Two Ohio newspapers issue editorials condemning publishing of NY gun owners' names and addresses

by Chad D. Baus

In the wake of the horrific mass murder in at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut last month, one New York newspaper, Gannett Company's The Journal News of White Plains, N.Y., decided to punish people who had nothing to do with the crime by publishing an interactive map with the names and addresses of handgun permit owners in New York's Westchester and Rockland counties.

When indignant readers responded by publishing personal information about the The Journal News' staffers, much as Buckeye Firearms Association did in 2007 when The Sandusky Register pulled a similar stunt, the hypocritical Journal News hired armed guards, who it is now being reported will be employed "indefinitely."

Two Ohio newspapers, The Columbus Dispatch and The Lima News, have published editorials condemning The Journal News for its actions.

First, from The Lima News' Thomas Lucente:

When it comes to free speech and open government, I am largely a purist, or what First Amendment scholars would label an "absolutist," a Justice Hugo Black on free-speech steroids, if you will.

When the Framers said there should be no law abridging free speech, they meant it. That includes flag desecration, obscenities and pornography. Even so-called time, place and manner restrictions should be mostly beyond the reach of government regulators. Or, as James Madison put it in a draft of the First Amendment, "The freedom of the press, one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable" (emphasis mine).

Likewise, when it comes to government information, there is very little that should be kept from the public. Again, on this issue, I am largely a purist. It is the reason I advocate that executions should be conducted in public. If the government is going to kill someone in my name, I should be able to watch the proceedings.

However, and this is important to remember, with freedom comes responsibility. As the Supreme Court said in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, the First Amendment mandates freedom not responsibility. In other words, while the Constitution protects the freedom, it is up to the individual to exercise responsibility. The government cannot regulate or mandate that.

Nowhere should the exercise of this vast responsibility be more obvious than with the media. While the media often fail to exercise this responsibility, e.g., its unbalanced coverage of politics, it rarely fails on such a vast scale as The Journal News of White Plains, N.Y. On Dec. 22, that august publication posted an interactive map with the names and addresses of handgun permit owners in New York's Westchester and Rockland counties (http://j.mp/12JQDpr).

This is beyond the pale of journalistic responsibility. Words cannot adequately express my level of disgust for those at The Journal News who thought this would be a good idea. I have been in the news business for more than two decades, and I can't recall a more irresponsible action than what they did.

In a statement, the paper's publisher, Janet Hasson, feebly tried to defend the indefensible. She wrote, "Frequently, the work of journalists is not popular. One of our roles is to report publicly available information on timely issues, even when unpopular. We knew publication of the database (as well as the accompanying article providing context) would be controversial, but we felt sharing information about gun permits in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings."

However, what the newspaper did was go beyond sharing information about gun permits in the area. That could have easily been achieved simply by giving numbers of permits in areas of the county. There was no need to print the names and addresses and satellite views of their homes.

How many of those people are abused women hiding from their abusers? Now their names and addresses and a map to their homes are readily available. It also gave burglars a shopping list of homes that might contain guns.
Did Hasson and her editors even consider that?

Hasson is right that sometimes our work in this business is unpopular. However, we are the gatekeepers. We share and publish information we think is important. If we are just going to collect and dump all the data we can get, then why do we need newspapers? Anyone can do that. Our job is not simply to pass out all information. Our job is to collect that data, determine if it is important and then share it in a responsible manner, all while explaining it and giving it context. We often know more than we report.

What The Journal News did was simply gratuitous, even if it were within their First Amendment rights to do so. It served no real purpose and put lives in danger.

Fortunately, the market responded. Bloggers have been publishing the home addresses and telephone numbers of newspaper staffers (http://j.mp/12JSVoC).

If anything, this stupid stunt proves my point that the government should not be issuing gun licenses. It already issued a blanket license on Dec. 15, 1791, called the Second Amendment.

Also condemning The Journal News is Ohio's Columbus Dispatch:

Two things are certain about the controversy surrounding a Westchester, N.Y. newspaper’s decision to publish and map the names and addresses of everyone in three counties who holds a gun permit:

• The information is, and should be, a public record.

• Nevertheless, without any compelling reason nor any purpose that benefits the public, the Journal News was wrong — and foolish — to invade the privacy of so many people.

There’s plenty of bad behavior to go around in this mess, including threats of violence which prompted the newspaper to hire armed guards temporarily. But it started with the paper's decision to publish the information. The rationale, as stated by publisher Janet Hasson, is flawed: "We felt sharing information about gun permits in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings."

In what way is the fact that Joe Smith of 123 Maple St. has a gun permit relevant to the awful tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.? Did the paper mean to suggest a connection between those presumably law-abiding gun owners and the deranged Adam Lanza's carnage? Surely it didn't, but the outrage of gun owners and those who feel strongly about gun rights is understandable. And what the paper did mean to convey is impossible to discern.

Even staunch defenders of the public's right to open records have criticized the newspaper’s decision. As Al Tompkins, senior faculty for broadcasting and online at the journalism think tank Poynter Institute, argued in a Dec. 27 post, journalists regularly and rightly use public records to invade people’s privacy — when it legitimately serves the public good.

If the Journal News had compared the list of gun-permit holders to a database of felony offenders and found that permits were given to felons, or if it found that those with personal or political connections were given special access to permits, that would have justified naming some permit holders. If analysis showed a meaningful connection between gun-ownership rates and high or low crime, that could justify mapping the locations of permit holders, though their names would be irrelevant.

The newspaper's move is not only misguided but foolish, because of the predictable backlash it has triggered. A New York state senator is calling for legislation to limit public access to gun-permit information.

That's a bad idea: Without records of what government does, the public can't assess the legality, ethics or efficiency of government action. In the case of gun permits, open records are the only way to be sure officials aren't granting them to people who shouldn't have them or denying them to people who should.

While we obviously disagree with The Dispatch's take on licensee's personal, private information being make a public record, it was good to see that even they agree that this act by The Journal News of White Plains, N.Y. was as pointless as it was despicable.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.

Additional Information:
Ex-Burglars Say Newspaper's Gun Map Would've Made the Job Easier, Safer

Inmates using newspaper's gun owner map to threaten guards, sheriff says