Access to places

New York City and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new policy that would allow online journalists and bloggers to more easily obtain a press credential, The New York Observer reported.

A recent story on a football game in the INDenver Times highlighted a Colorado University press policy that limits which Web sites are granted press passes to cover athetic games.

An Oakland Tribune photographer who was arrested while taking pictures at an accident scene lost his civil rights case against the City of Oakland and several police officers on Tuesday.

A Michigan jury convicted a reporter of two felonies stemming from an incident that unfolded at the scene of a fatal accident involving state troopers, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Diane Bukowski of the weekly Michigan Citizen was convicted Friday of two felonies, each punishable by up to two years in prison. According to the Free Press,

Just when it seemed journalists had staked out anew the freedom to cover high school sports, a new legal battle has come to a head in Wisconsin.

A federal judge in Minnesota on Wednesday issued an injunction blocking a state law that would have prohibited news organizations from conducting exit polls within 100 feet of a polling place.

In the face of criticism, the Army has for the first time formally outlined a policy outlining media access to military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, giving clear but limited control to mourning families while reserving the final word for cemetery officials. 

The mayor of Galveston ordered city employees not to speak to the news media following the wave of destruction from Hurricane Ike, according to The Galveston County Daily News. 

At a press conference Monday, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas would not say when the ban might be lifted. She said city employees, including the chiefs of the fire and police departments, were too busy to talk to reporters during the state of emergency.   

A Galveston reporter who evacuated the city in the face of Hurricane Ike was asked to leave an Austin shelter Sunday, she wrote in a blog for The Galveston County Daily News, as the staff said it made them "very uncomfortable for a reporter to be inside."

At least two reporters were denied access to the site of a sinking Lake Tahoe seaplane on Thursday despite the area's designation as a "public forum," the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza said.