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Why We Need Government Transparency

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You can read about government, listen to stories on the radio and watch them on TV...but do you really know how government works?

When a mayor makes a campaign promise...when a candidate takes a campaign donation from a company...when a complex budget is explained in a one-page press release...we’re left wondering, “What’s the real story?”

But with newsrooms slashing budgets and fewer reporters covering the inner-workings of government, things can slip through the cracks. Hartford Courant investigative reporter Matt Kauffman called his kind of reporting "time-consuming" and "inefficient in the sense that you run down blind alles." But Kauffman added, "What you hope, is that at the end of the day when you do find something, it's very, very meaningful. It sort of makes up for all of those deadends."

"The Connecticut Post does not have one full-time city hall reporter," said Lennie Grimaldi who has worked on both sides of the relationship as a reporter and in city hall. 

Today the public is turning to new tools and demanding more “transparency” in government.

Today, we took a look inside with journalists from WNPR, The Hartford Courant and ProPublica. We’ll also learn about the Sunlight Foundation - which provides remarkable transparency tools for reporters, bloggers and the public. 

As WNPR reporter Jeff Cohen said, "It's important to note that we don't do this just for kicks. We do this because we really believe in the value of transparency as a way to help government function better."

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