Jerry has already dealt with Lawrence Lessig’s recent essay on transparency in TNR, but I believe there was another inconsistency in Lessig’s argument that needs some attention.
The takeaway from Lessig’s essay is that too much transparency will lead to false accusations of corruption and misbehavior against elected representatives:
The point in such cases is not that the public isn’t smart enough to figure out what the truth is. The point is the opposite. The public is too smart to waste its time focusing on matters that are not important for it to understand. The ignorance here is rational, not pathological. It is what we would hope everyone would do, if everyone were rational about how best to deploy their time. Yet even if rational, this ignorance produces predictable and huge misunderstandings. A mature response to these inevitable misunderstandings are policies that strive not to exacerbate them.
Therefore, “naked transparency” (as Lessig calls it) may actually create more problems than it solves by lowering the already low esteem the people have for their government.
Lessig places this “transparency → mistrust” observation into a larger model, where a (1) technological change (2) threatens a previously existing cultural, economic, or social institution. He applies the “1+2″ model to online music sharing and journalism. While the model is so general that it encompasses these and many other examples, the journalism example is especially relevant here because Lessig is so concerned its future:
… First on the chopping block is investigative journalism, with its risky return, and even when successful, a return not measured in cash. Less than 10 percent of large daily newspapers in America have four investigative journalists or more. More than 40 percent have no investigative journalists at all. One need not hate the Internet to be deeply worried about the repercussions of this development for democracy.
But, given that new technologies are making the traditional newspaper business model obsolete, shouldn’t we (and Lessig) celebrate any move towards making data more easily and cheaply available? Instead of spending money and time hunting for potentially incomplete or unreliable data on campaign contributions in difficult-to-access filing cabinets tucked away in the sub-basement of some municipal building, reporters can access the data via the web. Not only that, the Sunlight Foundation and its cohorts will be on hand to create the tools, sites, and offer training on how to use that data. For an actual example, see Jerry’s paper Hack, Mash, and Peer: Crowdsourcing Government Transparency, where he talks about the Washington Post’s effort to provide Congressional members’ earning statements to the public. Imagine if the Post could access this information via the web, instead of sending interns to the Capital Hill to photocopy hundreds and thousands of pieces paper, at a quarter each, only to scan them back into some computer at the office. The cost savings in terms of money and time could be enourmous and could allow the Post the financial breathing space to do more investigative reporting.
Since newspapers are losing money and cutting back on investigative journalism, the benefits of making massive amounts of information about our elected leaders available for professional and amateur investigative reporters should at least be acknowledged as benefit of the move towards government transparency. Before completely overhauling the business model for newspapers or making them another government dependency, perhaps we should give journalists and reporters the tools they need to more easily do their job.
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