Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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Freedom of information
ASNE providing tool kits to celebrate FOI
By Diane H. McFarlin
The Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, like ASNE, has always put
support for First Amendment rights at the top of its agenda.
So FSNE’s board was a receptive audience when Cindy Stiff proposed in
1994 that the group designate a week for celebrating freedom of information
on the pages of member newspapers.
Stiff, then a professor at Florida A&M University and now a consultant
based in North Carolina, writes about the Florida experience here.
ASNE’s Freedom of Information Committee hopes to build on the success
of the Florida project by organizing a similar event on a national level
this year.
The week of the Fourth of July, June 29 through July 5, will be designated
"Your Right to Know" Week. The FOI committee will provide every daily newspaper
in the United States with tool kits for observing the week and educating
readers about the rights afforded them by the First Amendment and open
government laws.
These kits will include introductory blurbs, guest columns, editorial
cartoons, a list of story suggestions, house ads and a "Your Right to Know"
logo with suggestions on how to use it to label stories that could not
have been published without open government laws.
The kits will be distributed in early June. Everything will also be
posted on ASNE’s Web site.
Just think of the impact this can have if newspapers across the country
underscore the public’s right to know.
McFarlin, 1996-97 chair of the Freedom of Information Committee,
is executive editor of the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune.
