John Adams

This really came clear to me even before I lost my job at the Trib where I had written – I was one of the first reporters in the state to blog.

Not the first, but one of the first.

And I had a blog, and in my blog, I had taken the attorney general to task over what I thought was an inappropriate attack on the Associated Press, which had very reasonably asked for public information.

And instead of producing that public information or denying it and going through the necessary channels, sometimes they deny it and then we sue them and then the courts decide whether we have access to that information or not.

Rather than kind of go that traditional route, the attorney general issued a press release denying it and saying that he was protecting gun owners' rights from the prying eyes of the news media that was asking for information.

information about concealed carry permits, you know, which communities have the most concealed carry permits.

This is information they've been asking for for years and publishing stories that would say, you know, they would report on the trends, you know, never like listing who has concealed carry permits.

But that's sort of like...

that attack on that AP reporter led to a doxing incident, one of the early doxing incidents where that AP reporter, his name, address, Google images of his house were posted on a extreme far right extremist network.

And I took issue with that and I made my attitudes known.

And that very quickly led to an invitation for the Montana Tea Party Association to come basically

answer for my attacks on the Second Amendment.

So I took that invitation.

I went to an evangelical church out in the out in the Helena, North Valley, and they wanted to know, like, why I wrote what I wrote and why I think journalists should have access to that information.

And we had a really interesting conversation where we heard each other, right?

Like I heard what their concerns were.

And then I said, let me tell you how we do our job, why we do our job, why this information is important, why the Montana Constitution has a right to know.

And I kind of explained just sort of like the whole process and how the role that journalism plays in representing the public, in holding their government officials accountable.

And it didn't take long for them to make those connections and see that this was a more complex story than the soundbites might have you believe.

And that takes work, right?