Sunshine in Government Week is an annual event designed to highlight the need for transparency and accountability by our government officials, and the News/Media Alliance is committed to this goal by protecting our free and independent press, whose coverage makes that transparency and accountability possible.
According to Pew Research Center, only 22% of Americans trust the federal government all or most of the time, one of the lowest levels in 70 years. This means that it’s more important than ever that we have access to information about what the government is doing and why, especially at the local level where coverage is increasingly sparse and most Americans trust local news. Trust comes from accountability, and that accountability is only possible with an accurate picture of what government officials are doing and how they’re spending taxpayer money.
Journalists are key to this process, providing important news and information on the activities of our elected officials and local policymakers and ensuring transparency and truthfulness in their decision-making and spending of taxpayer money. Journalists play the critical role of a watchdog for the community, which is why it’s important to invest in the tools that allow journalists to perform their important work. As such, as we commemorate Sunshine Week, the Alliance is focused on protecting the right to obtain public information easily through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, a right that has been eroding over the years.
Requesting records under FOIA is a critical tool for journalists to be able to provide a window of transparency into government actions, especially when public officials may be hesitant to share information. FOIA has helped improve public safety, save taxpayer dollars, and expose malfeasance or bad decision-making.
However, in recent years FOIA requests have been blocked by bureaucracy and deliberate obfuscation. The average FOIA response time is now 289 days – over 100 days longer than the response time just a few years ago, and 269 days longer than the 20 days allowed by law! But journalists who receive a delayed response are the lucky ones – most get either a rejection, no response at all, or in some cases, the information provided is so heavily redacted it becomes virtually unreadable. Data shows that only 26.3% of FOIA requests receive a response and result in new information being released to the public.
We’re trending in a troubling direction. This country needs more, not less, transparency, at every level of government. The American people deserve to know what government officials are doing behind the scenes that might impact their lives, and they deserve a free press that has the ability to unveil misbehavior, fraud, and waste. We hope that coming years will reverse this trend, and to that end, the News/Media Alliance will continue to track state and federal efforts to improve freedom of information laws, like a recent bill to extend FOIA’s reach to records under the federal judiciary, and support journalists in lawsuits seeking to obtain information from an agency refusing to provide it.
Danielle Coffey is President & CEO of the News/Media Alliance. View bio.