From Kansas City Star: More and more, the internal workings of Indiana government are being shown and the political pageantry stripped away in a reminder that the trappings of power are rarely trumpeted in news conferences, aired in campaign ads or otherwise pushed out to the public.
The shock over former school Superintendent Tony Bennett's grade-changing scandal might have had the biggest impact, costing a national education rock star his job as Florida education commissioner. But many other stories have been unearthed by Indiana media recently, showing a government that often operates more in private than public.
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Gerry Lanosga, president of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government and a professor of investigative journalism at Indiana University, points out that politicians have always looked for ways to get their message straight to the public, notably Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fireside chats. Now they have even more options, from Facebook to Twitter, for narrowly crafting what the public sees.
"It's a pretty showy way of demonstrating 'openness,' but in reality what's happening is they are trying to ensure that their carefully crafted messages are the only ones the public sees. And so we actually see less of the deliberative processes of government," he said.
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Indiana Coalition for Open Government is a member of NFOIC. –eds.