Sharing.
It’s one of the first things we’re taught to do, and it provides a framework from which many people choose to lead their lives. House the poor. Feed the hungry.
For journalists, it’s a word that also means the promotion of access to
public information.
In a nation where our First Amendment touts freedom of speech, and democracy is the cornerstone of government, it is a wonder why access to government information has become such a “dirty” endeavor. It is often scary and difficult to look beyond what the Department of Homeland Security tells us to think about national security. Words such as risk, danger and protection are splashed into the reasoning for dismissed Freedom of Information Act requests. To a certain extent — for public safety — this is understandable.
But there is no excuse for the mockery the Bush administration has made of records disclosure, a sad situation that culminated this past week in yet another failed attempt by a news agency to obtain copies of President Bush’s military records. A March 20 Associated Press article reported that the federal government refused to release the records, deemed public information by the courts, because officials were unwilling to search boxes filled with rat excrement. Texas National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. John Stanford was quoted as saying it was tough to search through the boxes because they were full of dirt, bugs and the
aforementioned droppings.
We just can’t resist: What a load of crap.
This came after months of litigation with The Associated Press, which filed numerous lawsuits during the 2004 presidential election to gain access to records that might shed light on the scope of the president’s 1972 service in the Texas National Guard. After government officials swore under oath that they had released all documents pertinent to Bush’s service, 31 pages popped up, apparently covered in so much dirt and excrement that they couldn’t find them during the first search … or rather, the documents were “discovered” after pressure from an AP and Guard agreement to look again.
This is just one of many disappointing examples of state and federal agencies spending more time protecting secrecy than promoting access, a sentiment recently highlighted by AP attorney David A. Schultz. The government has used national security and outrageous search and copy fees (such as hundreds of thousands of dollars just to agree to search for documents) to undermine the power of the Freedom of
Information Act.
However, FOIA requests reached 4 million this past year — an all-time high — and we couldn’t be more pleased. This validates the incredible necessity of the act and the desire of citizens to understand the inner-workings of the federal government; or, more appropriately, the actions and spending of the officials they have elected to serve them.

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