Sunshine Week celebrates access to information
News | Published on March 12, 2024 at 3:10pm GMT+0000 | Author: Tucker Henderson
0Annual celebration coincides with James Madison’s birthday
By Tom Hintgen
Otter Tail County Correspondent
March 10-16 is Sunshine Week when newspapers in Minnesota and all across the nation celebrate access to public information.
Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan collaboration among groups of journalists, such as the Minnesota Newspaper Association, along with civic groups, educators, governmental officials and people in the private sector who emphasize the importance of public records and open government.
Weekly newspaper editors in Otter Tail County point out that Sunshine Week, held each year in mid-March, coincides with James Madison’s birthday (March 16, 1751). Madison served as the fourth president of the United States.
He was a driving force behind the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and presented the first version of the Bill of Rights. Those rights were approved in 1791. That’s when freedom of the press became part of American law.
Freedom of the press, protected by the First Amendment, is important to a democracy in which the government is accountable to the people. A free news media has the right to function as a watchdog that can investigate and report its findings to the general public.