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22
MARCH 2006
Open
government advocates, media, public celebrate Sunshine Week
in the United States
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| Sunshine
Week poster created by the Buffalo News
with the American Society of Newspaper Editors
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During
the week of March 12-18, the second annual Sunshine Week
was observed in the United States, focusing national attention
on the need for more open government and access to information.
Sunshine
Week was first celebrated in March 2005, when
journalism groups, media companies, freedom of information
and civil liberties advocates, librarians, civic groups,
educators, and student journalists came together to pay
tribute to the importance of open government in a healthy
democratic society. Last year, more than 730 organizations
and news outlets participated, printing thousands of articles
in newspapers, magazines, and online publications, and airing
hundreds of radio and television broadcasts and public forums
focused on why open government is important to everyone,
not just journalists. Sunshine Week 2006 was even bigger
and better.
Sunshine
Week was modeled after Sunshine Sunday, which was first
observed in Florida in 2002. The Florida
Society of Newspaper Editors (FSNE) developed
Sunshine Sunday in direct response to moves by the state
legislature to severely restrict public access to information
after the September 11 terrorist attacks. For the first
Sunshine Sunday, newspapers across the state ran news stories,
editorials, columns, and cartoons highlighting the importance
of open government and seeking to preserve Florida's reputation
as the nation's leader in open government laws. In November
of 2002, Floridians voting resoundingly in favor of a referendum
to strengthen the state's Sunshine Law, making it more difficult
for the legislature to create new exemptions to the Constitutional
right of public access. Participation in the event has since
grown exponentially, and the impact has been tremendous:
a group of Florida lawmakers publicly committed to promoting
open government and FSNE estimates that as many as 300 new
exemptions to Florida's open government laws have been defeated
in legislative sessions, largely because of the heightened
public awareness generated by Sunshine Sunday publications
and events.
Since
the September 11 attacks, government secrecy in the United
States has increased dramatically. Although the federal
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other open government
laws have been on the books for nearly 40 years, members
of the public and private organizations continue to struggle
to gain access to records and proceedings that the government
has sought to conceal for a variety of reasons, from avoiding
embarrassment and exposing misdeeds to protecting national
security. In 2004, there were more than 15.6 million classification
decisions, compared to 8.7 million decisions that took place
in 2001. During that period, the number of pages that were
declassified annually fell from about 100 million to 28.4
million.
Sunshine
Week participants seek to draw attention to the dangers
of excessive secrecy, and to mobilize the public to demand
the access to their government that they rightly deserve
in a democratic society. "Sunshine Week is about reaffirming
the basic American belief that government belongs to the
people and there is no such thing as government information,"
says Hodding Carter III, Honorary Chairman of Sunshine Week
2006, "It is the people's information." (Bob Dart,
'There's
No Such Thing As Government Information', Cox News Service,
February 3, 2006)
2006
events included:
National
FOIA Day Conference (March 16, 2006) - This
annual conference, sponsored by the First Amendment Center,
the American Library Association, and Sunshine Week, brought
together open-government advocates, government officials,
lawyers, librarians, journalists, educators to discuss the
latest issues and developments in freedom of information.
The
day began with a keynote
address by Hodding Carter III, former CEO of the Knight
Foundation and chief State Department spokesman from 1977-1980.
Carter spoke forcefully about the duties to the public of
open government advocates and journalists: “Freedom.
Liberty. Self-government. Accountability. Transparency.
The Constitution. People died for those words. Wars were
fought because of those words. History was made by those
words. And we are too sophisticated to invoke them, to demand
them? … What has happened to our capacity for outrage?
… Where are our refuseniks to say no to a government
determined to shackle the people’s right to know the
raw materials of freedom?”
Panel
discussions focused on "FOIA's Past, Present, and Future"
and "Whistleblowers: Patriots or Traitors?" Twenty-one
prominent open-government activists were inducted into the
2006
class of the National FOIA Hall of Fame and the American
Library Association's 16th annual James Madison Award for
champions of the public's right to know was presented to
Steven Aftergood of the Federal of American Scientists.
"Are
We Safer in the Dark?" Teleforum (March 13,
2006) - A panel of experts from around the country hosted
a lively discussion from Washington, DC about open government
and secrecy-the problems, the impact on communities, and
what the public can do. The panel discussion will link via
satellite to locally hosted discussions in communities across
the country.
'NOW'
Newsmagazine on PBS, Special Broadcast: "The Sunshine
Gang" (March 17, 2006) - This one-hour
special focused on government secrecy, highlighting the
erosion of open government in America through the stories
of whistleblowers who have risked it all for democracy by
telling the truth about the government from the inside.
Congressional
oversight hearing: Government policies on sensitive information,
House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security,
Emerging Threats and International Relations (March
14, 2006). Witnesses from government agencies and private
organizations discussed classification practices and strategies
to prevent overuse of classification and other information
restrictions. Rep. Christopher Shays (CT-4), Chairman, arranged
this important hearing to coincide with Sunshine Week. Shays
stated: "We're spending a great deal of time and money
hiding information from ourselves. Policies and procedures
on classification, declassification, reclassification and
designation of 'sensitive but unclassified' material have
run amok. The Cold War intelligence machinery churns on,
impervious to post-9/11 realities, and we're literally drowning
in faux secrets." The National Security Archive also
released two reports to coincide with this hearing:
The
League
of Women Voters hosted 14 local Openness
in Government forums and has also developed Looking
for Sunshine: Protecting Your Right to Know,
a resource guide for all chapters planning local Sunshine
Week events.
National
survey on public perception of open government issues will
be conducted by the E.W.
Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.
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