House committee hears four hours of testimony on Freedom of Information bills; rejects one and approves the other

Continued from Page 3 the House committee to table HB 1726 for further study. "It deserves for all the stakeholders involved … to be able to hear and address specific problems with the FOIA, not a blanket exemption as this bill does."

After a do-pass recommendation and a motion request by Rep. Richard Womack, R-Arkadelphia, to reject Ray's bill, the House committee turned back the proposal in a voice vote. According to Committee Chairman Rep. Dwight Tosh, R-Jonesboro, 28 FOIA supporters were signed up to speak against HB 1726, while a dozen mostly law enforcement and Arkansas Municipal League members spoke in support of Ray's measure.

Immediately after the defeat of HB 1726, the House committee took up another special order of business to debate HB 1610 by Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville. That bill returned to the committee after it was rejected in a voice vote in another threehour hearing on March 16. Bentley's original one-page bill would have changed FOIA language only to apply if there were a quorum of lawmakers present.

Bentley told the House committee that she has since met twice with the FOIA Task Force during spring break and had amended her bill as a compromise proposal. "It is a compromise of what I brought to you before. I just think it is a tragedy that we don't allow our city and county elected officials to call each other on the phone," she testified.

Under the amended legislation, all meetings of more than onethird of Arkansas's local and municipal governing body members supported by public funds shall be "public meetings." Bentley's earlier open meetings portion of the FOIA would only apply if there were a quorum present. A minimum quorum is the number of board members needed to be present to act and differs from body to body.

After 30 minutes of testimony from several FOIA advocates who previously testified against HB 1726, the weary House committee voted 12-3 in favor of Bentley's bill. On Thursday, it passed on the House floor and is now headed to the Senate.

The national headline on stories about the latest poll on the news media and democracy were about its finding that half of Americans believe national news organizations deliberately "mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting," as Associated Press media writer David Bauder put it. He added, "In one small consolation, Americans had more trust in local news."

It wasn’t a small consolation for people in local news, but it also had some warnings, and offered the basis for some guidance.

The poll by Gallup Inc. for the Knight Foundation, of 5,593 Americans 18 and older between May 31 and July 21, 2022, found a much higher level of trust in local news organizations.

That was driven in large measure by a belief that local journalists care about the impact of their reporting; 53% in the poll agreed with that statement and only 19% disagreed with it. (The survey is at https:// tinyurl.com/2eayncrw.)

Trust can be a hard thing to measure, because it is driven not just by facts, but by emotions, and the latter make it volatile. Research in news has shifted from issues of transparency and credibility to “the affective or emotional aspects of trust – that is, how trust in news is related to how people feel about news outlets," Knight said.

The poll asked respondents if they agreed or disagreed with this statement: “In general, most national news organizations “care about how their reporting can either positively or negatively affect American society, culture and politics.” Only 35% agreed, while 43% disagreed.

But when the poll asked if most local news organizations “care about the best interests of their readers, viewers and listeners,” those polled said yes, by a margin of 2 to 1.