Senior Curator
National Public Broadcasting Archives
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
USA
Thomas Connors will be presenting a keynote on The Policy and Politics of Government Information in the George W. Bush Era: A Citizen-Archivist’s Perspective on Wednesday.
The George W. Bush administration has been noteworthy for its attitude toward exercising executive power without regard for the other branches of Unites States pf America government, or to the U.S. people as a whole. The management and use of information is a key component of the Bush style of governing.
The Bush team’s information policy is three-fold. First, it involves careful control of access to information – access by the general public, access by the Legislative Branch, and even access by members of the Executive Branch itself.
Executive Order 13233 – Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, issued on November 1, 2001 exemplifies this piece of Bush’s information policy. The order removes responsibility for providing access to presidential records from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and hands it to the Executive Office of the President.
Second, the policy involves gathering information on individuals without their knowledge or consent. This is done in the name of fighting the war on terror. The far-ranging warrantless surveillance of telephone and Internet communications by the National Security Agency is the most glaring example of this program of personal information harvesting.
Third, Bush’s information policy involves manipulating public information for clearly partisan political ends. This is exemplified in the production and distribution with White House oversight of “video news releases” by federal agencies to private broadcasting organizations. These videos present administration positions on matters such as health care, social security and education as if they were independently and objectively produced by broadcast journalists.
While it can be said that most American executive administrations engage in information politics, it is generally agreed that Bush’s engagement is particularly aggressive. What accounts for this and what does it mean for American information professionals, and indeed, for American democracy itself?
In my paper to the Wellington conference, I will explore the various ways Bush’s information policy has unfolded, what its political underpinnings are and the responses to the policy from the Legislative and Judicial Branches of government, from the Press and information professionals and from access and civil liberties advocates.
I will also consider the global trend of the politicisation of information contained in government archives and records and the need for archivists and records managers to understand this trend and find ways to work and act that serve openness, accountability and social justice.
