Online Media Daily
September 1, 2010
By Wendy Davis

A federal court has dismissed news anchor Toni Miles’ claim that her former employer, Raycom Media’s WLOX-TV, committed “cyber libel” by allowing readers to post unfiltered comments about her. U.S. District Court Judge Louis Guirola, Jr. in the Southern District of Mississippi ruled that the federal Communications Decency Act immunized the news station from liability for readers’ posts.

“Persons who claim that they were harmed by a website’s publication of user-generated content may sue the third-party user who generated that content, but they may not sue the interactive computer service that enabled the third-party user to publish the content online,” Guirola wrote. “Thus, an interactive computer service is entitled to immunity as long as it did not create or author the particular information at issue.”

The defamation claims stem from an article WLOX ran on its Web site in October of 2008 stating that Miles was arrested for cocaine possession. The arrest occurred at a home Miles was visiting; a grand jury reportedly voted not to indict the news anchor.

Miles alleged that the news station defamed her both by posting an article about her arrest and by hosting readers’ comments. Her court papers don’t specify which comments by users she believed were defamatory.

In dismissing the libel claim, Guirola noted that Miles did not allege that the article was false — which is necessary to prove defamation. “The article did not state that she had actually committed any crime, but correctly noted that she had been arrested and charged with possessing drugs,” he wrote. Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman, who first publicized the case on his blog, calls the lawsuit “a super-easy case” in light of other decisions saying that Web publishers are immune from defamation liability for users’ comments.

Copyright 2010 MediaPost Communications    FAC Content Use Policy

The Detroit News
September 2, 2010
By Candice Williams

MOUNT CLEMONS, Mich. — A woman who was removed from a jury for announcing a guilty verdict on Facebook will have to pay a $250 fine and write a five-page essay on the constitutional right to a fair trial.

Hadley Jons, 20, of Warren told Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Diane Druzinski this morning that she was “very sorry.”

Jons, a premed student at Macomb Community College, was a juror in a resisting-arrest case last month. On a day off from the trial, Aug. 11, Jons wrote on Facebook that it was “gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re GUILTY.”

The defense attorney’s son found the post while researching jurors. Druzinski removed Jons from the jury the next day.

Druzinski told Jons that she violated her oath to be fair and impartial. The fine and essay are due Oct. 1.

“I believe it’s an appropriate resolution under the circumstances,” said Jons’ attorney, John Giancotti. Since the matter was a civil one, he said Jons will have no record “other than the spotlight she’s been under.”

Associated Press contributed.

Copyright 2010 The Detroit News     FAC Content Use Policy

A First Amendment kiss-off**  to Craigslist, which is resisting the demands of seventeen state attorneys general (but not including California’s Jerry Brown) that it shut down the website’s “adult services” section because, claim the AGs, it continues to promote prostitution and child-trafficking despite the site owners’ introduction of vetting (by lawyers, no less!) of sexually-oriented listings.

Let’s be clear: Craigslist has every right to publish sexually-explicit personals and ads–even ads by prostitutes trolling for customers.  The ads are no different than the sleazy come-ons that for years have filled the back pages of alternative newspapers. Craigslist gets no lesser degree of First Amendment protection merely because its adult services ads, on one of the internet’s busiest sites, are more effective than the ads of print competitors.

But just because Craigslist has the right to post these ads–-providing a market for adult consensual transactions, yes, but also, inevitably, for exploitation of the worst kind–-doesn’t mean that it has to exercise that right. By choosing to stay in the sex ad business, Craigslist not only appears irresponsible, but it also creates the risk of a spasmodic backlash in state legislatures and Congress that could seriously threaten free speech on the internet.

Finally, please spare us the argument about how hard it is to distinguish between legitimate ads and ads hawking the services of prostitutes–like these listings that were easy to find in the August 31 adult services section:
———–

– SEXXY MIXXED CARAMEAL BARBIE! OUTCALL SPECIALS ALL DAY & NIGHT! – w4m – (sf bay area) pic

– ….. Hot …… *( INDEPENDENT )*……..*Blonde*……..*Babe*…… – w4m – (Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, in*out) pic

– NEW______! * ! G E N T E L M E N’ S___#1___C H O I C E ! * !_______NEW – w4m – (dublin / pleasanton / livermore) pic

–~*/**/~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Gina ~*~*~*~* gReAt sErViCes ~~*~~*~~*~~*~~ – w4m – (sunnyvale)

✦NeW✦ hOtT✦ bArBiE✦ w4m – w4m – (SaNtA cLaRa✦SUnNyVaLe✦SaN jOsE) pic

————-

It’s time for Craigslist to get out of bed with businesses that sell sexual services. Founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster will sleep better.-ps

* *A kiss is just a kiss, but a First Amendment Kiss is FAC’s honorific for those who, by their acts, words, or example, strengthen the claim for freedom of speech, for transparency in government, and for political accountability. Our First Amendment Kiss-Off is reserved for those persons and institutions who, whether out of distrust of citizens or undue deference to special interests, threaten to curb robust debate and exclude the public from the councils of government.  Please help us find deserving recipients of the First Amendment Kiss, and Kiss-off, awards. You can submit nominations here.

Onlne Media Daily
August 30, 2010
By Wendy Davis

A new lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly violating a California law banning the use of minors’ images in ads without parental consent presents novel questions that defy easy prediction, legal experts say.

“There are arguments on both sides here,” says University of Minnesota law professor Bill McGeveran, an expert in legal issues presented by social media. “It’s a colorable case, but I don’t think it’s clear that the plaintiffs will prevail.”

The potential class-action lawsuit, filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court, says that Facebook misappropriates minors’ names and faces via the “like” button. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook turns users who “like” particular brands or ads into endorsers of those companies by sharing that information with users’ friends. A 1971 California law says that companies can’t use names or photos of people in ads without their consent or, in the case of minors, the consent of their parents.

But it’s difficult to know how that law, passed well before the emergence of the Web — let alone social networking services — applies to communications on sites like Facebook. “The borderline between conversation and advertising is really blurry in social networking,” he says. “That borderline used to be very clear in traditional advertising.”

The law itself specifies that companies can’t knowingly use minors’ names, voices, signatures, photographs or likeness “for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of products merchandise, goods or services” without parental consent.

Facebook’s best argument, McGeveran says, is that its use of the like button isn’t advertising as the lawmakers envisioned the term. At the same time, he says, the plaintiffs have grounds to contend that Facebook’s like button should be considered an ad platform — at least in situations where the company is working with marketers to help them promote goods or services. “They have some reasonable arguments to say that liking something is an endorsement,” he says.

McGeveran says he personally thinks Facebook’s alleged use of “like” as an ad tool probably violates the statute, but other observers reach the opposite conclusion.

Kimberley Isbell, staff attorney at the Citizen Media Law Center, agrees that the allegations present a close case, but says it doesn’t necessarily make sense to treat “likes” on Facebook as ads, when users can communicate the same information without using a like button.

Isbell presents a scenario where a teen says he likes the new Radiohead album, versus clicking the “like” button — saying that the plaintiffs’ interpretation of the law would yield the different results in those situations: “If I am a 17-year-old and I post, ‘I just heard the Radiohead album and it’s fabulous,’ that’s okay. But if I go to the Radiohead page and click ‘like,’ and they have an advertising agreement with Facebook, that’s not okay,” she says. “I don’t think that’s what the legislature intended by the law.”

A separate allegation against Facebook is that it violates the statute by returning minors’ images in search results. But Facebook says that it doesn’t allow minors to include their profiles in search engines.

A Facebook spokesperson also says the lawsuit is without merit and that it will contest the case. “The complaint misunderstands the law, its intent and the way Facebook works,” the company says.

It’s not clear at this time whether the plaintiffs also intend to sue companies that advertise on Facebook. The lawsuit refers to unknown defendants, to be named later. An attorney for the plaintiffs did not respond to Online Media Daily’s questions about the unknown defendants. But some marketers who participated in Facebook’s defunct Beacon program, which told users about their friends’ e-commerce activity, were named in privacy lawsuits several years ago.

Copyright 2010 MediaPost Communications       FAC Content Use Policy

MediaShift
August 30, 2010
By Alfred Hermida

Social media is such a new phenomenon that it is easy for someone to claim to be an expert in the subject. A search on Twitter throws up all sorts of people claiming to be social media gurus. But at journalism schools, professors are working out how to teach social media to ensure that graduating students are proficient, if not expert, in this new addition to the curriculum.

Students use social media in their daily lives, with Facebook an almost permanent fixture on the computer screen. Yet they tend not to think about social media as part of their professional toolkit as journalists.

If anything, anecdotal evidence suggests that students are resistant to adopting social media, seeing it as a personal activity, rather than as part of their work as a journalist. The pressure is on educators to demonstrate the professional value of social media.

The first step is working out what we mean by social media. After all, there has also been a social aspect to media, whether it was people discussing last night’s TV in the office or clipping a newspaper article to send to a friend. But there is something new about services such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter that let people connect, create, share and mash-up media.

European researchers Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”
In other words, digital technologies that empower users to interact with each other, and participate and collaborate in the making of media, rather than just consuming media.

Clearly there is more to social media in the classroom than technology. Central to teaching social media is providing an understanding of how these digital tools affect the way students actually do journalism. The issue for many journalism schools is incorporating social media into an established and packed curriculum, within an academic environment where the pace of change is slow.

LESSONS IN BEST PRACTICES

The question of how to teach social media in a way that enhances journalism reverberated at a meeting of hundreds of journalism educators from across North America. The annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in Denver provided a platform to discuss ideas on social media in the classroom. In a sign of the growing recognition of social media, the AEJMC even organized a competition for educators to share some of their best practices for incorporating social media into the classroom. (Read MediaShift’s previous coverage of the AEJMC conference here.)

One idea mentioned by several speakers at the AEJMC conference was the value of incorporating social media into beat reporting. There are various ways that this can be done. Students can use Twitter to monitor the community chatter on issues in their beats through hashtags. They can also identify and follow key people connected to their beat.

But students also need to understand how to assess the stream of information on social media. Real-time services such as Twitter have established themselves as primary sources for breaking news, so it is important to teach students to critically measure and check the validity of information.

Social media is one way of introducing students to the notion of journalism as a conversation. The key lesson here is that these tools are not just another channel to distribute the finished story. Social media can help journalists reach out to audiences, seeking ideas for stories and fresh perspectives on stories they are working on.

One of the challenges here is teaching the different norms and practices on different social media services. For example, just posting a message seeking information is frowned upon. Instead, students are encouraged to be active on social media, showing they are contributing to the conversation rather than just taking.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

Social media blurs the line between the personal and the professional, so another important lesson is how to build and manage your online identity. Serena Carpenter at the Cronkite School at Arizona State University has students use Google themselves to research their online identity. She has found students are encouraged to adopt social media when they see themselves appear high up on Google.

In a variation of this, I have students Google each other to find out something they didn’t know about their peer. The aim of the exercise is to make students aware of how future employers might see them.

The next stage is teaching students how to manage their reputation and establish their credibility. Prof. Carpenter has students complete their bio on numerous sites such as LinkedIn and Google Profile using the same photo, credentials and web links.

Social media has also been used for student-centered learning, for example, to educate students about the strengths and weaknesses of online collaboration. Bob Britten of West Virginia University used Google Maps for students to work together to map retirement homes in the area.

Rather than lecture students on the credibility of Wikipedia, Gary Ritzenthaler, a PhD student at the University of Florida, created a wiki for students to collaborate on study notes for an upcoming test. By participating, the students learned about collaborative writing but also became aware of questions about the credibility of content produced by others.

THINKING ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

Practicing social media is not enough in an academic environment. There has to be a place for student reflection on what they have learned, explaining their understanding of social media. Students should have set out their goals for the use of social media and demonstrate they can assess the most appropriate platforms and services.

Teaching social media is more than showing students the mechanics of Twitter. Rather, they should learn how to build a network of relevant followers and how to interact with them to be a better journalist.

In the classroom, we need to stress that social media technologies do not just offer journalists new ways of doing old things. They offer the potential to explore new ways of telling stories, of collaborating and connecting with audiences, of rethinking how we do journalism.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in our special series at MediaShift, “Beyond J-School,” where we will take an in-depth look at the state of journalism education and training in the digital age. Look out for more articles all this week and next.

Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer, currently an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, the University of British Columbia.

Copyright 2010 Public Broadcasting System     FAC Content Use Policy

Broadcasting & Cable
August 24, 2010
By John Eggerton

The FCC conceded Monday that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that its indecency enforcement regime is unconstitutionally vague bears directly on its fine for nudity in a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue, but says that the same court should hold off on reaching any decision on ABC’s appeal of that fine until the U.S. government decides whether or not to petition to appeal the Fox ruling.

Given that the deadline for that petition is Aug. 27, the government seemed to be signaling it would likely challenge that Fox decision.

That came in a supplemental brief solicited by the Second Circuit after it made that Fox ruling. The court wanted to know what impact that decision had on ABC’s challenge to the FCC’s 2008 ruling that nudity in a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue was indecent.

The FCC said that NYPD Blue’s scripted airing of images of adult nudity (actress Charlotte Ross’s backside) was different from the “gratuitous utterances” during a live awards show. But it conceded that the court’s decision went beyond the specifics of the cases to the larger issue of the commission’s indecency oversight authority.

“The panel’s opinion in Fox does not turn on such distinctions, however. Rather, the panel in Fox held that the Commission’s contextual approach to applying the federal indecency statute is inconsistent with constitutional requirements, and accordingly invalidated the Commission’s indecency policy in its entirety,” the FCC said in a brief that lived up to its name at only four pages worth of background and discussion. “Because the contextual framework the Commission applied in Fox is the same one it applied in this case, the Fox decision appears to suggest that the Commission’s indecency policy is unconstitutionally vague even as applied to the very different facts of this case,” it said.

The FCC said it and Justice were contemplating filing a petition for a full-court rehearing of the Fox ruling, which was a three-judge panel decision rendered last month. The court won’t have long to wait for that decision, since the deadline for petitioning that decision is Friday (Aug. 27).

“Because of the substantial adverse consequences of the Fox panel’s decision for federal broadcast indecency enforcement and the decision’s inconsistency with precedent of the Supreme Court, this Court, and other courts of appeals,” said the FCC, “the interested agencies of the Federal Government are considering whether to file a petition.”
But seeming to suggest the government may be leaning toward a challenge, the brief continued: “it would be appropriate to defer issuing a merits decision in this case until the Court has had an opportunity to resolve any rehearing petition filed in Fox. If rehearing is granted, that action will have obvious implications for this case. If rehearing is denied, the Court would then be positioned to dispose of this case in light of the recent decision in Fox.”

Copyright 2010 NewBay Media, LLC.  FAC Content Use Policy

Metropolitan News-Enterprise
August 24, 2010f
By a MetNews Staff Writer

A former airline employee whose whistleblower complaint was rejected in federal administrative proceedings, and who failed to request a de novo hearing available under federal law, is barred from suing under California law based on the same allegations, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

In a 4-3 decision, the high court held that collateral estoppel precludes Kevin Murray from proceeding with his action against Alaska Airlines.

Murray worked at Alaska as a quality assurance auditor. He claims that the company outsourced his position and did not rehire him because of safety concerns he brought to the attention of the Federal Aviation Administration.

He filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor under the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century, commonly referred to as AIR 21. In 2005, he was notified that the department had investigated his allegations but found no connection between his termination and his involvement in protected activity.

The notice advised him that he had 30 days to request an administrative hearing and that the decision would be final and not subject to judicial review if he failed to do so. About two months later, he sued the airline in state court, claiming that he was terminated in violation of public policy. The airline removed the action to federal court, based on diversity jurisdiction, and the district judge granted summary judgment in favor of the airline based on collateral estoppel.

Murray appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which certified the question of collateral estoppel to the state high court.

Justice Marvin Baxter, joined by Justices Carol Corrigan, Carlos Moreno, and Ming Chin, said that Murray’s action was barred under California’s approach to collateral estoppel.

California applies the doctrine to the final decision of an administrative agency, Baxter explained, if the party against whom the doctrine is sought to be invoked had an adequate opportunity to litigate the issue in the administrative forum. The right to a de novo hearing before an administrative law judge, and to judicial review of the ALJ’s decision, under AIR 21 provides such an opportunity, the justice concluded.
Werdegar, joined in dissent by Chief Justice Ronald M. George and Justice Joyce L. Kennard, said the opportunity for a de novo hearing did not provide Murray with an adequate opportunity because of the nature of the underlying investigative process.

“In the course of the investigation of his administrative complaint, he received no hearing,” the dissenting justice noted. “He was not contacted to provide evidence. He was not permitted to confront the witnesses against him, to review the evidence submitted by Alaska, or to make oral or written arguments before findings were made. No testimony was submitted under oath and no record was prepared.”

Under those circumstances, Werdegar argued, the majority’s holding that the plaintiff “may be collaterally estopped based on the resulting administrative findings, and forever barred from seeking redress, because he failed to appeal those findings and have them set aside,” is flawed.

The case is Murray v. Alaska Airlines, Inc., 10 S.O.S. 4962.

Copyright 2010 Metropolitan News Company   FAC Content Use Policy

I never opened the special meeting notice so I didn’t  know items were moved from the regular agenda to the special meeting agenda, which, it turned out, was held first, at four p.m.  I arrived 15 minutes late, and by that time, the other members of the city council had already approved the sales tax item.

My question is this: which agenda should have been discussed first?

A: From what I understand, the agenda for the city council’s regular meeting was posted 72 hours before the meeting itself, as required under the Brown Act. You planned to attend this meeting as usual in your capacity as a city councilmember.

However, the council then decided to hold a “special meeting” rather than a “regular meeting” at the exact same time and day as the regular meeting. This special meeting was noticed 24 hours before the meeting itself, as required by the Brown Act. The agenda for the special meeting was similar, if not identical, to the agenda for the regular meeting. The council held its special meeting, which you missed by 15 minutes, and then moved on to its regular meeting, as planned.

As you probably know, legislative bodies “shall provide, by ordinance, resolution, bylaws, or by whatever other rule is required for the conduct of business by that body, the time and place for holding regular meetings.” Gov’t Code § 54954(a).

The Brown Act permits legislative bodies of local agencies to hold “special meetings” on 24 hours’ notice, provided certain steps are taken:

A special meeting may be called at any time by the presiding officer of the legislative body of a local agency, or by a majority of the members of the legislative body, by delivering written notice to each member of the legislative body and to each local newspaper of general circulation and radio or television station requesting notice in writing.
The notice shall be delivered personally or by any other means and shall be received at least 24 hours before the time of the meeting as specified in the notice.

• The call and notice shall specify the time and place of the special meeting and the business to be transacted or discussed.

• No other business shall be considered at these meetings by the legislative body.

• The written notice may be dispensed with as to any member who at or prior to the time the meeting convenes files with the clerk or secretary of the legislative body a written waiver of notice.

• The waiver may be given by telegram.

• The written notice may also be dispensed with as to any member who is actually present at the meeting at the time it convenes.  Gov’t Code § 54956.

It sounds like you did receive a special meeting notice, although you do not state whether it was received by you 24 hours before the meeting, as required under the Brown Act.

As a general matter, the Brown Act provides for special meetings to permit the legislative body to address “time-sensitive issues” that “must be addressed before the next regularly scheduled meeting.” Frazer v. Dixon Unified School Dist., 18 Cal. App. 4th 781 , 790 n.12 (1993).

The situation you describe raises the question of whether the special meeting was called in place of a regular meeting in order to replace the regular meeting’s agenda with an altered agenda for the special meeting.

Unfortunately, I could not find any case law or other authority that answers the question of which meeting should have been held first, or whether it is permissible to schedule a special meeting at the same time as the regular meeting. The Attorney General advises that “[i]f a body calls a meeting at a time or place other than the time or place specified for regular meetings, it is either a special or emergency meeting.” See http://caag.state.ca.us/publications/2003_Main_BrownAct.pdf at p. 16.

It might be argued, therefore, that since the council’s regular meeting is scheduled for a specific time and day each month, and the public has come to rely on that time slot for the regular meeting, the regular meeting should have been held at 4 p.m., and not the special meeting. The “use of “special meetings” to evade the agenda and public participation requirements that apply to ‘regular meetings’ … may well violate state open meeting laws.” Frazer, 18 Cal. App. 4th at 790 n.12.

If you feel that that there has been a violation of the Brown Act, you may want to consider taking legal action to either nullify action taken at the special meeting, or to compel the local agency to comply with the Brown Act in the future. Either a citizen or the district attorney may sue to compel the local agency to comply with the Brown Act; obtain a ruling that a particular practice of the local agency violates the Brown Act; or obtain a ruling that the local agency is violating the free speech rights of one or more of its members in seeking to silence that member. Gov’t Code section 54960(a).

Please note, however, that the Brown Act imposes fairly strict requirements on the enforcement of the Brown Act, including deadlines for taking certain necessary actions. You might find the information on FAC’s web site at http://www.firstamendmentcoalition.org/category/resources/access-to-meetings/ useful for proceeding.

Holme Roberts & Owen LLP is general counsel for the First Amendment Coalition and responds to FAC hotline inquiries. In responding to these inquiries, we can give general information regarding open government and speech issues but cannot provide specific legal advice or representation.

Electronic Freedom Foundation
Commentary
August 22, 2010
By Marcia Hofmann

An Indian computer scientist was arrested this weekend when he refused to disclose an anonymous source who provided an electronic voting machine to a team of security researchers.

Hari Prasad is the managing director of Netindia Ltd., an Indian research and development firm. He and other researchers have long questioned the security of India’s paperless electronic voting machines. Despite repeated reports of election irregularities and concerns about fraud, the Election Commission of India insists that the machines are tamper-proof.

In 2009, the commission publicly challenged Prasad to show that India’s voting machines could be compromised, but refused to give him access to the machines to perform a review. Earlier this year, an anonymous source provided an Indian voting machine to a research team led by Prasad, Alex Halderman, and Rop Gonggrijp. The team exposed security flaws that could allow an attacker to change election results and compromise ballot secrecy. They published a paper detailing their findings, which you can read here.

According to Halderman, Prasad was questioned Saturday morning at his home in Hyderabad by authorities who wanted to know the identity of the source who gave the voting machine to the research team. Prasad was ultimately arrested and taken to Mumbai, though reportedly hadn’t been charged with a crime.

This turn of events is deeply troubling. Prasad is a respected researcher who helped to discover a critical flaw in India’s voting system. He and his fellow researchers would never have been able to document the weaknesses in India’s voting machines without the help of their anonymous source. This is precisely why anonymity is important: it allows people to make important contributions to the public dialogue without fear of retribution.

The Election Commission of India should have given researchers access to the voting machines in the first place. Rather than attempting to persecute Prasad and the anonymous source, the government should be focusing its attention and resources on the real problem: electronic voting machines with no mechanism for accountability.

Copyright 2010 Electronic Frontier Foundation   FAC Content Use Policy

The Porterville Recorder
August 19, 2010
By Jenna Chandler

After quarreling, City Councilmen decided Tuesday night not to restrict when, and what topics the public may speak about during meetings.

When Pete McCracken requested they limit the first round of scheduled oral communications to matters which are only on the agenda, Greg Shelton and Brian Ward vehemently protested, saying it would silence citizens who attend meetings to air concerns about gang problems, announce community events and present other miscellaneous information which the Council was not slated to discuss.

“It’s small potatoes to let someone be able to get up there and talk about anything they want, especially when you’re already limiting them to three minutes,” Ward said.

California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, affords the public the right to comment on issues before a governing body makes a decision. At all regular meetings, time is provided under oral communications for the public to comment on items not on the agenda.

McCracken said he wanted to limit oral communications to councilmen’s reports and non-public hearing agenda items, because those who attend meetings for scheduled items have waited as long as an hour or more to have their items discussed while community members take to the lectern. He said his proposal would not violate the Brown Act, because he would allow for comments on any items not on the agenda after the Council finished its business.

“One of the problems we’ve had in the past with oral communications at the beginning is that we have forced people who have something on the agenda to sit and wait while somebody else talks about something that’s not on the agenda, and my intent on the oral communications was nothing more than we do the agenda, and then we sit here and listen to people as long as we have to,” he said.

But his opponents feared there would be a perception that the Council was trying to limit free speech, and didn’t want to inconvenience citizens wanting to partake in civic affairs.

“I’ve been out there and it takes a lot of guts to get up here in front of the Council to say anything regardless of whether it’s on the agenda or not … so now we’re going to say you know what, you can wait two and a half hours because someone on the agenda matters because someone on the scheduled matters doesn’t want to wait five minutes?” Ward asked.

“It’s free speech. I’ve listened to you guys blather on up here from back down there for hours at a time, and you can’t endure three minutes of the haranguing?” Shelton said.

McCracken ultimately conceded upon objections from most of the councilmen, Vice Mayor Cameron Hamilton included.

The Council did change slightly the agenda’s line up by moving reports from the Council to the beginning of the agenda, rather than the end.

At the start of the meeting, Mayor Ron Irish restricted oral communications for the night to only those items on the agenda. Although Shelton objected, the rest of the Council joined Irish.

While they ultimately agreed that restricting the comments to agenda items is a bad idea, the decision comes on the heels of other changes made to the format of meetings since Irish took the gavel.

Open session now starts 30 minutes earlier at 6:30 p.m. and will wrap up by 9:45 p.m. In the past, meetings have gone as late as 1:30 a.m., which some believed discouraged attendance and community participation.

And a few weeks ago, Irish said anyone who spoke out during the pledge of allegiance would be escorted out of chambers by the Police of Chief. He directed his comments to a woman who regularly attends meetings and says “one day” after “justice for all.”

Copyright 2010 Freedom Communications, Inc. FAC Content Use Policy