In considering famous authors tied to the best of the red, white and blue, few will mention John Moss.

More of us should. We remember his lasting legacy this week as Sunshine Week is celebrated throughout newspapers, learning environments and communities from coast to coast.

Sunshine Week, a national awareness from the American Society of News Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was launched in 2005. Its leading proponents in our state are the N.C. Open Government Coalition and the N.C. Press Association, the latter of which The Anson Record is a member.

Given a quick quiz, more people than not can match John Hancock to the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry to “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” and John F. Kennedy to “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You.”

Moss? He’s the author of the Freedom of Information Act, commonly known as FOIA and very often used by any number of citizens — not just the press.

We’re strong advocates for transparency. We firmly believe the government process has to be accessible to the citizens it represents, to include meetings and records.

We share a belief with the N.C. Open Government Coalition that “democracy functions best when citizens know what government is doing.”

Citizen participation and access to government is an unalienable right, one granted by our Founding Fathers.

Secrets are a risk. Any government leader choosing that route takes on the possibility of career suicide.

We’re still trying to figure out how far the spider web reaches in the election chicanery that has given national embarrassment to 9th congressional district. Without the light it received, we’d still believe our election process was fair and just.

It wasn’t. We’d like to know for how long and involving who.

Lest there be misconception, open records serve to benefit governments as well.

Not long ago, Pitt County’s school board could have been spared shame when it hired a former New Hanover County teacher. But her two suspensions for inappropriate contact with a student were suppressed.

When Wilmington police caught her “in intimate contact” with a 15-year-old, she lost her job in Pitt and eventually got a prison sentence for indecent liberties with a minor. Pitt board members said they would never have made the hire had they known.

Sunshine Week is more than exposing people looking to make a buck off politicians at the voters’ expense, more than causing annoyances for public officials by requesting records.

It is dogged determination for access by people like Moss, the California congressman who battled from the back bench a dozen years until he had the U.S. House pass it 307-0 and a reluctant President Lyndon Johnson sign it.

It is the fruition of a next step following a government secrecy study by the ASNE’s Harold Cross, who said, “The right to speak and the right to print, without the right to know, are pretty empty.”

Government should help our lives be better, our community stronger.

Let’s make it happen — keep shining the light.

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