Get the data, then finish the job

I recently attended a seminar on Transparency in Government.

Transparency is a way of protecting fairness and ensuring the common good. When citizens know what their government is up to, they have a better chance of ensuring that decisions treat everyone equally and protect the common conditions that are important to everyone's welfare.

This is the general idea of transparency in government but I feel its the journalist's job to make sure that the government is being transparent and to inform the public about what the government is up to. It is every American's right to do FOIA requests and look up what is going on in the government but I believe that it's the journalist's job to do so for the public. In a sense that is what we are being paid to do. Not only do I think its journalist's job to get the information I also think it's our job to go through whatever data it might be and report what the public needs to know from it in an easy to understand way.

This topic reminded me of something the Lansing State Journal did a couple of year's ago. In 2006 the newspaper posted a database on their website containing the names, titles, departments and salaries for more than 54,000 Michigan public employees. What they didn't do was put the information into any understandable context for their readers. I commend them for getting the information and making it public but I feel they didn't finish their job as journalists. What people ended up doing was searching for their friends and neighbors on the database and then left it alone. What the LSJ should have done was pick out the important information from the database that the public really needed to know and write stories that put the information into context to the readers.

Yes, anyone can get data from the government because it's open information. But as journalists it's our job to put it into context.