Annual Sunshine Week: Celebrate Freedom of Information
Sunshine Week was begun in 2005 and is celebrated annually to honor the principle of freedom of information.
The federal Freedom of Information Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on July 4, 1966, and has played an extremely important role in exposing misdeeds by the federal government. Each state, meanwhile, has a freedom of information or open records or public records act of its own.
This date was chosen for Sunshine Week in part because it also marks the birthday of James Madison, widely credited with being the father of the Bill of Rights.
The Freedom of Information Act, which allows ordinary citizens, journalists and historians to obtain (often secret) information about activities of the federal government, is widely regarded as one of the greatest contributions of American democracy in recent decades.
Read the outstanding new book: Michael Schudson, The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945-1975 (2015)
Learn more about Sunshine Week: http://www.nfoic.org/sunshine-week-2013
Learn more about states’ open records laws at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: http://www.rcfp.org/open-government-guide.