Where’s our Sunshine Week?
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 12 March 2007 at 16:52
Tags: foi, foia
The RSS feeds that I use to monitor Freedom of Information laws have been swamped lately, thanks to the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual Sunshine Week.
During this week-long campaign — named after Florida’s state freedom of information lawthe “Sunshine Act” — participating newspapers all highlight the importance of government openness, particularly by highlighting FOI issues arising in their local states and municipalities.
They run features explaining to their readers how they can excecise their rights under local open government laws and audit their local authorities’ performance in responding to FOI requests. Even the cartoonists take the opportunity to highlight Freedom of Information issues.
It’s a great idea, which, if copied by Britain’s regional newspapers, would make the Freedom of Information issues here impossible to ignore.
With both the Government and backbench MPs currently doing their best to water down Britain’s relatively new Freedom of Information Act, it may be time for to revist the suggestion, first made at the 2005 Society of Editors conference by FOI campaigner Heather Brooke, that Britain’s newspapers should institute a regular campaign modelled on the American effort.
At around this time last year, it seemed like things were starting to come together for something called Spotlight Week. We could have really used that this year.
Update: BBC FOI man Martin Rosenbaum thinks the cartoons are “dreadful”. He’s right.
