My, my...look who won the "2008 Brick Wall Award"

From John Curry, November 16, 2008

Each year, the Society of Professional Journalists (Ohio Chapter) presents awards to deserving recipients. A very honorable award that the SPJ presents, called The First Amendment Award, was presented to Dr. Dennis Leone in 2004 for his excellence in research and informing the public of the mismanagement, misspending, and entitlement mindset at Ohio STRS. This award, as described by the SPJ Central Ohio Pro Chapter, reads as follows:

"This award recognizes significant contributions to the First Amendment rights of freedom of expression. Individuals and organizations both inside and outside of journalism are eligible."

Well, the SPJ also annually awards the not-so-proud winner of "The Brick Wall Award." This dubious award is presented for finishing at the pinnacle of the following set of qualifications:

"Started in 2001, this dubious distinction is presented to the individual or organization that, according to chapter members, did the most to block citizen access to public records and proceedings or otherwise violated the spirit of the First Amendment during the past year. Anyone is eligible, but special consideration will be given to public officials and tax-funded agencies that fail to follow the law."

And the winner of the 2008 Brick Wall award is..........................

The Ohio Department of Education!!!!!!! Congratulations, ODE! You join a long list of deserving individuals and organizations...here's the list of your previous award winning comrades in past years:

2008 - Ohio Department of Education
2007 - Ohio Supreme Court justices Paul Pfeifer, Judith Ann Lanzinger, Terrence O’Donnell, Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Alice Robie Resnick
2006 - The Ohio Supreme Court for a series of decisions which weakened Ohio’s Open Records law. Particularly onerous was the court’s decision to recognize “executive privilege” for the Ohio governor’s office in Dann v. Taft. This exception is not in the state’s Open Records statutes or the Ohio Constitution. In other record-shielding decisions, the court has blocked newspaper access to photographs of police officers and to the home addresses of state employees – both longstanding public documents.
2005 - Sen. Larry Mumper, R, Marion: Sponsored “Academic Bill of Rights” to limit what professors can say in the classroom; Jacqueline Piar, superintendent of Northridge Local Schools: Dismissed the high school principal and sent public records out of the county to shield them from view and asked the Licking County sheriff to drop a criminal investigation.
2004 - Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Robert S. Tongren: Destroyed a $579,000 consultants’ report to hide it from public scrutiny
2003 - Village of New Rome: Refused to provide documents showing how money was spent or how some officials came to occupy their offices
2002 - The Ohio Historical Society: Refused to follow Ohio laws regarding open meetings or public records, even though it received 75 percent of its annual funding from taxpayers; kept executive salaries secret
2001 - Judge Thomas E. Louden of Delaware County Juvenile Court: Sued by The Columbus Dispatch when he improperly closed a detention hearing and posted deputy sheriffs at the doors of the Delaware County Courthouse to keep the media out of the building)

If you wish to view the SPJ Ohio chapter's list of current and past winners and losers, here's the link: http://www.centralohiospj.org/?page_id=5