National Conference for Media Reform
The 2007 National Conference for Media Reform kicked off on Friday. Thousands of media reformers - grassroots activists,journalists, and scholars got together in Memphis, TN to address issues including net neutrality, public broadcasting, ethnic media, global media policy and more. Bill Moyers, the keynote speaker, opened the conference, talking about Martin Luther King Jr. and said, “the bullet killed him but it couldn’t kill the story.†You can now watch or listen to Moyers' entire speech:
It looks like the agenda is filled with the discussion of many important media issues, but notably, there are several sessions about women in media highlighting a gender analysis and women's participation in cutting edge media production. It's great to see focus on women media which was absent at past conferences. Audio for all sessions is available on the program page. Continue readingDeclassified Government Documents in name only
Starting in the new year, hundreds of millions of pages of classified government documents were automatically declassified (see FGI's previous post for background). You might assume that you should able to access these documents in the National Archives, but think again. Declassification is different from "release" so certain documents will remain classified and some documents will be withheld. This is the result of President Bush's Executive Order on Declassification (Exec order 13292) which has nine grounds for exemptions and various restrictions on the release of declassified documents. Source: Alternet Continue reading
Not Just Blogs: Issues – Privacy
The week’s “not just blogs†installment will highlight the Privacy page of our Issues section. From the front page of Free Government Information, click on Issues:
Then on Privacy.
Citizens’ rights to access government information cannot be achieved without the guarantee of privacy. The issue of privacy is of extreme importance to us here at FGI, which is why we frequently stress its importance in our writing or blog posts. The essay on privacy is quite a short read and discusses privacy in the context of the physical depository library, the library’s Web site, and privacy while accessing a government agency’s site or downloading a document from said agency. There is also a link to a longer, more in-depth expose of the issue from a panel presentation that James R. Jacobs gave at the 2005 annual Nevada Library Association conference.
We hope you'll visit our Privacy page to learn more about this issue, and mull over its intricacies and implications. We’d appreciate comments or suggestions for additions to the bibliography of web resources, books and articles dealing with privacy. Continue reading
Happy 40th anniversary FOIA!!
40 years ago (July 4th, 1966), the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted despite the opposition of President Johnson to the legislation. Documents from the LBJ Library show that Johnson refused to hold a formal ceremony for FOIA. The National Security Archive created a site called Freedom of Information at 40 and lists copies of the key legislative history documents for the FOIA. Also National Sercurity Archive site has a complete FOIA legislative History.
In a related story, according to a report published by OpenGovernment.org., many federal agencies are still lagging behind in their efforts to comply with FOIA.
Continue reading
FGI’s new style
Dear loyal readers. As you can tell, FGI has had a facelift. Please email me at radlib AT ucimc DOT org and let me know what you think. Hopefully, it will make your FGI experience that much more enjoyable! Continue reading
Latest Comments