Reflections on the “right to be informed”

Abstract

In this article, the author uses a passage from Bernard Fry's 1978 NCLIS report as a point of departure for defending the public's “right to be informed” in light of tumultuous recent issues surrounding public policy in the dissemination of government information. The author treats, in turn, the U.S. Government Printing Office's reluctance to disseminate machine-readable government information through the depository library program, the federal government's historically poor performance in the timely dissemination of its information, the current administration's abridgement of government publishing and information dissemination, and the effect of recent budget cutbacks on the government's statistical programs.