Abstract
With the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) poised to mark its 50th anniversary in the summer of 2016, a book on the right to know could not be timelier. Michael Schudson’s The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945-1975 begins with a look backward in American history from the Founding Fathers through the development of the FOIA.
The book is not simply a rehash of an old law and legislative history. Schudson breathes life into the topic by illuminating some of the people behind the law and the movement for transparency in government and public issues.
Schudson expands the discussion beyond FOIA, linking transparency and openness to several other areas including consumer protection laws, food and drug labeling, and environmental and agricultural policy.
The author’s goal is “to show that openness was a key element in the transformation of politics, society, and culture from the late 1950s through the 1970s.” He also pays homage to Harold Cross’s seminal 1953 book, The People’s Right to Know, largely considered the first authoritative look at freedom of information.
As the book traces the origins of openness among America’s democratic traditions, it also notes our demand that government be accountable to the people, and how access to information plays an important role in the democracy. But as much as our post–World War II, and especially post-Watergate, traditions and operations tend to default to openness, Schudson reminds the reader that this openness is far from absolute and hardly engrained in the Founding Father’s intent.
History has lauded Founding Fathers like James Madison who famously wrote about his preference for popular government based on public knowledge and an independent press. But Schudson points out the founders were skeptical about the general public’s involvement in political affairs.
Schudson is more reverential to others who came more than a century later to redefine the American perception of openness and transparency. Schudson provides historical and biographical background and sketches of a range of people who have influenced various movements that affect public information with the goal of expanding the public’s knowledge. The cast of characters is diverse, including talk show hosts like Phil Donahue and Oprah, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and Esther Peterson, who left the Johnson Administration and forged a pioneer’s path in product labeling and consumer protection.
One of the most compelling characters memorialized in the book is John Moss, a Democratic congressman from California who is regarded as the “Father of FOIA.” Schudson writes, He was not a profound thinker. He was not much of a legislative craftsman. But Moss, not Madison holds the secret to how the Freedom of Information Act came to be and how it serves as a beacon of contemporary democracy. . . .
Moss served in Congress from 1955 to 1978 and shepherded the legislation through the legislative and political maze in a way that compared him with the iconic congressman played by Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Moss’s legislation was a triumph of political machinations and public support, mostly from news organizations and democratic Cold War era values.
Schudson is more circumspect with his assessment of the law’s origins, noting its emergence from political disputes between the three branches of government. Efforts to open government information go back to the 1930s with the Federal Register Act and then development of the Administrative Procedure Act in 1946. “Although FOIA was a landmark of historic proportion, it was less of a breakthrough than Moss and his allies in Congress and the press had hoped.”
Perhaps the disappointment lies in the fact that FOIA does not apply to Congress, the courts, or the president. Furthermore, the statute also includes nine sometimes malleable exceptions that often allow a government agency to withhold information if it fits into one of the categories.
Making laws require compromise and the exceptions are just that. In addition, even some of the staunchest government transparency advocates may acknowledge that there might be some information in some circumstances that should be kept outside the scope of public view.
Even when it comes to transparency, there has to be some balance. The FOIA law reflects some of that and Schudson helps explain the balancing act.
According to the book’s title, the study ends in 1975. However, that is not even close to the end of the story. Schudson fast-forwards to our contemporary world where information is only a click away on a computer and whistleblowers challenge how and what information government can and should keep secret. The Age of Wikileaks presents us with not only a new conception of transparency but also dissemination and will lead us to continue to reassess the meaning of public information and the right to know about it.