New Media Rights shines light on the importance of Sunshine Week and access to public information

The latest issue of San Diego's CityBeat featured New Media Rights and three projects featured at Drumbeat San Diego, in its article "Light of the day". The article highlighted our advocacy work which includes legal assistance and advocacy for access to public information, just in time for Sunshine Week. Sunshine Week takes place between March 13-19. Organizations around the country emphasize the importance of the right to information and the right to know during this week.

New Media Rights supports access to public information by assisting individuals and groups in submitting PRA & FOIA requests. In the article Art Neill, Director of New Media Rights mentions, “We’re always willing to help bloggers and citizen-journalists with Public Records Act (PRA) requests. PRA and FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests are not extremely difficult, but there really is a nuance to getting them done." If you would like assistance in getting access to public information via an FOIA or PRA request, contact us.

New Media Rights will also be creating a guide in the upcoming weeks answering questions we have received over the years regarding PRA & FOIA requests, so we invite you to send us questions that you would like answered in this guide, below in the comments, or email us at support@newmediarights.org

We also support the work of the Government Accountability project through the Make It Safe Coalition (MISC) and our advocacy for the Whistleblower Protection Act. Drumbeat San Diego also highlighted several projects that support civic participation and access to open data. You can find details about the projects on the Drumbeat San Diego agenda.

A Knight Foundation-funded survey published on March 1, 2011 found, “Citizens who believe their community's information systems, government, media and such are performing well are more likely to be engaged in their community and are more satisfied with the quality of their community as a whole." Civic Participation is so valuable to our communities and to our lives, please make an effort during Sunshine Week to get more involved in your local community.

If you are interested to see what the government is doing on a federal level, on March 15, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy is holding an oversight hearing titled "The Freedom of Information Act: Ensuring Transparency and Accountability in the Digital Age". The event will also be webcast live here.

Get involved and learn more about Sunshine Week by exploring these links and finding a way to support their efforts.

Work of our friends and allies:

Open San Diego

Citizen Oversight Projects

Instant Impact

Access Humbolt, community media center to create video messages for Sunshine Week

Sunshine Week Resources:

FOIA Letter Generator

Sunlight Foundation: Sunshine Week Round up: A look at state-based events

Sunshine Week website

Sunlight Foundation Data Transparency Projects

"ROW@CASTEL_DEL_MONTE_MG_5222" by *sdp* Flickr user shared under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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