Why Impartial Government Reporting Is Vital.
By Michael Posner
In 1822, James Madison warned that, “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both.” Madison’s America, with less than 10 million people, was a simple society with limited government.
Two centuries later, 330 million Americans benefit from a government that now has extraordinary capacities to gather and disseminate information. It produces more than 300,000 taxpayer-funded data sets, many mandated by law. These reports provide basic economic data, predict storms, disseminate information on public health, and catalogue scientific and medical discoveries. They record data relating to climate change, provide information to protect consumers, and assess how other governments treat women and human rights more broadly.
The government’s capacity to produce these reports has long benefited from bipartisan support. Thousands of government experts have been recruited and given the resources they need to produce these reports without political interference.
Read the full Forbes article.
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Michael Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance, Professor of Business and Society and Director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.