will help the prosecutor, but she might go to jail if she stands up for her sources.

This is why Kansas needs a shield law. And it’s another example of why we need shield protection in every state (the 15 that don’t have it) and at the federal level.

The Obama administration has started taking down some of the data posted online during the past month through the Open Government Directive.

Agencies sent the Office of Management and Budget nearly 300 data sets to be posted online Jan. 22 at data.gov. According to a story at nextgov.org, an astute staffer at OpenTheGovernment.org noticed in her Excel spreadsheet that the number of databases posted by agencies was dropping.

An official from OMB said some databases were removed for privacy or national security concerns, even though some of them are available elsewhere online.

While it’s perfectly fine to remove data that might have problems, it would be nice if OMB provided a note online explaining what is removed and for what reasons. Transparency is always a good thing, particularly on transparency Web sites!