Former New York Times reporter Richard Halloran has criticized
the media here for not taking a tougher stand on openness.
Photo by Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin

Hard-liners were disturbed. Some quietly applauded this contrarian stand. Others simply didn't care.

The episode reveals a basic truth about the news media in Hawaii: They're far from homogenous. And some say the media here are far from perfect.

Two years ago, visiting journalist Spencer Sherman, writing in a Columbia Journalism Review piece, criticized Honolulu media for being overly mellow. He noted that the struggle to open the files of disciplined police officers was led by student journalists, not the newspapers or television outlets.

Former New York Times reporter Richard Halloran, who lambasted the Honolulu press in the article, faulted the established media here for not taking a tougher stand on openness, including police secrecy.

"Of all the people in our society that have to operate in the open, it's the police," Halloran said. "That's the way they maintain their credibility with the public. They don't get it with labor unions and privacy laws. The newspapers haven't fought very hard on this in my view...The media is the court of first resort. The public ought to be looking to the press first to lead the way to openness."

"Over the years, various media here have fought the good fight," Portnoy said. "But there have also been a number of times because of economics or politics that the fight has been ignored or overlooked. On the whole, I give the media very high marks collectively...Frankly, the public is very apathetic to it."

Portnoy offered the Hawaii Tribune-Herald on the Big Island as an example of "a newspaper that hasn't been hesitant to spend the money and time to get what they want." The Tribune-Herald sued and got access to the 911 emergency response tapes relating to the Dana Ireland murder and police files.

Pat Tummons, editor and publisher of Environment Hawaii, added that Hawaii's two daily newspapers have a responsibility to be at the forefront of monitoring public meetings and advocating openness. Instead, she said the papers have "dropped the ball."

Smyser said easing the state's open-meetings law actually improves government. Gov. Ben Cayetano signed the bill into law in June.

The measure allows members of boards, commissions and councils to meet privately if the gathering has less than a quorum but prohibits them from committing to a vote.

"I differ with my media friends in practically praying that Gov. Cayetano will sign the bill relaxing restraints in the state Sunshine Law," Smyser wrote.

He said Hawaii's ethics and sunshine laws are based on a "healthy fear of abuse of power." But some go too far and actually inhibit good government and free speech, Smyser said.

"The Board of Regents were forbidden from talking to each other without declaring a public meeting," Smyser said. "That's the dumbest idea in the history of the world."

University of Hawaii journalism Professor Gerald Kato claims the law's provisions were a necessary evil.

"I think Bud misses the point," said Kato. "He says a lot of these boards could function better with the changes.

"But a lot of these boards could do the job a lot faster and easier if there was total secrecy...Government is not a private corporation. I strongly disagree with Bud about that...Democracy, open government, is a very difficult thing to live with. It's a pain in the butt. But that's the premise, that people can hold their government accountable."

Frustrated parents at Kaneohe's Mokapu Elementary School say the Lawrence J. Norton sexual molestation case is a frightening example of how government secrecy can threaten the public welfare.

Norton, then a fourth-grade teacher at Mokapu, was accused in 1991 of fondling the breast of an 8-year-old student.

Administrators granted Norton tenure with the Department of Education while the case was still under investigation. Eventually, he was cleared by both the DOE and the courts. Citing the state's privacy law, DOE officials sealed records of the case and declined comment on its substance.

Two years later, when a different Mokapu student accused him of fondling her, Norton pleaded no contest, acknowledged a history of abuse and was jailed.

But the details of that case also are still secret. The DOE won't release results of its investigation, and Circuit Judge Sandra Simms sealed the presentencing report on which she based her sentence of a year in jail and five years' probation.

The only person to offer insight was City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro who, in criticizing the sentence as a "mockery of justice," revealed that Norton had admitted molesting more than two dozen children in his lifetime.

Kaneshiro was accused of misconduct for revealing information from the secret presentencing report, and Norton's lawyer tried to use it to get other pending molestation charges released. Nobody would elaborate on the details of Norton's past molestations.

Parents say they are fed up with the secrecy. They want to know how many children Norton molested at Mokapu Elementary School. They want to know what education officials did to protect students and what they're doing to keep it from happening again.

They want to know the fate of the two dozen molested children cited by Kaneshiro. How recently did the abuse occur? How many were Mokapu students? Do their parents even know what happened? And have the children received the therapy experts say is essential to recovering from childhood abuse?

School officials insist they handled the case properly, but the records to prove or disprove that are secret.

Parents like Carolyn Mellon accuse school officials of hiding behind privacy laws to prevent public scrutiny of their actions. The privacy laws that protect Norton also protect the state from exposure of its wrongdoing, she said.

"Everyone should be concerned about this and want to know what they're doing to keep it from happening again," Mellon said.

"Since when do (Norton's) rights to privacy outweigh the compelling and inarguable need for treatment for these children?" asked the mother of one alleged victim.