The Importance of Open Government; a Deadly Fire in Cathedral City–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: March 11, 2024

Indy Digest: March 11, 2024

The Independent yesterday published one of my favorite annual features: The FOILIES, a list of tongue-in-cheek awards for anti-public-records hijinks, given out to government agencies each year by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock.

The annual FOILIES list is important and sometimes humorous—but the recounting of government officials going to extreme lengths to keep records that belong to the public, from becoming public, never ceases to really piss me off.

The FOILIES are timed each year to coincide with Sunshine Week, “a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.”

As I have mentioned in this space before: Journalists, now more than ever before, often have to fight to get even the most basic of records from government agencies. The reasons for this range from incompetence, to indifference, to attempts to hide legitimate corruption and wrongdoing—but no matter the reason, this disregard for the public’s right to know is terrible in so many ways.

Right now, my colleagues and I are being stymied in our efforts to get public records from at least three different sources. In one case, we’re being denied the records on flimsy grounds. In another, we’re being flat-out ignored; in a third, we’re so far getting information slowly, in delayed little chunks.

The only recourse journalists and members of the public (like you!) have? To sue. Lawsuits, of course, are time-consuming and expensive—for both plaintiffs and defendants (aka taxpayers). Thankfully, there are organizations that provide pro-bono help—but it’s depressing and appalling and tiring to need to go to court to get records that are obviously public records.

If you’ve never read our annual FOILIES piece, I strongly recommend doing so this year. When public officials try to keep secrets or withhold information, they’re not just hurting journalists; they’re hurting YOU.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• A terrible and tragic local story over the weekend didn’t get nearly the amount of attention that it should have, in part because whoever/whatever determines story placement on the daily’s website prioritized tennis to a bonkers degree: Three people, possibly homeless, were killed in a fire at the former Elks Lodge in Cathedral City early Saturday morning. The Desert Sun reports: “Firefighters rescued two people from inside and the roof collapsed shortly after, Contreras said. One of them was declared dead at the scene and the other was taken to Eisenhower Medical Center with serious injuries. They later found two additional victims who had died from their injuries. Contreras said there wasn’t a business currently using the building, and the victims were not occupants. The entire backside of the building collapsed, he added. An official from Elks Lodge said the organization sold the building three years ago and it’s been vacant. … Contreras … did not confirm the victims were homeless but did confirm they were not legally allowed to be there.” On Saturday night, you would find this story at DesertSun.com only after scrolling past 12 BNP Paribas stories, four ads, a sponsored content piece, restaurant inspection “news” and two events previews. This is not an exaggeration; I have the screen shots.

• A cyberattack on a medical-claims system has wreaked such havoc on the health care industry that Medicare is starting to make accelerated/advanced payments to make sure providers have enough money. NPR says: “The hacked company handles ‘14 billion clinical, financial, and operational transactions annually,’ according to its website. … The American Hospital Association calls the suspected ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, a unit of insurance giant UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division, ‘the most significant and consequential incident of its kind against the U.S. health care system in history.’ While doctors’ practices, hospital systems, and pharmacies struggle to find workarounds, the attack is exposing the health system’s broad vulnerability.” Here’s the Medicare info on the advance payments.

• The former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee is increasingly speaking out against vaccines and vaccine mandates. The Hill reports: “‘I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,’ Trump said in a recent campaign rally in Richmond, Va. It’s a line Trump has repeated, and his campaign said he is only referring to school COVID-19 vaccine mandates—but that hasn’t eased fears that the GOP leader could accelerate already worrying trends of declining child vaccination. Trump ‘is an important voice. He has a big platform. And he uses that platform, in this case, to do harm. Because he’s implying by saying that we shouldn’t mandate vaccines, vaccines are in some ways ineffective or unsafe,’ said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. … Throughout the campaign, Trump has performed a complicated tap dance regarding COVID vaccines. He simultaneously wants to take credit for their speedy development but has also criticized their use and knocked his now former rivals for being too pro-vaccine.”

• Related: A researcher, writing for The Conversation, says that anti-vaccine beliefs by many women have their roots in the medical system’s long-documented mistreatment of women: “As young girls in medical offices, they were touched without consent, yelled at, disbelieved or threatened. One mother, Susan, recalled her pediatrician abruptly lying her down and performing a rectal exam without her consent at the age of 12. Another mother, Luna, shared how a pediatrician once threatened to have her institutionalized when she voiced anxiety at a routine physical. As women giving birth, they often felt managed, pressured or discounted. One mother, Meryl, told me, ‘I felt like I was coerced under distress into Pitocin and induction’ during labor. … Together with the convoluted bureaucracy of for-profit health care, experiences of medical harm contributed to ‘one million little touch points of information,’ in one mother’s phrase, that underscored the untrustworthiness and harmful effects of U.S. health care writ large. … They tied childhood vaccination and the more recent development of COVID-19 vaccines to a bloated pharmaceutical industry and for-profit health care model. As one mother explained, ‘The FDA is not looking out for our health. They’re looking out for their wealth.'”

• Today’s recall news involves … cinnamon products! The Associated Press says: “Several U.S. discount retailers recalled packages of ground cinnamon after federal health officials warned that they were contaminated with high levels of lead. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a safety alert for six brands of cinnamon, including those sold at Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores. The move followed massive recalls last fall of WanaBana and other brands of cinnamon applesauce pouches linked to nearly 500 reports of lead poisoning in young children in 44 states. The FDA tested retail samples of spices to determine whether other products were contaminated. … Recalls have been issued for Marcum and Supreme Tradition brand ground cinnamon sold at Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and Save A Lot stores nationwide. Other recalls include El Chilar brand cinnamon sold at La Joya Morelense in Baltimore, Maryland; and Swad cinnamon powder sold at Patel Brothers stores across the U.S.”

• Plus … infant swings! The New York Times says: “Jool Baby, a brand of children’s products, has recalled about 63,000 infant swings that were sold at Walmart stores and online because they posed a suffocation risk, federal safety regulators said. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday that the Jool Baby Nova Baby Infant Swing that was marketed, intended or designed for infant sleep posed a suffocation risk because it had an incline angle greater than 10 degrees. The product violated the commission’s Infant Sleep Products Regulation and the Safe Sleep for Babies Act, the agency said. … The recall notice affects infant swings that were manufactured from June 2022 through September 2023.”

• And finally … the Los Angeles Times’ presses printed their final paper over the weekend; the paper will now be printed by another company. The shuttering of the press, which is having reverberations in the print-newspaper world across the west, has to do with today’s realities regarding print-newspaper readership, real estate and various other issues. Here’s the Times’ piece on the closure. A tidbit: “The decision was set in motion many years earlier when the Chicago-based Tribune Co., then owner of The Times, sold its historic properties, and The Times became a tenant. Now, six years after Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought The Times in 2018, the lease on the Olympic plant is expiring, and paying rent has become untenable. The paper will be printed in Riverside by the Southern California Newspaper Group, with its circulation numbers remaining the same. … (Press employees) have watched as their crews have been cut, three shifts reduced to one. They once printed other papers besides The Times, and those have gone elsewhere. But it’s hard to be nostalgic over what seems inevitable.”

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