The John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press and the People's Right to Know, 1988 / The Meek Shall Not Inherit by Jean H. Otto, The Rocky Mountain News / Scottsdale, Arizona, November 11, 1988

The John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press and the People's Right to Know, 1978 / Beware a Homogenized Press, An Address by Robert H. Estabrook

The John Peter Zenger Award, 1959 / Men in the Dark, An Address by Herbert Brucker, Editor, Hartford Courant

The John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press and the People's Right to Know, 1976 / The Investigative Reporter and The Democratic Process, An Address by J. Edward Murray, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colorado, At the Presentation of the Posthumous Award to Donald F. Bolles, Arizona Republic / January 22, 1977

The text deals with the question of defining what exactly right to information is. As the public debate concerning different institutes of the right to information and transparency goes on intensively and extensively in the Czech republic as well as worldwide, it has become the aim of the author to search for the roots of the right, of both its restrictive and extensive scope and its guiding principles. Such a research should be useful for the interpretation and the aplication of the relevant law and serve as a guide for the proper understanding of the rights' social and legal importance. The first part of the text after the introduction describes the term of the right to information, it's evolution in history, philosophical, political and legal basis and contemporary meaning. The following chapter concerns itself with the material sources of the right, i. e. the reason and meaning of the existence of the right. It explains the rights' commonly recognized width and depth and its liberal and conservative tendencies reaching from the current events into the even more informational based future. The conflict of the right with the other interests of modern society is covered and the different formal sources of the right are listed demonstratively. The third chapter examines the universally acknowledged...

This thesis assesses and explains the effectiveness of the legal regime for government transparency in China, with a focus on the legislative and judicial protection of citizens’ right of access to information (ATI), through a combination of normative doctrinal analysis and empirical investigation. In 2007, China promulgated the Regulation on Open Government Information (ROGI),which implicitly created a general and legally enforceable ATI right, thereby establishing a regime akin to the freedom of information (FOI) regimes that prevail in many countries worldwide. However, this nascent regime appears to have had mixed, and rather confusing, effects. Existent assessments of the regime’s effectiveness have concentrated either on the ROGI text or on data concerning bureaucratic performance and the extra-legal factors affecting that performance, but have failed to consider sufficiently the perplexities and peculiarities of the Chinese legal system that bear heavily on the ROGI’s operation. This thesis constitutes an attempt to make both substantive and methodological contributions to research in this field. The thesis is organized into three main areas. First, it analyses the relation between the ruling Communist Party’s policies and the making of local and national transparency legislation. It finds that the legislative endorsement of an ATI right resulted from several of the Party’s reform goals, which include not only the facilitation of economic prosperity and social progress but also the fostering of government accountability and public participation. These goals, although with respective limitations, overlap with the values underlying FOI law. Second, it examines the labyrinth of Chinese laws, regulations and other legal norms that regulate the disclosure of government information, particularly the ROGI and Law on Guarding State Secrets, and evaluates them against international best practice standards on FOI law. It finds that the overall legislative framework lags behind international standards, largely because it fails to stipulate a presumption of disclosure and contains multi-layered restrictions on access, thereby leaving administrative organs with an enormous degree of discretion. Third, it reviews 169 judicial decisions collected through methods specially designed to ensure their representativeness. It distils the major trends in the interpretations made and rules set by the courts and finds that, by placing restrictions on access to court, imposing a need test, failing to scrutinize state secret claims, deferring to administrative discretion in applying exemptions and avoiding injunctive relief, the courts have further reduced the normative scope of the ATI right. It argues that this inadequate judicial protection is caused not by limitations on judicial power with respect to that right, but primarily by the abandonment of duty on the part of most courts, which have either misapplied the law or deviated from the guiding cases and legal doctrine that maintain the coherence of laws and judicial autonomy. Owing to the combined effect of a weak legislative framework and largely impotent judicial protection, the ATI right has been virtually deprived of its function to enable the citizenry to monitor and check the government. It has also failed to fulfil its potential in protecting citizens’ personal and property rights. In this regard, China’s ATI right falls far short of a genuine right to freedom of information. These findings provide a necessary basis for a more accurate assessment of China’s open government information regime and a more perceptive comparison of this peculiarly Chinese regime with the FOI regimes of other countries. They also shed new light on the operation of judicial review in China. Furthermore, they indicate the barriers that must be overcome in future reforms to achieve a genuine FOI environment and highlight the interconnectedness of any such reform measures. / published_or_final_version / Law / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation examines the impacts of shifting federal and state regulation on localities and on their efforts to extend public access to new technologies by exploring how libraries, diverse community sites and commercial hotspots have configured their services and programs in Austin, Texas in the last decade. Historically, regulation to ensure public access to communication and information systems have been regarded in the United States as an expression of government's concerns about preserving the public interest in the media. Since the early 1990s, diverse policy initiatives promoting public access to information and communication technology (ICT) sought to fulfill ideals of equity and democracy in the information age. However, an increasing preponderance of neoliberal ideology in current policy discourses, coupled with the explosive growth of high-speed, mobile networks, and individual-based, social software applications are challenging traditional notions of public access in communication policy. Since 2002, federal and state governments have ended a decade of direct government support to local, non-profit and community-based programs that facilitated public access to ICT. Over the same period, they have increasingly pursued a market-oriented approach to broadband access through the unlicensed spectrum, encouraging private enterprises to provider WiFi and wireless services to consumers in restaurants, airports, and other public places. Such changes bear significant implications for issues of governance, participatory democracy and equity in the information age. The comparative case study of Internet access initiatives in Austin seeks to answer three interrelated questions. First, how has public policy facilitating the transition toward convergent media environments framed public access to information and communication technologies (ICT)? A framing analysis of federal, state and local regulation of public ICT access indicates increasing fragmentation of policy discourses on access. Second, what are the main characteristics of the field of public access to ICT in an American technopolis? Austin, a modern American Technopolis and pioneer of Internet access in the country serves as a site to assess the impact of fragmented regulation on public ICT access. Third, how has public access to new technology through the unlicensed spectrum been conceptualized by different access cultures in a shifting regulatory environment? A survey of Wi-Fi hotspots in Austin, interviews with stakeholders and secondary data are employed in analyzing how non-profits, private firms and the local government are configuring high-speed Internet access through the unlicensed spectrum.

The John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press and the People's Right to Know, 1971 / The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers, An Address by A.M. Rosenthal, Managing Editor, The New York Times

The John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press / Number 9 / The Press and an Informed Electorate, An Address by John C. Colburn, Managing Editor, Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch

The John Peter Zenger Award for Freedom of the Press and the People's Right to Know, 1973 / The Faith of a Free People, An Address by Katharine Graham, Publisher, Washington Post