Members of the press hold both a personal and professional obligation to report on matters of public concern.

Access to public meetings and spaces is a fundamental right of journalists and of citizens in general.

In the chaos of a shooting last Tuesday that rocked Purdue University, Michael Takeda, one of the photographers for the school’s newspaper, the Exponent, was detained by police for three hours. They also confiscated his camera.

According to a story from the Exponent, the Electrical Engineering building, where police detained Takeda, had not yet been closed off to the public. The Exponent also reported that it was only after Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, put pressure on the university that Takeda’s possessions were returned to him.

On the same Tuesday in Colorado, reporters from the Craig Daily Press and KRAI in Craig were barred from entering a public discussion with federal officials to determine the endangered-species status of the greater sage-grouse by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, according to the Daily Sentinel.

While the situations being covered by the press on Tuesday were completely different, the disregard of public rights was identical between Jewell and Purdue police.

There is no need to discuss the finer details of open-meetings law. If the public is allowed to be somewhere, then, as members of the public, so are reporters.

The press is not a separate group of citizens. It is not subject to restrictions that do not apply to other citizens. Any citizen can take notes and photographs in a public place and then write a story about it. The fact that the story could be printed in a publication is irrelevant.

The Criterion commends U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton and Daily Sentinel Publisher Jay Seaton for publicly opposing the restriction of reporters from the sage-grouse meeting, as well as the Exponent and SPLC for quickly opposing and revealing injustices against Takeda.