Open Govt. is Good Govt., Public Tells Pollsters on the Eve of the Second National Sunshine Week

Two national polls conducted on the eve of the second national Sunshine Week open government initiative, March 12-18, show a public that equates open government with effective democracy and is concerned about the rise in official secrecy at the national, state and local levels.

Sixty-two percent of respondents to a Scripps Survey Research Center poll conducted at the request of the American Society of Newspaper Editors said "public access to government records is critical to the functioning of good government."

The poll indicated that only a third of Americans consider the federal government "very open." Twenty-two percent of respondents consider the federal government "very secretive"; another 42 percent said it was "somewhat secretive." The Scripps poll is online here.

When asked about secrecy at the state and local level, respondents to the Scripps poll were less concerned: 10 percent said these legislative bodies were "very secretive" and 30 percent said "somewhat secretive." More than half, 55 percent, said state and local governments are open to public review.

In the second survey, eight in 10 (81 percent) said democracy requires government operate openly. The survey was conducted by the AccessNorthwest research and outreach project at the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University in Pullman, with a grant from the Knight Foundation and National Freedom of Information Coalition.

While nearly seven in 10 (69 percent) told researchers that open public records and meetings keep government honest, nearly as many (63 percent) said it was okay for government officials to keep records secret if they deem it necessary, and almost three-quarters of the public (73 percent) believe the president should "make some public records secret if it might help with the war on terrorism."

Read more about the polls here.

Comments

[brendan]

the USA was founded as a Constitutional Republic not a democracy ..... a democracy os mob rule

the USA today is a socialist welfare deomocratic state ..... with 2 planke of the communist manifesto (a central bank and a graduated income tax)

the federal reserve bank is not federal at all, it is a private for-profit entity owned by the international banking cartel

Constitutional money is gold and silver coin not federal reserve notes which are debt instruments backed by treasuries (debt)

The USA is far from what the founders of this country established

From freedom for fascism