Where the right to know comes from

[Commentary] The idea of transparency in government as we know it today did not wait for the Internet to become part of American political culture. But nor did the founding fathers develop it. The First Amendment, although enshrining free speech and press by forbidding the federal government to make laws abridging them, said nothing about government release of information to the public. Very little before Freedom of Information Act institutionalized disclosure practices. Would we have inaugurated these practices without direct “political” intervention on the part of the news media?

That counterfactual is not something anyone can answer with certainty. All we can say with assurance is that FOIA, in fact, came into existence with considerable active and self-conscious assistance from the press.

[Michael Schudson is a sociologist and historian of the news media and a professor at the Columbia Journalism School]