Lufkin Daily News

James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. He is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

He was a smart man who knew the power of information and the power held by those able to control it. He also recognized that without an informed citizenry, any nation was doomed to fail its citizens. So it’s no coincidence that Sunshine Week, an annual observance intended to raise awareness about the importance of open government and access to public information, is held to coincide with Madison’s birthday.

But Sunshine Week — which ran through Saturday this year — goes beyond the interests of journalists and the media, whose jobs require access to information. It goes, as Madison noted, to the heart of our representative democracy. The only way for this grand experiment in self-governing we call America to survive and thrive is with a free flow of information, with an informed citizenry.

Yet every year, it seems, it gets more and more difficult for citizens to find out what their government is doing on their behalf. An open government means our government must be transparent. The effect of half-truths and non-truths mixed in with a little bit of truth here and there only obscures the truth by muddying the waters.

This is particularly important in an era when our elected leaders often taunt the media and refer to stories critical of their actions as “fake.”

But the idea of replacing facts we don’t like with falsehoods we do is anathema to the notion of democracy. There is a reason, after all, that the Founding Fathers codified “Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of free speech, or of the press.”

There is a reason they included it in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In too many cases, though, those who were elected by the people to do their work tend to believe that government works best in the dark; that the opinions of their employers, the people, is an impediment to their work instead of a basic requirement.

That is the crux of Sunshine Week. Each day, The Lufkin Daily News serves as a conduit between the government and the people, providing information as routine as a calendar of events or as important as how governmental entities are spending your tax money. In the process, we provide the public with information to help them make informed decisions.

Reporters have always relied on trust to do their jobs — the trust of subjects that what they say will be accurately reported and the trust of readers that stories are factual and fair.

We and hundreds of other legitimate news operations continue to do our jobs as we always have, by interviewing all sides, by gathering information from reputable sources and by revealing to readers what we have and how we got it. And when we get it wrong, we own up to it and run corrections.

Take a minute to learn more about the message of Sunshine Week. The open records laws are listed by the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press (rcfp.org/open-government-guide). State groups are listed at the National Freedom of Information Coalition (nfoic.org). Visit the Sunshine Week website (sunshineweek.org). Want to file a records request? Try Muckrock.com.

Madison wrote he believed “there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

It seems clear: We must watch over freedom if we wish to keep it. The same idea applies to open government. Keeping freedom fresh is up to you, your friends and your neighbors.