GARY SCHOOL CORP., OTHERS PREVENT FLOW OF INFORMATION
POST-TRIBUNE
BY: MICHELLE HOLMES

When Frank Wiget retired from the Post-Tribune earlier this year, he'd been a newsman just about as long as I'd been living.

As he told me more than once, it was well past time to say goodbye. A reporter's job had changed, and it wasn't for the better.

Gone were the days of walking past the murder weapon at the crime scene and jotting down the details in his notebook. Gone were the days of asking simple questions (Is it true the victim's fingers were all chopped off?) and getting simple answers (Yes, and his toes, too).

Frank's last years were mostly at a desk, waiting for a fax from “public information officers.”

The cop who worked the case? Too rough, too raw, too likely to say something that someone wants to hear.

These days, the simple question never gets a simple answer, but an “official statement” (along the lines of: The investigation continues into a digital anomaly discovered at the scene.).

“I'm too old for this,” Frank would shake his head and say, explaining that the desk clerk refused to answers questions (which way did the ax murderer flee?) and the dispatcher quaked in fear of firing (The chief's not in; you'll have to call back Monday, sir).

It's not just police departments that have declared the public's business really isn't public after all.

In the Wal-Martization of America, the worker bees just can't be trusted and the muckety-mucks alone can spout the party line.

Fine for corporations. Bad news for democracies.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the problem more evident than in the Gary Public Schools where, we're told, just two people have the right to speak without permission.

To the 938 teachers and 332 principals and guidance counselors, librarians and other professionals, the message is made clear:

Sit down and shut up. Your voice is not worth hearing.

After all, you might just speak the truth.

You might know why money's missing, why kids can't read, why a high school pool was broken for a year.

You might ask why you spend your money on Kleenex for your classroom, and School Board members jet to California conferences.

You might even have a class where kids — gasp — excel, and if word got out to others, imagine what expectations might arise.

So, it's better, really, if you let the “expert” answer. At least that seems to be the view of Superintendent Mary Steele.

Want to know how and where Gary stores its valued art collection (so valued that we can't photograph it)?

Why an administrator was suspended or anything at all about the athletic program?

You'd better hope she has the time and inclination to find an answer. Because at her command, all others must stay silent.

You can see this as a media problem. But if we — with editors, reporters, lawyers and a printing press — can't get answers, pity that poor citizen who tries to go the course alone.

Luckily, there are those who won't be cowed, who speak even under threat of firing, who understand public employees don't sign away their rights as free Americans and the news, both good and bad, belongs to everyone.

Still, it's too bad — for reporters, and the public — that those in charge of civic life in Northwest Indiana don't seem to subscribe to that same view.