by No Single Name

Created on: April 14, 2009

"All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers."

So says George Orwell in the infamous dystopian novel 1984, a quote which stirs a certain suspicious fear in readers. The government can be many things, can function on many levels: it can be friend or foe, protector or tormenter, state or federal. But many people fear a national government; and as 1984's doomed protagonist Winston Smith could tell us, it is not just financial or political transparency that matters. It is complete transparency.

How can this be done? By public demand; and much to the chagrin of the government, public demand is often controlled by the media. The issue, however, lies in the fact that as the media turns to different sources (electronic news, Twitter-esque news bites, and yes, even bloggers) it becomes more biased. And the more biased, the harder it becomes for another Woodward and Bernstein to emerge.

There is an advantage to the filtering of the media down to bloggers and electronic papers, however. In this age of technology, we are granted near-limitless (and not always legal) methods of gathering information, hidden or not. Again comes the problem of sifting the wheat from the chaffwhich stories lack evidence, which ones corroborate others? So goes the double-sided coin of the Internet: more often than not, the information people receive is a well-disguised lie.

Government transparency is a disturbing issue, even in the mundane. The decriminalization of cannabis in Ohio was kept quiet from media outlets due to the fear of increased marijuana use. An understandable concern; but when the crime is the paraphernalia and not the plant, don't people have a right to know?

To the new administration's credit, President Obama took a step towards transparency earlier this year when he abolished all secret C.I.A. prisons, said organization arguably being the most untrustworthy in the American government. From involving themselves in a Cuban coup and allowing Fidel Castro to take charge, to having a tremendous hand in the development of LSD and spread of cocaine, the C.I.A. is responsible for more ill in the country (and even the world) than most people are aware. It is corrupt organizations like that which prevent transparency.

Media and investigative integrity, and the destruction of secret government organizations: though these steps will not directly solve the transparency problem, they are steps in the correct direction. The first, most important freedom is that of the mind: and it cannot be maintained under an opaque organization.

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