{"id":182,"date":"2009-11-15T22:30:59","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T02:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/?p=182"},"modified":"2009-11-15T22:30:59","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T02:30:59","slug":"why-we-need-transparency-and-media-that-does-its-job-in-the-policymaking-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/2009\/11\/15\/why-we-need-transparency-and-media-that-does-its-job-in-the-policymaking-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Need Transparency–and Media that Does its Job–in the Policymaking Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just finished writing my statement of purpose for my grad school applications on the need for transparency paired with\u00a0 robust, public-interest media in order to counteract corruption in the policymaking process.\u00a0 Almost as soon as I’d hit save and finally, after weeks of agonizing revisions, put the piece to rest I opened the New York Times to find this article<\/a> about lobbyists’ influence over the congressional statements on health care reform.\u00a0 The most galling part of the article was not that congresspeople submitted statements for the congressional record that had been drafted by lobbyists.\u00a0 The most galling part was that seemingly no one on Capitol Hill seemed to think there is anything wrong with it.\u00a0 They’re even going on record!<\/p>\n

In a written addendum in the Congressional Record, Mr. Hare said the bill would also create high-paying jobs. Timothy Schlittner, a spokesman for Mr. Hare, said: \u201cThat part of his statement was drafted for us by Roche pharmaceutical company. It is something he agrees with.\u201d<\/p>\n

and<\/p>\n

[Congressman] Brady\u2019s chief of staff, Stanley V. White, said he had received the draft statement from a lobbyist for Genentech\u2019s parent company, Roche.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record,\u201d Mr. White said. \u201cI asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There\u2019s not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Larry Lessig has made waves recently<\/a>, arguing that transparency in itself isn’t necessarily good for democracy.\u00a0 If citizens are exposed to the rampant corruption intrinsic in the system they may just give up hope and disengage from the process altogether.\u00a0 There’ll be no shock value, as there clearly isn’t in Washington these days, judging by the reaction of the members of congress and their staffs.\u00a0 I agree with Lessig, which is why I declare in my statement of purpose (is that like a mission statement?) that we need to match transparency with real journalism (not punditism) and media literacy training so that citizens have avenues to feed back into the process.<\/p>\n

For now, I’ll just give props to the New York Times for actually doing some reporting that holds decision makers accountable.\u00a0\u00a0 Now if they just didn’t have that whole “profit” thing to worry about….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished writing my statement of purpose for my grad school applications on the need for transparency paired with\u00a0 robust, public-interest media in order to counteract corruption in the policymaking process.\u00a0 Almost as soon as I’d hit save and finally, after weeks of agonizing revisions, put the piece to rest I opened the New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}