Public citizens may not have access to audio of 911 tapes, if a bill passed by the state Assembly Thursday gains support in the Senate.
Currently, audio recordings of 911 calls are considered public records and are often used by the media in high-profile stories.
With the death of University of Wisconsin junior Brittany Zimmermann in 2008, many media outlets obtained copies of the call between Zimmermann’s fianc? Jordan Gonnering and a 911 dispatcher. The call was frequently played on the air as part of the murder investigation.
The Gonnering and Zimmermann families have since urged lawmakers to prohibit the release of 911 calls to the public.
The bill does not allow public access to audio tapes of 911 calls, although an amendment added does allow the media to listen to the calls, but not copy them. Transcripts of the calls will continue to be available for reviewing and copying, but audio recordings will be inaccessible.
The bill passed with a 67 to 30 vote. Jordan Gonnering’s parents were present to witness its passage.
After the bill had been passed, Rep. Amy Vruwink, D-Milladore, thanked the Assembly for voting in favor of the bill.
She expressed her approval with its passage, saying that voting for the bill showed strong support for victims’ families who have been “re-victimized” by having to hear their 911 calls played by the media.
“When you make a 911 call, you don’t expect that that tragedy that you are reporting…is going to be played over and over again,” Vruwink said.
Not all were pleased with the bill’s passing, however.
Peter Fox, executive director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, said even in light of the amendment allowing media to listen to audio recordings, they are still opposed to the bill.
Journalists and news-gathering media should not be treated any differently than regular citizens, he said.
The issue, Fox added, is public access to these records.
There are valid reasons why the public should have the ability to hear for themselves what is on 911 calls. For example, a simple 911 transcript does not convey whether a 911 operator is competent or not.
“There’s a basic difference between a scream of a young woman and a high-pitched sound,” Fox said. “Who are we going to trust to make these evaluations of what is heard on a short piece of tape? The public deserves access to those recordings as well as to the content of those recordings.”
Additionally, there are only a very small fraction of 911 calls that ever make their way to being reported as an actual call, which are the ones this bill is concerned with.
“[These calls] tend to be emotional, and it’s very well understood there’s people’s lives involved and there’s persons’ lives affected by these recordings,” Fox said. “The great majority of news editors whose responsibility is to either air or put the records on news websites…there is solid judegment used in making that decision.”
