By Bridget Manley First Published in the The Harrisonburg Citizen in 2021
Following a ruling against him in early October, The Breeze’s Editor-in-Chief Jake Conley says he’s worried moving forward about how much information university officials will or will not provide to journalists in the interest of public health.
Conley, who sued the university on behalf of the campus newspaper, was asking that JMU provide The Breeze with COVID-19 data in response to a FOIA request filed last year.
“In my opinion that really does give the school a pretty wide discretion, and that sets a pretty large precedent for the university in how it moves forward with data governance and data release, and working with future journalists,” Conley said. “That really kind of solidifies the power that they have, and gives them something to fall back on if people ever try to push back on the timeline that they think is unreasonably long.”