The New Presumption of Transparency - WSJ.com

The New Presumption of Transparency - WSJ.com:

"We live in a new era, as seen in such varied efforts to suppress information as expense fiddling by British parliamentarians, Beijing's censorship of Tiananmen Square, and libel laws that deter reporting on terrorism. A growing list of institutions and countries find themselves on the wrong side of this shift in expectations. Information that was once locked away is fair game, and anyone who refuses to play by the new rules is presumed guilty of having something to hide.....This trend against secrecy is in stark contrast to countries such as China, which censored coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre last week. Beijing has done such a good job of erasing history that most young Chinese people know nothing about the 1989 crackdown. The PBS documentary "The Tank Man" made clear that the best and brightest interviewed at Beijing University had never seen the iconic photograph of a citizen facing down the tanks."