Michael Hardner Posted November 15, 2010 Report Posted November 15, 2010 In this column, Tim O'Reilly puts Open Gov into the lineage of media that watch government... Open government is also not a new idea. The conviction that transparency is a check on the power of government is a crucial element of modern democracies. When it was forbidden to provide transcription or reports of debates in the British Parliament, Samuel Johnson, among others, was hired by The Gentleman's Magazine to imaginatively recreate the debates as if they'd happened in some other, fictional kingdom. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Napoleon reportedly said "I fear the newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."Organizations like mySociety in the UK and the Sunlight Foundation in the US, which apply the latest technology to provide greater government transparency, are the direct heir to the newspapers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, which played so important a role in shaping the expectations of modern democracy. Quote Looks like someone has a new patronizing catch phrase ! Michael Hardner
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