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While lawmakers try to blame their recent GRAMA fiasco on media excess, the public should understand this rhetorical charade for what it is.

In the uproar surrounding the passage of HB477 by the Utah Legislature, lawmakers have been quick to say that the news media's support of strong open-government laws in Utah is all about "selling newspapers." There are legitimate issues to be discussed in the coming weeks about the Government Records Access and Management Act, but labeling the media's role in this fight "a special interest" should not be among them.

The facts don't support such assertions, including a significant study released this week by a BYU law professor about the historical role newspapers have played in creating, supporting and defending open-government laws across the nation.

RonNell Anderson Jones, an associate professor in the BYU law school, found that newspapers have been key instigators, litigators and enforcers of open-government laws. She argues that news gathering is only one piece of what newspapers have done to preserve and advance democracy – and maybe not even the most important piece.

"Without newspapers at the helm to instigate, coordinate, and finance legal change, much, if not most, of the nation's important constitutional and statutory open-government law of the last generation simply would not have come to pass," Jones said.

Jones notes that newspapers have fought for broad rights that allow anyone in the public to access information. Case in point is wide public access to courts guaranteed through a series of important U.S. Supreme Court precedents. The cases were largely supported by media organizations. In one of the nation's most famous First Amendment cases — New York Times vs. U.S. — Jones notes that the New York Times' legal expense in fighting the U.S. government's attempt to restrain the printing of the Pentagon Papers was likely never made up in newsstand sales.

James Madison, whose birthday on Wednesday was the reason for celebration of national Sunshine Week this week, said, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both."

Utah lawmakers' efforts to curtail the means to obtain information through HB477 have placed them squarely on a road to both a farce and tragedy. Already, some are making a course correction back to the sunshine. Let's hope others will see the light.

As for the arguments that newspapers just want to sell newspapers, those who make them don't understand the news business. If that were true, newspapers would simply fill their pages and websites with sports, celebrity gossip and entertainment news. Some profitable tabloids already use this formula. That's what sells, but it does not promote a democratic (or republican) form of government. The fact that Utah news organizations make such a large expenditure of resources to cover local and state government, even in the face of some public apathy, illustrates this commitment.

The kind of journalism that covers public agencies and uses records and investigations at its base is expensive and time-consuming. Those who want to engage in public affairs and investigative reporting do so at considerable expense. They do so with a keen recognition of the media's role as the Fourth Estate, an external watchdog to the government's three branches.

Furthermore, while lawmakers suggest that they amended Utah's records law, GRAMA, to curtail media "fishing expeditions," many other groups have said that GRAMA's fee waiver provisions have been vital to their work. If all of the GRAMA requests in the state were studied, it would likely show that the vast majority come from citizens, not the hated media.

Let's hope the emotions, anecdotes and labels surrender to more thoughtful and fact-based discussions about GRAMA and the public interest as we move toward the looming July deadline of GRAMA amendments.

Joel Campbell is a former reporter and current associate professor of communications at Brigham Young University. He is a lobbyist for the Utah Press Association. His reporting does not necessarily reflect the views of BYU. He writes on First Amendment and open-government issues for The Tribune. He can be reached at foiguy@gmail.com.