Sunshine Week

Across all areas of the public spectrum, the United States government is increasingly limiting what the public sees, hears and knows. This is cause for great alarm, not only for the journalism profession but for the entire American public as well. Without a free flow of information checking government power, democracy fails.

“The liberty of the press is the only effectual check on arbitrary power,” French lawyer and political leader Maximilien Robespierre told the French National Assembly in the midst of the French Revolution.

Without a free press, the public cannot, and will not, make informed decisions about selecting leaders and will become increasingly apathetic to abuses by the government. The free press is all that prevents the public from falling under a tyranny, American lawyer Tunis Wortman warned in 1801.

Hence, a journalist’s duty is to provide citizens with accurate, unbiased information so they may lead their lives with freedom and liberty. A journalist should investigate complaints against the government, report back and suggest, when appropriate, solutions. Journalists must never violate the public trust by creating news or framing it inaccurately.

However, there is a now a growing temptation in the news industry to do just that. Increased competition, razor-thin budgets and a desire to be “first and live” pressure today’s industry. Journalists no longer have the time or resources to challenge increased government secrecy or its version of the “facts.” This is making it increasingly harder for citizens to differentiate between fact and fiction, news and propaganda. However, hope remains.

Truth will emerge if all information, both true and false, is presented, John Stuart Mill, a 19th century British philosopher, argued. Wortman went a step further when he claimed that people are intelligent enough to sort out the truth even if presented with information that is false.

However, the U.S. government appears to feel differently. The Patriot Act closed judicial hearings, censored government websites and the secret imprisonment of “enemy combatants” --all expressly to limit what the public knows.

Long before America came into being, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes seemed to predict the current climate when he called government a “leviathan”, or monster. . Hobbes saw government as a powerful institution seeking to oppress the people. Yet, he was quick to note that a powerful government was needed to keep society from unraveling. Even so, recent government actions seeking to censor the press have crossed the line. As the government closes meetings to the press in the name of “national security” and seeks to circumvent the First Amendment by punishing journalists for reporting unfavorable stories, one begins to worry.

Yes, certain government work demands secrecy. However, how does the University of Rhode Island justify keeping the meetings of the Joint Strategic Planning Committee, a body that directs the overall vision of the university, closed to the press and public? How can the federal courts defend keeping the trials of famous defendants closed, sealed and gagged? Is it really democracy if the American government refuses to release the amount of tax dollars spent on the Central Intelligence Agency or “non-existent” agencies within the Department of Defense? The public should be outraged.

“Freedom of Speech is ever the symptom, as well as the effect of good governments,” John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon proclaimed during the early 1700s in a series of essays arguing for a free press.

If so, then how does the government justify actions such as these—requiring protestors to secure permits or allowing\ a deputy U.S. Marshall to seize a reporter’s tape recorder at a public appearance by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia? It simply cannot be justified.

Granted, Americans are better off than citizens in some parts of the world. In poor African states and in China and Cuba, there is one news source controlled by the government, for the government. In most of the Middle East, criticizing the government will cost a reporter an arm, leg, or worse, his life. During the first half of 2003 in Turkey alone, the government charged over 1,000 journalists with “endangering the security of the state,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Apparently in Turkey, reporting on the government’s abuse of the minority Kurds or exposing the Prime Minister’s shady government contracts poses a security threat.

Hopefully, America will never reach a point that low. Hopefully, our government and the public will understand that the risks of prohibiting a free press are much greater than the risks of releasing wrong or damaging information. Hopefully, the public will demand and fight to maintain a free press.

As Trenchard and Gordon said in 1720, “Everyone who loves liberty ought to encourage freedom of the press.”

Christopher Barrett is a news editor at the University of Rhode Island student newspaper The Good Five Cent Cigar.