Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction): This newspaper accepts its role as government watchdog with grave intensity. Indeed, it is the reason this newspaper exists. It is our job to discover facts and report them in a dispassionate, truthful manner.

This burden was placed on newspapers in this country by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The language is absolute: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” After setting up the apparatus of government, the Framers in their very next act immunized the press from the powers of that government.

They placed this right first under the Bill of Rights and they did it for a very good reason: When government controls the press, people living under that government cannot be free.

In order to give meaningful effect to the First Amendment, the federal government and every state have passed laws allowing citizens, including newspapers, to obtain from any level of government documents related to the workings of government. These are typically known as “Sunshine Laws.”

Over the course of time, the definition of “documents” has expanded from only paper to electronic files and databases. Under existing law in Colorado, government entities may produce information in response to an open records request in any form they choose. That is, if information is maintained by the government in an Excel file or a searchable database, the government may produce that information in the form of hundreds or thousands of pages of paper.

This practice happens far more frequently than you may suspect, including for example by our own school district. (And with that needlessly burdensome volume of documents comes a bill for 25 cents per page.)

In addition to the cost and burden, when taxpayer-funded entities control the manner in which they reveal public records to the public, they control the narrative.

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