The media and Open Government
Posted by Prof Richard Sambrook
The media has long had a role in holding governments and politicians to account. But as more countries attempt to be transparent – offering open access to more government information – how does this role change? And is it working?
Next week a thousand delegates from 60 countries will gather to discuss how to make their governments more accountable. However they may face some hard questions this year on reconciling open government with free speech – and living up to their progressive rhetoric.
The London summit marks the second anniversary of the Open Government
Partnership, when eight founding countries committed themselves to greater transparency. With civil society organisations they are working on radical reforms including access to information, budget transparency, anti-corruption measures, public service delivery measures and more.
Unless you follow the movement closely you may not know about the
partnership, the commitments or the track records of the signatory countries. A
global survey of journalists suggests most of them have never heard of the OGP –
even though 70% of those answering came from partner countries.
I recently chaired an independent media council to look into the media’s reporting of open government and which commissioned the survey. A working paper is published today. The report finds a significant gap between media, government and civil society organisations over views of progress and accountability. In particular it highlights inconsistencies in some member countries between OG commitments and policies towards the media and free speech and finds widespread ignorance of the OGP among journalists even in member countries. The paper offers a number of challenges and makes four key recommendations:
- The OGP should develop a joint statement which recognises the importance of free expression and free media in the context of open government and encourages OGP signatories to reconcile open government commitments with their policies towards free speech.
- The OGP should launch a major engagement initiative to educate the public – and media – on the aims and purpose of the partnership and open government. This should include a resource centre to support better understanding of open government including educational tools and developed case studies as examples.
- Civil Society organisations should seek to establish a regular index of “open governance” which establishes best practise, benchmarks, and can generate greater levels of reporting and debate.
- Media should be encouraged to seek partnerships with civil society organisations and others who can better inform their reporting of open government and support the development of appropriate expertise and skills within media organisations
The OGP has made rapid progress in bringing countries into the fold. To do so it has adopted a flexible approach, allowing countries to interpret the goals in their own terms. The next stage may require confronting some of the inconsistencies that has allowed – particularly over free speech.