Reflections

...Reduced spending by the Food and Drug Administration means less information for consumers...

...Whereas the freedom we cherish in this land is rooted in information...

...The Right denies, of course, that it is trying to limit public access to information...

...REFLECTIONS Beau Grosscup GUTTING THE RIGHT TO KNOW Last January, shortly after the Ninety-seventh Congress convened, a resolution was introduced in each house authorizing the President to proclaim March 16 as "Freedom of Information Day...

...Public opinion is to give way once again to elite opinion...

...Social Security recipients, women (rape crisis centers), the unemployed, and youth (student loans and the CETA program) are being severely restricted as a result of budget slashes...

...Whereas a fundamental principle of our Nation is that given information, the people can make the decisions that determine their present and their future...

...Third, the Administration is resorting to the politics of intimidation to discourage the kind of public questioning that results in informed challenges to official conduct...

...Each of these measures has its specific rationalization, of course, but the general theme for all of them is that "excessive" public access to information is an obstacle to efficient government...

...Whereas if these decisions are to be wise, they must be reached after weighing the facts and considering the alternatives and consequences...

...Whether the conservative Reagan forces have accurately gauged public opinion is by no means clear...

...The Federal Trade Commission's funding is being squeezed, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission is either to be abolished or to have its budget reduced to a level of paralysis...

...Since assuming office, the Reagan Administration has often invoked the central assumption of S.J...

...intelligence agents has been applied in broader terms than originally conceived by Federal agents in their attempt to stifle investigations and reports they consider damaging to their agencies...

...A measure of the extent to which this effort has already succeeded can be seen in the pro-business, anti-consumer, anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-feminist message emanating from many Federal agencies...

...Three separate but compatible tactics are being used: First, the Administration has mounted a direct attack on the principle that the people have a "right to know" in a number of respects...

...Proposed changes in the Freedom of Information Act seek to restrict access to Government documents, either by outright denial or by burdensome rules designed to discourage demands for information...

...Now the Right threatens once again to disenfranchise millions of people because they lack the information they need and the resources to acquire it...

...It states: Whereas a free press exists to serve the American people whose daily decisions rest on their having information...

...intelligence agents...

...The legislation preventing the unauthorized identification of U.S...

...legislation that would reduce the public's right to gather information for use at nuclear plant licensing hearings...

...Agencies which provide the public with information on the rights of workers, minorities, and women are under attack...

...22) made it a point to stress that public access to information is indispensable to public decision-making in a democracy...

...CIA Director William J. Casey has asked for legislation that would give the CIA and the FBI the power to conduct surprise searches of newspaper and broadcast newsrooms...

...The new guidelines to ease restrictions on domestic spying have already begun to create a climate of intimidation...

...This, after all, is the basis of its claim that its program has been shaped by informed public sentiment...

...But the Right also understands that access to the private sector depends on one's ability to pay...

...The Right is attempting to institutionalize its alleged mandate and make it permanent...

...Second, reduced public access to information is a consequence of the Administration's wholesale budget cuts in social services...

...We may wind up celebrating "Freedom of Information Day" on March 16 and not even knowing that it is a holiday without a meaning...

...What is clear is that the Administration and its supporters in Congress have moved swiftly to choke off the flow of information by which public opinion is presumably formed...

...S. 391 would prohibit the unauthorized disclosure of information identifying U.S...

...Public access to information on welfare rights, tenant-and-landlord rights, health-care rights, and services available to the elderly...

...The Administration has, in fact, put an end to the dissemination of consumer information by the Government Printing Office and imposed a spending moratorium on films, brochures, and audio-visual aids...

...One bill, S. 587, would amend the Freedom of Information Act to limit access to records of law enforcement agencies...

...The ultimate danger posed by the public's diminished access to information is that in time it will become impossible to know whether a right to information still exists...

...In a speech before the National Association of Government Communicators, Ralph Nader argued that the Office of Management and Budget is deliberately using budget reductions to hobble those Government agencies that monitor business practices and publish consumer information...

...Another, S. 586, would amend the Privacy Act of 1974 to allow Government officials access to law enforcement records while limiting such access for those who are the subjects of Government files...

...The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and affirmative-action programs in the Labor Department have had their budgets cut and their very existence challenged by the Reagan Administration's anti-regulation crusade...

...Drawing on its conception of past American greatness, it wants to give maximum exposure to its ideas of family, religion, sexuality, authority, economic structuring, and national security, while curbing public access to ideas and values that differ...

...Rather, it claims to be encouraging the private sector to act as the basic gatherer and disseminator of information vital to the formation of public opinion...

...The contradiction between the Right's celebration of public opinion as the "mandate" for its program, on the one hand, and the Reagan Administration's attempts to limit the public's access to information, on the other, has great and ominous significance...

...Paradoxically, the concentration of control over public and private mechanisms of communication will make it increasingly difficult for people even to perceive that all this is happening...

...The Senate version (S.J...

...Many of the agencies bearing the brunt of funding cuts are basic informational sources for consumers, educators, and public interest groups...

...The Nuclear Regulatory Agency has proposed Beau Grosscup teaches politics at Ithaca College in New York...

...In fact, the greater role the Federal Government has assumed in the past two decades as a gatherer and disseminator of information can largely be attributed to the extent to which private channels were closed to the public...

...22 that public access to information is crucial to the democratic process...