The Rise of the Right to Know

When Michael Schudson began researching secrecy in the United States, he anticipated that the 1960s would be the critical turning point, the moment when champions of greater openness and more accountability lobbied politicians to enact new legislation. Schudson also believed that scholarship on the topic would be abundant. However, he soon discovered that the antisecrecy movement was a complicated phenomenon that researchers have too often neglected. The underlying argument of his study is that the cultural shift away from secrecy “was under way before American ground troops went to Vietnam, before an antiwar movement existed, before Students for a Democratic Society was founded, before a modern women's movement took off” (p. 268). Schudson's book is comprehensive and interdisciplinary—an engaging mixture of history, political science, media studies, sociology, and administrative law. Although his analysis is wide ranging, he gives prominence to four landmark pieces of legislation: the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (in chapter 2), the 1967 Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (in chapter 3), the 1970 Legislative Reorganization Act (in chapter 4), and the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (in chapter 6). From the labeling of meat in supermarkets to the establishment of environmental impact statements, a belief that people had the right to know took root during those four years. But why did these changes happen so quickly? According to Schudson, the backlash against secrecy had been gaining strength for several years, and he gives considerable credit to journalists and a select group of reformers in Congress. More than any other person, California representative John E. Moss was the architect of the Freedom of Information Act. Yet, as Schudson explains, Moss received essential support from reporters; for example, Kent Cooper of the Associated Press published The Right to Know (1956) to raise public awareness (p. 50). Beginning in the 1950s, observes Schudson, “there was a broad cultural change that made the news media a chief constituent of the opening up of American society and not simply its transcriber” (p. 143

Business · Political science · Politics · Right to know · Transparency (behavior · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law

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