One thing that reporters hear a lot when covering public meetings is that a project, or concept, or proposal is not yet done – and therefore not entirely ready for public consumption. When an idea is on the table, in its early stages and far from completion, organizers will sometimes say they are simply not ready for the public to know.
But here’s the thing: when something is discussed in open session at a public hearing, it becomes public knowledge, and it is our task and responsibility as reporters to, well, create a written report of what happened. The state’s Open Meeting Law clearly emphasizes the need for transparency and public accessibility with the work that governing bodies do – meeting, discussing, voting, and all the rest.
But beyond that obvious fact, there is great value in educating people about how projects, proposals and other ventures
develop along the way. How did the idea come about? Who’s involved, and why? Did it come from government, or from the
grassroots? Who showed up to give input? What questions were raised? What kinds of debate ensued? What edits and
alterations were made in an ongoing effort to sort things out? What are the next steps?
Often there is the belief that until a contract is penned, a press release is written, or a local governing body is ready to
alert the public themselves, this ‘middle work’ needs to remain somewhat veiled. But to veil the process – in all its messiness,
as process often has – would be to diminish the potential for participatory democracy.
It may also create the illusion that a ‘final product’ can burst onto the scene from nothing and nowhere, while in reality,
creating (and re-creating) policies, regulations, strategies or plans for action are incredibly emergent. If our reporting reduced
things to a single article about a final product, so much of the dialogue and transformation that unfolds in process
would remain hidden.
In a sense, we as reporters should be tasked with following processes through space and time, as they unwind and take shape – not simply attending to moments of certainty, completion, and finality. If that’s uncomfortable for some, we should
ask ourselves why the illumination of process is unnerving, as something to withhold or obscure, rather than to disclose and
display.
