The Associated Press reports that the Federal Aviation Administration has reversed its previous decision to release a database of bird strikes on commercial aircraft, the kind of thing that forced a commercial airliner crew to ditch their plane in the Hudson River recently. The AP had requested the database under the Freedom of Information Act.
The reason: People may misinterpret the data and hold it against airports and airlines, and the carriers would withhold the voluntarily collected data from the government.
This is a classic example of the “third-person effect.” In a nutshell it’s this: You and I may not be affected by this, but someone else, who’s not as sophisticated as us, will take it the wrong way.
We shouldn’t let rhetorical fallacies dictate what records are released to the public. The traveling public has the right to know how often bird strikes occur and what is being done to combat it.
If there is a concern about misunderstandings, locking up the information is not going to clear things up. It creates greater apprehension. Instead, we need all the information released, along with whatever else is needed to make it understandable.
Thanks to The Salt Lake Tribune’s FOI blog, The Vault, for pointing out this outrage.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memorandum today saying that federal records are presumed public unless an agency an reasonably foresee that disclosure would harm the country. Holder also said agencyies are fully accountable for administering the Freedom of Information Act and that agencies should post information online without people having to request it.

This is great news. The memo reverses the Ashcroft and Card memos of the Bush administration that supported agency secrecy. It sets a new tone, or at least brings us back to pre-2001 days. Outstanding!

Check out the memo, courtesy of the Reporters Committee.

Want to know where all your money is going in the financial bailout? So do a lot of other people. Fortunately, openthegovernment.org has dedicated a Web page to news, reports and sources regarding the transparency side of the bailout.

It is crucial that the government has the public’s trust before spending billions (and trillions!) of tax dollars. Journalists should be vigilant in pushing for transparency to let people know how their money is being spent. Eventually this Web site will become a stand-alone site at www.bailoutwatch.net. Watch for it!

A judge ruled that the Detroit Free Press should have access to the e-mails between former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, because the two exchanged love messages on city machines through the city e-mail system, according to a Free Press story.

The mayor had claimed the e-mails were private because of attorney-client privilege and marital privilege because some were between the mayor and his wife or attorney. The judge rejected those claims. The mayor had denied the affair under oath, even though other messages revealed by the Free Press indicated otherwise.

Kudos to the Free Press for continuing to fight for the e-mails. For a good background on the issue, see a Reporters Committee summary.

Prepare now for national Sunshine Week, March 15-21, which educates citizens about their right to access government information. Tons of free information is provided online by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that you can use in your reporting, at www.sunshineweek.org.

Here is a sample of some of the materials you can retrieve, either now or right before the week, under the Toolkit tab: online ads, opinion columns, calendar of Sunshine Week events, a national public opinion survey on secrecy and FOI, results of a national survey of state government information online (a good peg to localize to your community). Also, if your organization produces content regarding FOI, submit it to the Sunshine Week folks and they’ll showcase it.

Get sunny!