Our readers insist on their right to know

You can't have missed Monday's nationwide Your Right to Know launch in which the front page of just about every daily newspaper comprised mostly blacked out text.

I'd love to say this illustration of a heavily redacted document was an exaggeration, but the reality is our journalists are all too commonly presented with such pages, or worse, in response to freedom of information requests.

The goal of the campaign is to apply pressure to government, but also to try to awaken an interest in the public about press freedom. Both are big challenges.

The Morrison government has hardly inspired confidence it wants more transparency. The Prime Minister's fairly glib response was that he believes in a free press but also that no one is above the rule of law. The objective of the media campaign is that laws need to change, not that journalists should sit above or outside them.

Governments won't heed these calls unless they think there's votes in it, hence the co-ordinated nature of the campaign. The media industry knows getting people to really care about what some might think are just "journo issues" is a tough ask. Many people are also sceptical of the media's conduct or motives, or perhaps just don't see a problem in the government keeping so many secrets.

Fortunately that's not the case with our readers. When we polled our Times Reader Panel this week (you can join up here) we asked if they believed Australia was a free and open democracy where governments seek to keep the public as informed as possible.

Seventy-four per cent of participants said no and only 20 per cent said yes. We also asked the panel if they supported the media's calls for reform. Eighty-five per cent said yes and only 10 per cent said no.

This certainly matched up with our experience hosting readers in our newsroom this week at sessions aimed at showing them how to make best use of their digital subscriptions.

Each group we asked expressed strong support for the Your Right to Know campaign and concern about government secrecy not just at a national level, but also here in the ACT. As reporter Daniella White wrote on Monday, the territory is hardly the model of transparency it claims to be. Our reporters run into obstruction and obfuscation around simple questions daily, whether from police, health or any number of other government agencies.

If you care about this issue, as our visiting subscribers most certainly did, you can learn more or take action by writing to your federal representative.