{"id":1015,"date":"2011-10-20T07:10:34","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T11:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:26:23","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:26:23","slug":"fla-mayor-says-reporters-columnists-are-lobbyists-under-ethics-code-i-say-hes-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/10\/20\/fla-mayor-says-reporters-columnists-are-lobbyists-under-ethics-code-i-say-hes-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Fla. Mayor Says Reporters, Columnists Are Lobbyists Under Ethics Code; I Say He\u2019s Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Peters\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, my parents can be proud of me. No longer do they have to tell their friends that I practice law or teach or write. They can say I\u2019m a lobbyist, all because of Richard Kaplan, the mayor of Lauderhill, Fla.<\/p>\n

Kaplan\u00a0said last week<\/a>\u00a0that reporters and columnists are lobbyists. Specifically, he refused to speak with a reporter unless she filed for public inspection \u201cwhatever is required as a lobbyist.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The purpose of the ethics code is to limit influence peddling. It restricts lobbying by elected officials and their family members, it bans gifts from lobbyists and expands disclosure requirements, and it creates a special office to investigate government wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

To see if Kaplan\u2019s right, let\u2019s look at the code.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s its definition of \u201clobbying\u201d and \u201clobbying activities\u201d:<\/p>\n

[A] communication, by any means, from a lobbyist to a covered individual regarding any item that will foreseeably be decided by a final decision-making authority, which communication seeks to influence, convince, or persuade the covered individual to support or oppose the item.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s its definition of \u201clobbyist\u201d:<\/p>\n

[A] person who is retained, with or without compensation, for the purpose of lobbying, or a person who is employed by another person or entity, on a full-time or part-time basis, principally to lobby on behalf of that other person or entity.<\/p>\n

Mashing them together, then, a lobbyist is a \u201cperson who is retained \u2026 for the purpose of\u201d communicating with public officials about public business, with the intent \u201cto influence, convince, or persuade\u201d the official to take a certain action.<\/p>\n

First, columnists in the broadest sense often want \u201cto influence, convince, or persuade\u201d public officials to do things. Some are employed for that very reason\u2014to poke the bear. But in general they\u2019re not doing so by communicating with the public official. They\u2019re doing so by communicating with the public at large. Any direct communication between the columnist and official is incidental.<\/p>\n

Second, reporters worthy of the title don\u2019t \u201cseek to influence, convince, or persuade.\u201d They try to uncover the best obtainable version of the truth, as Bob Woodward once said, and then report it accurately, fairly and without bias. That\u2019s the most any reporter can do in a world without perfect information. Reporters are objective, not advocative.<\/p>\n

Third, the idea that a reporter or columnist would have to file something to talk with a public official raises First Amendment questions. It conjures images of licensing, the Colonial-era scheme the government used to control access to printing presses. Which, in turn, controlled who could be reporters and columnists. David Bralow, assistant general counsel of the Tribune Company, which owns the South Florida\u00a0Sun-Sentinel<\/em>, made that point\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It might not hurt for the county to revisit the code to clarify a few terms, but by my reading reporters and columnists don\u2019t qualify as lobbyists. And even if they did, the First Amendment wouldn\u2019t tolerate it.<\/p>\n

My parents will be so disappointed.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Peters is a lawyer and the Frank Martin Fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism, where he\u2019s working on his Ph.D. and specializing in the First Amendment. He\u2019s written on legal issues for a variety of news media, most recently Wired and PBS. He can be reached at\u00a0jonathan.w.peters@gmail.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Peters\u00a0 Finally, my parents can be proud of me. No longer do they have to tell their friends that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-gn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}