June 23, 2016 – Florida Politics
by Scott Powers
The City of Orlando and a long list of news media are headed to court to decide whether scores of phone call recordings of the Pulse nightclub massacre should be released to the public.
Media companies including the Associated Press, the Orlando Sentinel, several Orlando TV stations, various other newspaper companies, TV networks and online news services filed suit against the city Thursday challenging the city’s strategy for blocking media and public access to recordings of phone calls from the Pulse nightclub the morning of the massacre.
In all, there were 22 news media or their parent companies, plus four press or freedom-of-the-press organizations, including Florida’s First Amendment Foundation, joining to sue the city.
The city contends the files are exempt from Florida’s broad public records laws for two reasons… [READ MORE]