By Michael Miner
Maybe, maybe not. Jim Ryan’s pledge last month made headlines across Illinois, but not in the Tribune or Sun-Times. He was reacting to an extraordinary investigation that saw 14 Illinois newspapers–though none based in downtown Chicago–test the willingness of public officials to turn over public documents. Reporters visited public offices in every one of the state’s 102 counties, and the results, published in late July, were appalling.
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Journalism pays solemn lip service to the public’s right to know, but a free press isn’t legally obliged to tell the public anything. Government is another matter. “It is declared to be the public policy of the State of Illinois that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government.” So says the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, but it makes no provision for punishing violators.
The popular image of the American daily newspaper these days is of a cash cow being milked for every last nickel by profitmongers beholden to faceless stockholders. Against that, set Duncan’s proposition–which united papers from Effingham, Belleville, Bloomington, Champaign, Decatur, Galesburg, La Salle, Mount Vernon, Peoria, Rock Island, Carbondale, Springfield, Sterling, and Arlington Heights.
The reporters made a total of 605 visits to public offices, and in 354 of them they had to break out a copy of the Freedom of Information Act and point out where it said that they had a right to the requested document. “Ignorance of the law,” wrote Wills, “often seemed to be as much a problem as hostility toward it.”
“If you have met this kind of resistance to compliance and it’s statewide,” he told the AP, “we’ve got a problem and we better do something about it, and I will. I will promise you fast action, quick action on this, and I am willing to consider anything that is reasonable.” Ignorance of the law is no excuse, he said, not after the public officials were given a chance to read the law they were violating.
In hoarding information the people have a right to, Illinois runs with the pack. “Illinois now joins Indiana, Virginia, Connecti-cut, Rhode Island, and North Carolina on the list of states that have been subjected to freedom-of-information audits–and failed,” Editor & Publisher commented in an editorial this month. “Unfortunate-ly, the only real difference between these six states and the other 44 is the fact that the former have been audited and the latter have not: The results are likely to be similar across the nation.”
