Greg Weaver: Reporters Committee making a difference in Indiana public access

Established more than 50 years ago, the Washington, D.C.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has made quite a splash in Indiana in just the past 16 months.

It was in March 2024 that the nonprofit announced the hiring of attorney Kris Cundiff to provide free legal services to Indiana journalists and news organizations as they seek access to events and information critical to providing an understanding of local and state government across Hoosierland.

Indiana is one of five states where the committee has established a Local Legal Initiative, a six-year-old program that is working to expand beyond the organization’s federal efforts and help keep state and local governments accountable. The initiative also is at work in Colorado, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

The Local Legal Initiative is now large enough to have its own national director, Eric Feder, who was appointed to the post last month.

“At a time when local newsrooms face mounting legal challenges and shrinking resources, the Local Legal Initiative is crucial to meeting their legal needs so they can produce reporting that holds power to account,” Feder said in a news release.

Cundiff, a former radio news reporter and former assistant in the Indiana Public Access Counselor’s Office, certainly is working to provide that kind of help in Indiana.

Cundiff’s legal work was able to shake loose the price of Indiana’s recent purchase of lethal-injection drugs, information sought by the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

Ultimately, Chronicle reporter Casey Smith was able to report that the state spent nearly $1.2 million on four doses of the drugs. Two were used in the executions of convicted killers Joseph Corcoran in December and Benjamin Ritchie in May. The other two—valued at $600,000—expired without ever being used.

“The Reporters Committee has provided an invaluable service not only to us as a media outlet but to the taxpayers of the state,” Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Niki Kelly said in an email. “Without their representation in our lawsuit, we wouldn’t know how much the state had spent on execution drugs — almost $1.2 million. And they are still fighting to make sure independent media witnesses are allowed in for state executions.”

Indiana is one of only two death-penalty states that does not explicitly provide the media access to executions. However, Indiana reporters have gained access to some executions by persuading the condemned inmate to allow them to be on the inmate’s personal witness list.

Cundiff is representing five media organizations—the Capital Chronicle, The Associated Press, Gannett, Circle City Broadcasting and TEGNA—in a lawsuit that challenges the state’s witness execution policy, arguing that the lack of accommodations for the media violates the First Amendment.

Even before Cundiff entered the picture, the Reporters Committee helped several media organizations challenge Indiana’s buffer zone law, which allows police to keep observers 25 feet away from a police action. That case is now pending before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

But it’s not just large or statewide media organizations Cundiff is helping. He also worked to secure an out-of-court settlement for the small Morgan County Correspondent, persuading the Mooresville Consolidated School Board to adopt new transparency reforms for certain public actions.

While the lawsuits draw headlines, Cundiff said his day-to-day contact with newsrooms across the state is just as important. Those contacts now total in the hundreds and include everything from presentations on the state’s open-door and open-records laws to pre-publication review of controversial stories, he said.

“That’s gratifying to me in this role, that there’s certainly a need for this, because being a resource is my No. 1 goal,” Cundiff said.

And that’s certainly a comfort to journalists across the state.•

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Greg Weaver is editor of The Indiana Lawyer. Reach him at [email protected]