WFSU by Gina Jordan
December 18, 2019
The Tallahassee-based First Amendment Foundation has a new leader. Pamela Marsh took over this month from the retiring Barbara Petersen, who will stick around for a while as a consultant.
Marsh is the former U-S Attorney for the Northern District of Florida. She has more than 20 years of legal experience and is a shareholder at the Ausley McMullen law firm in Tallahassee.
She says her new job shares some similarities with her time as both a private and government attorney. “I will still be helping others with the law and interpreting the law and thinking about applying the law to different sets of facts,” Marsh says. “There’s a lot of looking at new legislation, thinking of how bills will affect the public and change the law.”
In the current political climate, Marsh says it’s more important than ever for journalists and news consumers to dig deeper and rely on evidence rather than short sound bites. “That’s what our public records law and our open government meetings laws really facilitate.”
She says “we have to push back” against those who refuse to acknowledge the truth.