7OPEN MEETINGS / OPEN TRIALS
Access to all places where the public’s business is conducted is vital to the news-gathering role of a free press. Without that access, government becomes a secret oppressor rather than a public servant. Transparency is a virtue, and we should insist on it.1
Private businesses and other private organizations may conduct their affairs behind closed doors, on the golf course, or in secret. Public institutions should not. In most states, a law requires that most of the public’s business be carried out in public. Almost without exception, the public has – or should have – the right to see and hear its business being done. That business should not be carried out in a smoke-filled room; it should not be carried ...
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