Sunshine Week: Cherish, protect your right to know - El Paso Times

Sunshine Week: Cherish, protect your right to know

El Paso Times Staff

Article Launched: 03/17/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

A s the nation observes Sunshine Week, it's good to remember that freedom of information and the right of people to know what's going on in their government extends beyond the journalism community.

You have a right to know what goes on at City Council and County Commissioners Court, in the House and Senate and governor's office in Austin, in House and Senate sessions in Washington and in the Oval Office -- and beyond purely public sessions.

Why did your congressmen, Democrats Silvestre Reyes and Ciro Rodriguez, vote to raise your taxes by $683 billion over the next five years? Why did one Texas GOP senator, John Cornyn, vote for a moratorium on pork-barrel spending, or earmarking, while Texas' other GOP senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, voted against that moratorium on wasteful, provincial spending of your tax money?

Sunshine Week encourages the public to take a more-active role in their government. Having the public more and more involved in government is a powerful and important check on matters that range from pork-barreling to public corruption.

Freedom of information is important to journalists because it's a tool used to gather information that helps to keep the public informed. And government, understandably, doesn't like to relinquish information because information is power and government prefers that power stays within its control.

A recent example is the case of Toni Locy, who as a reporter for USA Today reported on the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton demanded that Locy provide names of all Justice Department and FBI sources for her stories and if she refused, Walton's penalty was that starting at midnight last Tuesday, Locy would have to pay -- out of personal funds -- $500 a day for seven days, then $1,000 a day for seven days, then $5,000 a day until she appeared in court April 3.

After that, the judge could have ordered further fines or jail time for any continued refusal to disclose her sources.

Fortunately, this heavy-handed perversion of justice was overturned by an appeals court, but it clearly demonstrates the lengths to which government will go to protect information.

If reporters can be forced, through threat, fine or imprisonment, to reveal confidential sources, those sources will dry up. They don't want the inevitable reprisals. Then that information won't be available and the government will be able to keep more and more of its activities hidden and thus be able to get away with more and more.

Freedom of information is hugely important in the system of checks and balances necessary to keep a rein on government.

To that end, Cornyn and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have introduced a new effort to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act.

"It was encouraging to see Congress take major steps recently to expand the American people's right to government information," Cornyn said.

"This latest bill is an effort to further enhance government transparency and accountability. Sunshine Week is an opportunity to highlight these important principles of our founding fathers -- a truly self-governing society depends on an informed citizenry."

 
 

Inserted from <http://www.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_8596010>