VIDEO: The difficulty of obtaining public records in Mass
NBC10 Boston investigative reporter talks about secrecy in Massachusetts
Happy New Year, folks!
Here’s something you might have missed during the holiday rush: NBC10 Boston ran a segment in which Ryan Kath, the investigative reporter behind the Small Town Secrets series, spoke at length about the difficult of obtaining public records in Massachusetts. If you look closely, you can see that Kath is wearing the same grey Adidas with black stripes that I have — so clearly he’s a man of good taste.
You can check out the video here:
At the beginning of the segment, there’s a graphic showing how some cities and towns have paid out thousands of dollars in legal fees to media organizations for refusing to provide records.
I covered one of those cases — the Telegram & Gazette’s lawsuit against Worcester — in detail. Read about it here:
I have my own pending public records lawsuits against the Northwestern and Bristol County district attorney’s offices, which have refused to provide information about police misconduct.
Those cases are currently paused while the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decides another public records lawsuit against the Bristol County DA’s office with similar legal issues; I filed an amicus brief in that case, which you can read about here.
I wanted to remind everyone that this newsletter is currently on a kinda sorta hiatus. I’ll still send out newsletters like this one on occasion, but most of my time and energy is focused on a big Secret Project right now. I’ll have more to say about that when I publish the project’s first story, probably in late March or early April.
If you want to support my work, you can sign up for a paid subscription to this newsletter below or send a tip via PayPal.
That’s all for now!