With political leaders pledging great transparency, do we still need Sunshine Week to promote open government?

Absolutely.

This year's Knight Open Government Survey, done by George Washington University's  National Security Archive,  found that only 13 of 90 surveyed federal agencies have made any concrete changes to their Freedom of Information practices even though the president directed them to do so a year ago.

The day after the survey story appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere, the White House chief of staff and the counsel to the president wrote a memo to the agency heads noting "more work remains" and asking them to "take action" to ensure "full implementation" of President Obama's Jan. 21 2009 memo.

Other highlights:

• This year's presidential statement marking Sunshine Week, citing the progress since last year.
• The Scripps Poll, showing that 70 percent of U.S. adults believe the federal government is secretive.
• Headlines from around the country marking the week.

Sunshine Week started in 2005 as a project of the American Society of News Editors along with dozens of other groups, with funding from Knight Foundation. The foundation later endowed the annual event, which promotes the importance of open government and freedom of information.

— By Eric Newton, Knight Foundation Vice President

Knight Foundation CEO and Chairman of the Newseum Board of Trustees Alberto Ibargüen introduced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to an audience at the Newseum today in Washington, D.C.. Secretary Clinton stated that Internet freedom should be a right for everyone, and that the United States has a responsibility in helping protect the free exchange of ideas on the world's information infrastructure.

Secretary Clinton mentioned the launch of a competition to improve information exchanges:

"... There are companies, individuals, and institutions working on ideas and applications that could already advance our diplomatic and development objectives. The State Department will be launching an innovation competition to give this work an immediate boost. We’ll be asking Americans to send us their best ideas for applications and technologies that help break down language barriers, overcome illiteracy, connect people to the services and information they need. Microsoft, for example, has already developed a prototype for a digital doctor that could help provide medical care in isolated rural communities. We want to see more ideas like that. And we’ll work with the winners of the competition and provide grants to help build their ideas to scale."

You can watch video of the speech at C-SPAN. A full transcript of the speech is available at the U.S. Department of State.

It's been a while and progress is still slow after the Global Day of Solidarity  called upon President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to ensure justice for the victims of the Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines, where at least 30 journalists and support staff were among the 57 people brutally killed.

CPJ joined in on the protest and also traveled to Mindanao’s General Santos City to meet with local journalists, the relatives of victims, and local prosecutors responsible for building a case against the suspects.

Here is what CPJ had to say:

An assembly of local journalists situated in the towns near the site of the massacre underlined the trauma felt by many survivors. When we spoke with them, some noted that the security protocols they implemented for reporting in dangerous areas…had failed to save their friends and colleagues.

Many more feared for their safety in reporting on the massacre’s aftermath, explaining why several reports on the massacre have run without bylines or datelines in both national and local newspapers. One reporter told the assembly that unidentified men had photographed journalists when they reported on the arrests of Ampatuan clan members and the military’s discovery of their underground private armory.

CPJ ranks the Philippines as the sixth worst country in which journalists’ killers are brought to justice.

For the full story on CPJ’s findings from the Philippines, read this article.

                             -- Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

From Eric Newton, VP/Journalism, Knight Foundation:

CPJ's Global Campaign Against Impunity -- the legal impunity too often enjoyed by those who would murder journalists -- has produced a bright red infographic detailing the cases of 758 journalists killed since 1992.  The graphic leads a new section of the CPJ web site launched this week. Here's how you can get involved in the Knight Foundation-underwritten Campaign Against Impunity.

The CPJ campaign follows up on the Impunity Project launched in 1995 by the InterAmerican Press Association.  In addition to investigating the cases of  journalists murdered in the Americas, the project reached out to government leaders to better investigate the cases. A public advertising campaign in print and online media included more than 400 news organizations. The decreases in the impunity rate have reached as high as 50 percent.

Claire Austin is a Journalism intern at Knight Foundation.

Freedom House released its annual survey of press freedom showing the unfortunate post 9-11 trend of decreasing press freedom around the world.

The latest: only 17 percent of people live in a country where they can express themselves freely.

Click "play". Green countries are free, yellow are partly free, and red aren't at all free. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the world starts to turn yellow and green. But then, after 9-11, it turns back to red.

To get involved in freedom of expression issues, pick a project to help out with by visiting the sites of Knight grantees working in this field. These include the International Center for Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Inter-American Press Association's Impunity Project, and the University of Miami's Knight Center for International Media.

Several Knight grantees who advocate for a more open government expressed satisfaction about a presidential memorandum to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act on Wednesday.

More on their Web sites:

National Freedom of Information Coalition

The Federation of American Scientists

National Security Archive

Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press

MediaShift Idea Lab

SunshineWeek.org

Today, celebrate Constitution Day by learning more about the First Amendment.

Take the quiz, find ways to protect student journalists, and nominate a school for the First Amendment Press Freedom Award (deadline December 1st).

How else might we celebrate Constitution Day?

In April, Knight sponsored a conference in Paris on press freedom and the Beijing Olympics with Asia Presse (Paris), Committee to Protect Journalists (New York), Human Rights in China (New York, Hong Kong, Brussels), Reporters Sans Frontieres (Paris), World Association of Newspapers (Paris), and the World Press Freedom Committee (Washington, D.C.). There was simultaneous interpretation in Chinese, French, English.

Statements from that conference are here and can be downloaded as a pdf.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) blog has recent posts about the Olympics and Chinese media, including one post on a 21-point directive from the Central Propaganda Department.

Global Voices, the 2006 Grand Prize winner of the Knight-Batten Awards for innovation in journalism, has special coverage of the Olympics from their worldwide network of bloggers (here's the feed and the Twitter feed).

The Global Voices Beijing Olympics page also links to Play the Game for Open Journalism, a site to assist and inform journalists covering the Beijing games.

Other resources? Please leave them in the comments below.

Knight Foundation supports Miami's Wolfsonian-Florida International University's new poster exhibition "Thoughts on Democracy" through the Knight New Work Award. A video about the exhibit, which opened July 3rd, is below, followed by details on included artists and the inspiration for the exhibit.

"The Thoughts on Democracy exhibition is comprised of posters created by fifty-five leading contemporary artists and designers, invited by The Wolfsonian to create a new graphic design inspired by American illustrator Norman Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" posters of 1943, which were recently gifted to the museum by Leonard A. Lauder.

Some of the participating artists involved in the project are Neville Brody, Seymour Chwast, Wim Crouwel, Elliott Earls, Richard Tuttle, Lawrence Weiner, Paula Scher, Francesco Vezzoli, Chip Kidd, and Italo Lupi, among others.

Rockwell's images, reproduced by the U.S. Office of War Information for mass dissemination, communicated FDR's vision of 'a world founded upon four essential human freedoms'—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. The exhibition will be on view and free to the public in the museum's lobby."

At the July 3rd exhibit opening, visitors were asked for their thoughts on democracy. You can watch their responses on the Thoughts on Democracy blog.

What are your thoughts on democracy and this exhibit?