A bevy of research has documented the connection between strong journalism and better democratic self-governance, such as increased voter turnout, lower corruption, more efficient spending and greater civic engagement.
Our study, “Dark deserts: Newspaper decline and its relation to government noncompliance with public records laws,” adds another benefit to the list: greater government transparency.
The preliminary study provides some evidence that journalistic vitality is associated with greater compliance with public record laws at the state level in the United States, supporting the tenets of democratic theory.
We conducted a national public records audit from November 2023 through January 2024 in the U.S. to measure transparency of state governments.
Then, that state-level transparency was compared with metrics measuring newspapers per capita and the budgetary strength of press associations. The study sought to answer the question, is there a relationship between a weakening newspaper ecosystem and increased government secrecy?
While causation should be cautioned given the nature of this data, this is the first empirical study to lend some support to previously expressed concerns that the declining local news ecosystem in the U.S. could be associated with increased government secrecy.
As U.S. newspapers continue to close at a rate of two per week and cut back public affairs coverage, fewer reporters will be asking for public records and fewer outlets will sue governments to enforce public record laws. What happens if most, or nearly all, local newspapers go dark in an “Extinction-Level Event”?
Government officials may feel emboldened to ignore public records requests, knowing that few people will litigate. Perhaps they already feel that way, which may explain the findings from this study.
The results also suggest that states with financially strong nonprofit state press associations demonstrate more transparent state government. This underscores the importance of nonprofit support organizations that provide training for local journalists and advocate on their behalf in legislatures for stronger public record laws. Press associations continue to struggle financially, tied to the economic decline of legacy media, and they have few partners in promoting government transparency. Roughly three dozen of the states have active nonprofit coalitions for open government, and many have no budgets and rely solely on volunteers.
The study supports initiatives focused on saving local journalism, including exploration of alternative forms, such as online independent news outlets, citizen journalism and publicly funded information providers. A consortium of philanthropic foundations, led by the Johns S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has launched the “Press Forward” campaign to double-down on saving local journalism, potentially dedicating $500 million or more to the cause. Attention should be paid to organizations, activities and solutions dedicated to fulfilling local accountability public-records-based journalism that is quickly disappearing into the news desert abyss. That includes a focus on empowering everyone, not just journalists, in acquiring public records, and advocating for better public-record laws. If journalists won’t be there to defend democracy, who will?
Our results indicate that density of digital-only media outlets does not appear related to better public records request compliance — that there could be something special about newspapers, in particular. This could be because newspapers historically have shouldered the burden for submitting public records requests and litigating denials, and in getting the Freedom of Information Act enacted in the first place.
Newspapers have traditionally held a special power position in communities, where publishers wielded clout among local and state policymakers, who learned to not pick fights with those who buy their ink by the barrel. Also, newspaper newsrooms still tend to be larger and better resourced than digital-only startup news organizations that may average just a few reporters.
Efforts should be taken to help digital-only news outlets build influence and pressure on government officials, to fill the gap left by newspaper closures.
Funders, such as through the Press Forward initiative, might bolster legal support and records training for members of the Institute for Nonprofit News and Local Independent Online News Publishers.
This study, like most, has its limitations. It is likely that seven records requests cannot reliably and consistently predict a single state’s overall compliance with public records laws. It was clear that some states in this study “had a bad day.” Washington state, for example, had four agencies not even respond to the requests; another agency said they had nothing, one provided some information and only one provided what was asked. That is not typical, based on previous research, for a state that has relatively stiff penalties for noncompliance.
That said, many of the state responses did mirror previous research, and the final data still indicated reasonable findings. Statistically significant results were noted even with such a small sample. Future studies should attempt to acquire more requests from each state, perhaps including local jurisdictions.
Another limitation was the exclusion of six states that require requesters to be in-state residents. This likely hurt the statistical power of the study, reducing an already small sample of 50 to 44.
Also, many of the states omitted, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee, have been found to be more secretive than most, in previous research. Having their responses included would have likely improved the statistical power of the study. Future research could employ in-state residents to carry out the requests.
Future research could derive additional measures of journalistic vitality at the state level and explore the different types of transparency measures used in Freedom-of-Information audit field experiments.
This study provides some evidence that journalism matters in a democracy.
States with a higher density of newspapers demonstrate better compliance with public record laws. Also, states with financially strong press associations demonstrate more transparent government. As the local news ecosystem continues to founder, fewer watchdogs will pursue public records, and government agencies may continue to gravitate toward secrecy.
Additional attention should be given toward this troubling “dark desert” trend to ensure government is accountable to the people, and that journalists and others may serve as a check on secrecy, corruption and ultimately, tyranny.
This is excerpted from “Dark deserts: Newspaper decline and its relation to government noncompliance with public records laws,” a study News Research Journal published in July.
