Even though the annual project known as Sunshine Week officially kicked off just three years ago, the effort to pry the lid off government secrets has been around for much, much longer. In fact, the grand experiment in democracy known as the United States of America couldn't exist without the presence of an informed, engaged citizenry. And in order for the public to be informed, it must have ready access to public information.
The news media, as the nation's primary information gatherers and disseminators, play an instrumental role in this. Every year we - including the Missoulian - file numerous requests for information from various government agencies, from local city councils all the way up to the White House.
Of course, we're well aware that sometimes governments have good reason to keep information hidden from the public eye. Sometimes the widespread release of information, especially in wartime, would endanger our very lives.
But those instances, even in wartime, tend to be relatively rare. More often, politicians and government officials try to sweep information under the rug merely because it's inconvenient, or because it makes them look bad. And every once in a while, someone tries to hide information that should be public for more villainous reasons.
The fight to keep the curtains open on government activities is a day-in and day-out battle. It takes diligence to protect the First Amendment (that's the one that says, in part, “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”) because the light of public scrutiny doesn't come streaming into the darkest corners of government all on its own.
Recently, there's been much to celebrate on this front. Congress passed the Open Government Act, which among other important measures, will establish a new Office of Government Information Services to help process Freedom of Information Act requests.
Congress approved this important legislation because the American people demanded it. Unanswered FOIA requests have been piling up for years. An audit by the National Security Archive found that 212,000 requests for federally held information were awaiting an answer at the end of last year - which was actually a decrease of 2 percent from the end of 2005, when there were 217,000 unanswered requests.
These improvements are the result of a public that continues to push for transparency in government, and thanks largely to news organizations that strive for public access on their behalf.
With that in mind, we would like to point to the results of a recent national survey conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The survey was released just in time for Sunshine Week. Here are some highlights:
- More American adults - about 74 percent - regard the federal government as secretive, compared to 62 percent in 2006.
- About half of the people surveyed think state government is secretive, and 44 percent think it is open.
- About 90 percent of them think it's important to know a political candidate's stance on open government when voting.
Living in a democracy means being part of a government that we must oversee ourselves. The politicians we elect are merely the intermediaries we think will best carry out our orders. But our orders are only as good as the information on which they're based.
Our own sunshine
This week the Missoulian is joining hundreds of other news organizations in recognizing Sunshine Week, a national project led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that supports open government and the First Amendment.
The Missoulian's editorial board plans to join this effort by publishing editorials dedicated to the pursuit of government transparency for the rest of the week. Tomorrow, we'll discuss the apparent lack of public interest in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as we enter into the fifth year of the Iraq war. Thursday, we'll take a closer look at what the frontrunning presidential candidates are saying about open government, and compare that to what they're actually doing. And Friday, we'll plead with a local public institution to share public information more readily.
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