For the beleaguered news industry, there’s a rare upward trendline as it approaches next week’s Freedom of Information observance. Congress passed a Freedom of Information Act upgrade last year. A new federal shield law seems within grasp. And President Obama is promising the most transparent government in history.
But on Monday, Lucy Dalglish will carry a decidedly un-sunny message to Florida’s FOI Day celebration: The declining fortunes of mainstream media, she will say, could cripple efforts to fight government secrecy and preserve openness. “The last 45 to 50 years, these critical issues have been led by the mainstream media,” said Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee on the Freedom of the Press. If they no longer can afford that expensive fight, she said, “I don’t see that bloggers are going to be able to pick it up.”
Mainstream media — newspapers and broadcasters — spend tens of millions of dollars every year to battle government secrecy, push for openness and defend their news staffs against legal claims. Dalglish said that so far, she’s seen little evidence that news organizations are failing to back reporters named in libel or subpoena actions.
But she is seeing a pullback in newspapers and broadcasters going on the offensive to open up closed meeetings, court proceedings and government records. And, she told me in a phone interview, “It’s going to get a lot worse.”
As newspaper and broadcast newsrooms shrink under the pressure of fast-disappearing revenue streams, many new-media thinkers predict that new sources of information will emerge that will take up some or all of the slack. But when it comes to paying the legal costs of battling government secrecy, the answer seems less clear.
“How is a citizen journalist going to wage battle to open up a court proceeding that gets closed?” said Dalglish. “It’s ludicrous” to think that will happen, she said.
Dalglish is worried about her own organization, which has long been a pillar of First Amendment defense in the news industry. The Reporters Committee exists entirely on donations, and they are down dramatically. Dalglish recently learned that the Freedom Forum will no longer bankroll the group’s annual barbecue — its main fundraising activitiy. The group’s endowment is also down sharply. Staff downsizing is in the works.
She also worries about other key institutions such as the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which recently canceled its convention because of the industry’s financial woes. “We would not have had the federal Freedom of Information Act, period, if it weren’t for ASNE,” she said.
But she said the real worry was the legal resources that have existed at news organizations small and large across the country. “You think of the Pentagon Papers’ case, you think of others that have resulted in American citizens have the right to learn what their government is up to,”; she said.
Charles Davis, who heads the National Freedom of Information Coalition Foundation at the University of Missouri, said he isn’t concerned about funding for his organization. But he said, “I am MUCH more concerned about the broader question of who funds the litigation, and how often, and in what types of cases.”
Not all is gloom and doom. “The presumption of openness at most levels of government is robust, historically speaking, and Obama’s pledge to strengthen transparency at the federal level could set a standard that has ripple effects in state and local governments. Michael Schudson, a historian at the University of California-San Diego, said from a long perspective, the Freedom of Information Act and the existence of inspectors general in federal agencies ensure a remarkable level of openness in Washington.
Dalglish also said the Reporters Committee has decided to institute do-it-yourself lawyer training for reporters, under the assumption that it may well be up to reporters to make their own case against secrecy. “We’re saying, ‘Here’s how you can talk to a judge.’ ‘Here’s how to file a federal FOIA lawsuit.'”
She also said some news organizations clearly are showing particular resolve in keeping the First Amendment at the heart of their missions. “God bless the Associated Press,” said Dalglish of the wire service and its leader, CEO Tom Curley. It was Curley who came up up with the idea of a strengthened lobbying hand in Washington, which led to creation of the Sunshine in Government Initiative (SGI). SGI played a strong role in winning passage of the FOIA reform legislation last year. Paul Boyle, senior vice president of public policy at the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), one of SGI’s other big funders, told me he hopes NAA will continue its support for at least another year.
But Dalglish wonders how long it will take before dwindling profits at newspapers and broadcasters take their toll on the news media’s First Amendment defense. As for the Reporters Committee, she has a better time fix. “I can maybe survive two years of this,” she said.
Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of the National Security Archive, said the issue is akin to concerns about what will happen to investigative reporting if mainstream news organizations continue to fade. The answer, she said, may lie with advocacy non-profits.”It may be that in the future more of the digging will be done by non-journalists who have an explicit agenda,” she said.
“That will change what is reported. It also will mean that those organizations will be the epicenter for openness advocacy.”