Teaching Transparency: A One-State Case Study of Sunshine Laws and the Journalism Curriculum

IntroductionThe application of sunshine laws (also called open government or transparency laws) is extremely important for the journalist, who must practice the intellectual discipline of verification by gathering public information to write stories (Rosentiel, 2013). This can be accomplished either by attending public meetings or by filing open records requests. The crucial role the press plays in a free society underscores the need for competent and trained journalists to fulfill the responsibility of keeping a watchful eye on how public business is conducted, even in today's modern digital and socially electronic world.This digital world also compounds state sunshine laws, creating a dilemma of what constitutes a record, which ones governments are required to keep and how long they're supposed to keep them (Eason, 2011). Handling electronic documents, emails or how to handle newer technologies such as smartphones may not be addressed in some state laws, or the laws are changing frequently to reflect modern developments. These new issues present opportunities for college and university journalism programs to revisit their curriculum to determine if sunshine laws deserve more attention from journalism educators and students.This challenge yields to the topic of whether journalism programs at colleges and universities educate their students adequately on the current evolution of open government laws. For universities whose journalism and mass communication departments, schools or colleges teach sunshine laws, the issue is among many surrounding journalism education today, especially as journalism curriculum continues a transformation to reflect what is happening in the professional industry. This research explores this issue by studying journalism instruction in Tennessee-where sunshine laws have been modified often in recent years-as a one-state case study to learn how educators and curriculum address the subject.Literature ReviewDiscussion in this section is organized into two parts: how sunshine laws fit into the journalism curriculum and curricular modifications that impact how the instruction of sunshine laws is regarded. The literature review helps explain issues journalism educators have faced over time and will continues to confront, and how instruction of sunshine laws fits into the curriculum.Sunshine Laws and the J-curriculumEditors see knowledge of media law, an area that often includes sunshine laws in most journalism curriculum, as an important skill for a journalism graduate to have (Dickson & Brandon, 2000). In fact, editors thought journalism ethics, media law, and the media's impact on society were all more important than any of the newspaper management courses taught in a few programs (Arwood, 1993). Auman and Cook (1995) indicated educators and editors ranked legal concerns about the same, 11th and 12th respectively out of 25 skills deemed most important to teach.Similar survey outcomes have shown media law as an important knowledge base for journalists to have. In a study by the Associated Press Media Editors and Virginia Commonwealth University, nearly all print and broadcast executives listed writing, reporting, ethics, and interviewing skills as important aspects of journalism training and government affairs, current events, and communication law were important journalism courses (Dickson & Brandon, 2000). Likewise, other research has shown that daily newspaper executives are significantly more likely to believe the broad topics of the mass communication field, media history, and media law were priorities (Dickson & Brandon, 2000).Dickson and Brandon (2000) found the biggest gap between the journalism educators and professional journalists surveyed for their study was over the importance of conceptual media courses (communication theory, media history) and professional media courses (media law, media ethics). Dickson and Brandon, in their same research, concluded journalism education has a greater purpose than producing news reporters; the field should prepare graduates for a variety of media and non-media jobs as well as for graduate school. …