Also not surprised

Sarah challenged us to name what we found most surprising or unexpected in today's readings/video, but, like another poster, I wasn't surprised by any of this. Expecting that the White House website will police itself and not allow its contents to be manipulated by the political arm of the executive branch is naive at best, dangerous to the country at worst. We should all be vigilant, all of the time, to anything and everything politicians and their employees publish. Seriously, is there anyone in America, outside of W-deadenders, who doesn't believe the Bush administration lied and manipulated information before and during the Iraq war? In the full context of the overwhelming duplicity of Cheney, Rove, et al., the covert addition of Angola to a list of the Coalition of the Willing seems like small potatoes. The changing of the documents wasn't even well-executed, considering the thoroughness with which Althaus and Leetaru were able to detail the additions, subtractions, and outright deletions. And, honestly, such duplicity is neither new nor particularly outrageous in the history of human government, nor even in America. The surprising element of the Iraq war duplicity was the extent to which the American press rolled over and submitted to the administration's version of facts. This failure was not only surprising, considering the oft-alleged liberal media bias, which should have nurtured a suspicion of the Republican-led push for war, but also alarming.

I don't want to give the White House a pass here, because (ideally) we should be able to trust the president and his digital mouthpiece to be truthful. But part of being an effective politician is the ability to fudge facts, to shade the truth, to exploit the gray areas. In this context, such seemingly small adjustments to a press release probably seem to the politicians like par for the course; this is good politics. It is our job as citizens of a democracy to keep watch over the politicians, and to aggressively monitor what they say, what they do, and what they publish. Clearly, however, most citizens have neither the time nor the skills to do this effectively-- that's why we have a free press! It is the press that we count on to keep tabs on what the White House, the Congress, the military, and every other part of government does, says, or publishes. When the press fails us, when it accepts the words and actions of politicians at face value without doing its own fact-checking, we citizens lose our watchdog and our democracy is weakened.

Now, in the case of the GPO and depository libraries, it seems to me we are dealing with much different issues. While there is always the possibility of political manipulation, the fact that the GPO exists as a separate entity, staffed by career bureaucrats, makes this less a political issue and more about funding, mission, and feasibility. While Washington is currently split into divisive camps, the issue of access to government documents seems like the sort of thing people in both parties could get behind-- even tea partiers should have an interest in making sure citizens have access to the documents of a government of which they are highly suspicious. After all, it's easier to keep government in check when you have the information at hand. I suspect this is an issue that will be dealt with by the many earnest and hard-working congressional members and staff who don't make headlines, but often do the important work that keeps our country running. A quick and easy solution: charge for content, but allow depository libraries to access, download, and store that content free of charge. The GPO would be able to free itself somewhat from the uncertainty of budget cycles, while citizens would be insured of the preservation and integrity of the government documents.

Finally, a quick word about "Secret America"-- When almost 1 million people have "top secret" clearance, it makes the concept of top secret nearly meaningless. As we've recently seen in the documents published by Wikileaks, it's hard to ensure everyone with security clearance keeps a secret, and most secrets will come to light eventually.