New Jersey Says People Must Be Allowed To Videotape Government Meetings

from the citizen-journalists,-start-your-cameraphones dept

Fri, Mar 9th 2007 2:31pm — Mike Masnick

Remember how Virginia Republicans were upset at Democrats for videotaping them in the State House and putting the videos on YouTube? Apparently, that's not the only place where government officials have been worried about being caught on tape. Over in New Jersey, the state Supreme Court has now said that governments in the state cannot prevent citizens from videotaping public meetings (assuming that the taping doesn't interrupt the progression of the meeting). This certainly seems like a reasonable rule for a governing organization -- but politicians aren't known for being reasonable very often, which is why this case had to end up in the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

5 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 9 Mar 2007 @ 5:13pm

probably because
The court probably made that decision because there are no laws preventing videotaping in the state house.

My guess is that there will be laws like that pretty soon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
SteveO, 10 Mar 2007 @ 10:43am

Amerika
Typical Republicans. The one thing they learned from Nixon is don't allow anything to be recorded. Fuck them. Point a camera at these pricks every chance you get.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
BlueBoy, 11 Mar 2007 @ 3:43am

Must be Terrorists
The law prohibiting videotaping in government building will be billed as an "anti-terrorism" measure.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
a, 11 Mar 2007 @ 5:35pm

SteveO, Nice comment idiot
Ummm, New Jersey is pretty heavily Democrat, so your statement should read "Typical Democrats"

What a fucking idiot.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Doug Dante, 12 Mar 2007 @ 8:55am

In Michigan Too
Michigan's Open Meetings Act require officials to hold open meetings and to allow any citizen to video or audio tape them. Family Rights Activists have faced difficulties when dealing with Citizen's Advisory Committees in this state, and IIRC, one CAC was actually effectively dismantled rather than allowing its proceedings to be video taped. Also, some boards, most notably the Detroit Public Schools, hold "informal" meetings that may be to some extent "real" business meetings, and members of those boards have been punished for exposing any information from them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]