Chapter Nineteen - On The Brink: Of A Government Keeping You in the Dark

Since 1966 Americans have enjoyed freedom of information, a right to access the documents and the workings of government. Since 2002 journalists have celebrated Sunshine Week during March as a reminder that transparent government is less corrupt and more responsive. That right is badly under attack right now. Bureaucrats hide and withhold documents, flagrantly and with impunity, many journalists have given up trying to exercise the right at all while citizens are barely aware there is such a right. Most disturbing, legislatures across the country are exempting once-public records and otherwise watering down Freedom of Information. Mark Mahoney has won a Pulitzer Prize writing about government secrecy and Miranda Spivack has a book coming out next week about activists who use government information. They are the guests on this week’s chapter of On the Brink.