Our View: Why Sunshine Week matters

[The Straight Story]

Our View: Why Sunshine Week matters

One of the realities in the Internet Age is the opportunity for news consumers to pick and choose the source of their information.

Before the onslaught of websites with political agendas — Drudge on the right and Slate on the left as examples — our shared media experience provided one measure of government accountability. Public pressure could be brought to bear when a bureaucrat or politician ignored the citizenry.

Today’s media landscape rarely generates that level of focused attention. In 1972, an entire nation questioned why former CIA operatives were poking around in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee, In 2013, the White House prides itself on an ability to circumvent the Washington press corps and aggressively uses social media to speak directly to its constituency with its own version of an issue.

That dramatic change, and the continued growth of instant media by an ever-increasing number of outlets, adds to the importance of public records as a tool of accountability for our government.

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Today begins Sunshine Week in the United States, and together with all media outlets, we remind our readership that easy access to public records is a vital guarantee that must be protected to assure the transparency and accountability of government at all levels.

http://www.svherald.com/content/opinion/2013/03/10/348932