Welcome to Sunshine Week — a time to stand up for the importance of open government and freedom of information. And what better time than the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, when winter shadows are receding and the sun begins to usher in new life.

But as we all know, the metaphor is aspirational. In reality, darkness still obscures information that the public needs to participate fully in our democracy. That’s why, in honor of Sunshine Week, Free Press volunteers all over the country will be shining their own lights on their local media outlets. Starting today and continuing all week long, our volunteers will be paying visits to their local TV stations to inspect their public files.

Our media system is based on a transaction between media companies and the American people. For-profit companies receive free licenses to use the public airwaves for television and radio. In return, they are supposed to serve the public’s news and information needs. And they are supposed to be transparent about how they meet this public interest obligation. It’s a crucial piece of the puzzle — without easy access to this information, we have no way to hold our local broadcasters accountable when their programming fails to fulfill community needs.

In the Internet era, these public documents should be made available online. But broadcasters are fighting a reasonable proposal from the Federal Communications Commission that would require just that. Broadcasters claim that putting files online would be incredibly burdensome. We think that weak defense cloaks something more insidious — broadcasters know that shedding light on these files would expose how poorly most stations serve their local communities.

That’s where Sunshine Week comes in. By visiting stations all over the country and inspecting their public files, our volunteers will demonstrate that the public will collect and share this information whether or not the broadcasters put it online. The information we gather will help us engage directly with our local broadcasters, and will be part of Free Press’ homegrown database of station information. We hope the FCC proposal will go into effect someday soon. Until then, we’ll use our collective strength to shine our own light on the media.

To learn more about our Sunshine Week initiative, please email me.

If you're interested in supporting our effort to inspect public files, please consider a donation to the Free Press Action Fund. Thank you.