On October 3 2011, Michael R. Lemov author of People’s Warrior: John Moss and the Fight for Freedom of Information and Consumers Rights will attend a book signing at Busboys and Poets.
People’s Warrior is the best account to date of Representative Moss’s legislative battles to win the public’s right to obtain government information, consumer protections, federal safety standards for motor vehicles, and protections for securities in brokerage accounts.
For FOIA advocates, Lemov’s treatment of Moss’s decades-long fight to pass the Freedom of Information Act –which was signed into law on July 4th, 1966– is especially riveting.
Moss began battling excessive government secrecy in 1953, as a second-term congressman. In the midst of Cold War hysteria, the government’s attitude towards its records was, “when in doubt, classify.” The amount of peanut butter consumed by US forces was classified as secret, as was a twenty-year-old report about shark attacks on shipwrecked sailors.
The movement against what Moss called “silly secrecy” was bolstered by a report funded by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, entitled “The People’s Right to Know.” It was authored by Harold Cross, a leading newspaper lawyer, and counsel to the New York Tribune. Cross –who was supported primarily by the American press—declared, “Public business is the public’s business. The people have the right to know. Freedom of information is their just heritage. Without that, the citizens of a democracy have but changed their kings.” Newspaper editors and writers were the first to publicly advocate for a mechanism to give the public access to the government’s information. (more…)
