Editorials

Journalists often wax eloquently about the tenets of a free press in the United States — the public's trust in the printed word, the overt need for objectivity and honesty, the obligation for journalists to freely analyze the actions of their own government.

Most important is the free flow of public information.

Without it, a free press is hardly free.

Courtesy of the Freedom Forum in Washington comes this apt quotation from Alvin K. Hellerstein, a U.S. District Judge in New York: "Suppression of information is the surest way to cause its significance to grow and persist."

That is the perfect thought — that the suppression of information causes harm, not good — to hold dear today during Sunshine Week 2008, the fourth installment of a national effort to shed light on the public's right to know.

Unfortunately, we've seen examples here of a darkened world without informational sunshine, a world that allows governments and agencies to cloud intentions and operate behind closed doors. Such procedures only give residents reasons to believe the worst. Often, they do.

• Anniston City Schools, which, under former superintendent Sammy Felton, compiled an impressive and condemnable record of withholding information pertinent to the status of the city's public schools. The recent report from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools provides ample proof of the dangers that are brewed when school information is shielded from public consumption.

• The Joint Powers Authority, whose legal status — Is it a governmental agency or a private entity that can maneuver around the state's Sunshine Law? — makes it tricky for Freedom of Information Act requests to shed light on the operation of those charged with the redevelopment of the former Fort McClellan.

• The City of Oxford, led by its closeted and secretive City Hall, which seems unwilling to entrust public information to a town populace that soon will be the largest in Calhoun County. That Mayor Leon Smith was able to create the position of public safety director — and fill it at a salary of approximately $90,000 a year — in a covert, hidden manner is but one example of a City Hall that wants no free flow of city information.

This isn't merely a national issue. Don't partition this off as a Washington-only debate.

There is no place in Calhoun County for government and pertinent agencies that hide behind misplaced veils of privacy and concealment.

By nature of our laws, the public holds the unalienable right to the knowledge of our leaders' actions. You can thank the Founders for understanding the role of a free press, and leaders today who push the necessity of information's free flow.

Imagine our little part of Alabama if that information was squelched, if few knew of government's intentions until it was too late.

It's a world not worth living in.