By John H. Palmer

I’m barely a month into this job as editor, and already I’ve seen quite a bit. This week’s column is a bit wordy, so bear with me.

In the last week, there was public debate over who should have been able to see a letter from Staples PTA executive board members to the school board opposing the superintendent’s proposed cellphone ban — and for that matter, whether we should have published excerpts of it when a school board member sent it to us after the board’s April 3 meeting was abruptly canceled.

Just days before that, on Monday, March 31, planning and zoning officials had to cancel a planned public hearing about the Hamlet proposal in Saugatuck when unknown hackers hijacked the Zoom platform. With more than 100 people watching, several graphic videos were shown depicting violent sexual acts, as well as videos with white supremacist messages and Nazi insignia. In addition, violent videos of graphic beheadings of what appeared to be prisoners in orange jumpsuits were seen by participants.

Both incidents got me thinking about the topics of public access, regarding town meetings and public documents, and I thought I’d spend some time this week discussing how I – and by association, we at the Journal – view the public’s right to transparency in government and how we protect your rights.

Electronic access must remain the norm for town meetings …

Before the pandemic struck back in 2020, most town meetings were held in person. I’ve spent more than my share of evenings as a reporter in cold auditoriums, listening to town officials drone on while working feverishly to jot down as many details and accurate quotes as possible in my tiny notebook.

Of course, when Covid hit, Zoom meetings became the rage, and in many cases was the only way that town meetings could be held so that the public could participate, and the media could keep tabs on what government officials were doing.

In my opinion, it was one of the best things that could have happened, because suddenly anyone who had a computer had access to public meetings. Think about those who are elderly, who don’t have a vehicle, who are disabled, or traveling for business. Those are people who were now able to attend meetings electronically.

Town officials can now attend meetings and cast votes from afar without being physically present, and the media can cover the meetings remotely. Many of our reporters, including myself, don’t reside in Westport and the fact that meetings are held online allows us to cover the news better than some of our competitors who live in town.

That said, Westport still needs to get its act together a bit, as the town remains in a hybrid situation with some meetings broadcast live, while others are recorded, and still others remain in-person only. There’s no reason that the Planning and Zoning Commission should be able to hold a remote public hearing about the Hamlet on Monday, only to hold a special in-person only meeting on Thursday giving the public a first look at the design of the new Long Lots Elementary School.

There are those who will always want to be physically present at town meetings, and that’s fine. But if we have the technology and space to provide a hybrid option, that is the best option so that everyone gets a chance to monitor the proceedings.

… but they must do a better job of keeping them secure

At the same time, the P&Z’s online fiasco showed that even with the best intentions, electronic means of gathering are by no means foolproof. We all want answers to what happened, but even Westport police say that it’s likely those behind the “zoombombing,” as it’s been called, will never be caught. This is because many of these attacks come through overseas virtual public networks, or VPNs, that are encrypted and ensure no individual computers can be identified. It’s the same thing your employers use to allow you to work from home and keep information safe.

Which brings me back to Zoom. It’s been 5 years since the pandemic, and security issues with Zoom have been widely documented. So why is the town still using it to live stream and hold their meetings?

I’m no techie, but I have to imagine there is a better platform than Zoom that allows meetings to be held with higher encryption security. It may cost the town a bit more in the short-term, but remember that Zoom is free, and you get what you pay for. Westport has an opportunity to improve its ability to provide safe, easy-to-use meeting access for everyone.

Electronic access allows other journalists to be lazy

I’ve said often that I pride ourselves on the fact that we cover Westport better than any of our competitors in the area – despite the fact that many of our staff don’t live here. That’s because of electronic access. But that access also allows others to cut-and-paste your work for the sake of gaining eyes on social media.

All you had to do was look at the coverage of the hacking incident in The Hour of Norwalk and the Connecticut Post – both of which are Hearst publications that hide their news behind a corporate paywall. Patch didn’t even bother.

Hearst’s coverage was two days late, but was teased relentlessly on Facebook, making claims that the meeting “suddenly went dark and didn’t return.” That didn’t happen. I watched as Chairman Paul Lebowitz consulted with other officials and made the smart decision to close the meeting with apologies.

Both reports also contained much the same language I used in the Journal’s story. The least these “local” news sources can do is try to actually attend the meeting, rather than pirate my writing. But as Oscar Wilde once said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Access to public records must never be compromised

Finally this week, one of our competitors – a “bloog” writer, if you will – threw shade at us on April 9 for our decision on April 4 to publish a letter from the Staples PTA executive board to the Board of Education members. For the record, we did not publish the full letter, but used excerpts from it for a story we broke first about the letter’s existence.

The letter, which opposed Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarise’s proposed bell-to-bell cell phone ban at the school, was to be read at the school board’s meeting the night before, which was unexpectedly canceled with no explanation.

The Journal was forwarded a copy of the letter, which resulted in our story about the issue the next day. The criticism that we received was that the letter, sent by well-intentioned member of the school board, should not have been published because it was released “without consent” by a board member.

It’s time for a lesson on the Freedom of Information Act, which in Connecticut mandates that any correspondence that reaches the emails of public officials automatically becomes public record, and therefore open to scrutiny from the public and the media.

I stand behind our decision, and access to public records is a hill I will die on. Our rights as U.S. citizens affords us the ability to keep our elected officials accountable, and that includes the right to view documents that govern the decisions that ultimately govern us.

Respectable journalists protect the rights of their readers to have access to these documents, and we don’t wait for government officials to tell us what they’ve consented to.

John Palmer is editor of the Westport Journal, and has covered community news in Fairfield County and Massachusetts for over 30 years. He can be contacted at jpalmer@westportjournal.com