NLA Discussion: Public Forum

[bpihuman]

This is a response to John Comings' posting of Oct. 12, in which 
he said, "If talking about [research] findings on the NLA listserv is a 
public forum, we'll stop using it and open a closed research forum, which 
the NLA list members had asked us not to do.  But if we put out a 
document that says 'draft' it is not in the public domain."

	The NLA listserv is a public forum.  Any message posted to it 
goes to about 650 subscribers, most of whose identities are unknown to 
anyone but the list moderator.  These subscribers are free to copy any 
message and retransmit it just like an electronic chain letter, and they 
often do.  Journalists who subscribe to the list have much the same 
right.  They may quote from, paraphrase and summaraize the message in 
news accounts, but they may not quote it in its entirety because that 
would violate copyright law.  (The same law applies to all commercial 
publishers.)

	Hence, any message posted to a public list, even one marked 
"draft," is fair game for news coverage.  (This is not the same thing as 
being "in the public domain," which is another issue altogether.  That 
phrase refers to creative works such as "The Star-Spangled Banner," which 
have been around so long they no longer have copyright protection.)

	John and any of his colleagues may start a closed list and 
exclude journalists, and the NLA listserv may in the future decide to 
exclude journalists, but this is the current state of affairs.

	But let's say a draft report appears on a closed list or gets 
circulated among selected reviewers, and someone leaks a copy to me, 
as happened quite recently with a report circulated by John's think tank. 
 The law allows me to write about that report.  My ethical responsibility 
is to weigh the newsworthiness and credibility of the report, check out 
the facts, seek comment from the author(s) and, if I think it 
appropriate, tell my readers about it.

	Are there reports I would not write about?  Yes, indeed.  About 
two years ago I received a sheaf of material from an anonymous 
disgruntled employee at a well-known federal agency.  The sheaf contained 
photocopies of several formal complaints to the inspector general at a 
Cabinet-level department.  The sender obviously hoped to discredit the 
agency by generating bad publicity.  I decided not to do a story because 
I did not find the material particularly credible or newsworthy -- not 
because I wished to spare the agency any embarrassment.

Dave Speights, Editor
Report on Literacy Programs
951 Pershing Drive
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 587-6300
<bpihuman at bpinews.com>