Our Great 'Secretocracy'
Belief:
Are the "New Atheists" As Bad as Christian Fundamentalists?
Frank Schaeffer
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
How a Public Jobs Program Could Put America Back on Track
Julianne Malveaux
DrugReporter:
Pot Is More Mainstream Than Ever, So Why Is Legalization Still Taboo?
Steven Wishnia
Environment:
Why We Need Bees and More People Becoming Organic Beekeepers
Makenna Goodman
Food:
The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights
Makenna Goodman
Health and Wellness:
New York May Stop Heartless Health Insurers from Dropping Coverage When It Stops Being Profitable
William Ehart
Immigration:
NYC Marathon Raises Question of Who Is American Enough?
James E. Johnson, Jr.
Media and Technology:
Focusing on Fort Hood Killer's Beliefs Is an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
What Michelle and Barack's Marriage Has in Common with 56 Million Other Ones
Annabelle Gurwitch
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Fetus-Shaped Potatoes? Going Undercover Inside the Weird World of Right-Wing Abortion Foes
Ann Neumann
Rights and Liberties:
"My Kids Want to Hide Their Identity; They're Scared Someone Will Attack Us": U.S. Muslims Being Targeted
Jaisal Noor
Sex and Relationships:
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better?
Vanessa Richmond
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Why Natural Gas Is Not a Clean Energy Panacea
Stan Cox
World:
With Unemployment at 40 Percent, Afghan Teens Enlist in Army, Police
Lal Aqa Sherin
Seeing as how the big time reporters and columnists like George Will can't seem to come up with questions to ask the presidential candidates that actually matter, I'm going to suggest a line of inquiry that doesn't frolic in the frivolity of flag pins and pastors.
What do the candidates think about our "secretocracy?" And, if elected, will he or she work to strengthen the virtually toothless Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) -- the legal key to an open society?
Former staff writer for the Washington Post and Time Magazine, Ted Gup, uses the term "secretocracy" to describe our post-9/11 society. You may not have heard of this because reporters generally don't report on it, except maybe during Sunshine Week. Rarely are there stories about information journalists did not get. That's not sexy.
Over the weekend, Gup, who is now a journalism professor at Case Western Reserve University, explained to me what he means by "secretocracy."
First, noting that "secrecy is as old as power itself," Gup described the paradigmatic shift toward hyper-secrecy after 9/11, which should be fairly obvious to anyone who hasn't been in a coma since the dawn of the new millennium. But journalists, whose stock and trade is information, have come to know official secrecy intimately.
Virtually everything was considered a target after 9/11 -- the entire infrastructure of the country. It brought out the opportunists who've always thought there was too much transparency."For example, Homeland Security instructed state governments to take bridge maintenance reports off their Websites. After the Minneapolis bridge collapsed, when reporters went to find out if other bridges were safe on behalf of those who drive over them everyday, they hit a wall of "security" secrecy, despite it being more likely for a bridge to collapse than for it to struck by terrorists.
See more stories tagged with: government, courts, transparancy
Sean Gonsalves is a columnist and assistant news editor with the Cape Cod Times. He can be reached at sgonsalves@capecodonline.com.
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