By Jarret Liotta

WESTPORT — In honor of Rosh Hashanah, Labor Day, 9-11, AND my birthday, which was Friday — (and No, none of you remembered!) — I thought I’d reflect on a new year of challenges facing hard-working journalists in an Orwellian 21^st century.

While the roots of my interest and enthusiasm for journalism trace to fictional icons like Hildy Johnson, Carl Kolchak and Walter Cronkite, in my heart I hold a very deep & serious belief in the importance of a free and unfettered press, and its checks-and-balance role in maintaining democracy (if that’s what we’re still calling it).

Consequently, I’ve set out in my role as executive editor to be both the public’s eye and an information synthesizer.

One of the big problems, however, is that despite representing the public in this so-called democracy, I’m — all too often — not given the information to synthesize, nor allowed to see everything one would expect the public is entitled to see.

“Like the weather, everyone talks about “transparency,” but no one does anything about it.” — Phillip Walter Ludley

In Westport I constantly hear the word “transparency” thrown around, as people are want to do with a phrase like “checks and balances.”

But what they fail to embrace …  accept … honor … is that a real system of checks & balances (a.k.a. real transparency) should not — and ultimately cannot — be manipulated or controlled.

That scares public officials, public employees, people in the public eye more than ever in the 21^st century.

In most cases I’m not sure why. One would have hoped that the Paris Hilton sex tape sufficed in freeing all of us up to look bad in public.

As the years have rolled on, however, a collective fear of exposure with even the most benign regard — fueled of course by demented lawyers and abetted by the profoundly pointless, albeit prolific, Public Relations industry — continues to keep everyone flailing to focus more energy on how they’re perceived in public, rather than on doing their job.

Since I joined the Journal I’ve endured many examples of this, which I not only find annoying — as they thwart me and my team in our ability to keep you informed — but actually rather frightening.

Some are simply the embarrassing innocuous screw-ups of town and school officials, who perhaps neglected to dot an i or cross a t, and are either struggling with their misguided shame or sweating under a maladjusted supervisor they fear might pull the plug on their employment if their error is discovered.

Either way, Westport tends to be a highly forgiving town — as we tend to be a remarkably forgiving country — so I encourage everyone to come clean with their foibles and breathe easy that a little light won’t hurt anyone, and may even make us love you all the more!

Living with The Fear

Unfortunately, however, a lot of darkness permeates the various systems, wherein impenetrable walls have been created and reinforced in so-called public institutions, simply to keep the public out … Yes, even in Westport.

Ironically, 9-11 was a pivotal turning point. The country was so mired in fear — real or imagined — that most of us were only too happy to welcome something as ridiculous as the USA PATRIOT Act with open arms to assuage our terror.

Fear is a terrible powerful force and motivates a remarkable amount of human behavior — Fear of ambiguous threats that are beaten into our brains, Fear of people in all their weird varieties, Fear of change, Fear of a fading past and an unknown future, Fear of losing what we have, or not getting what we think we need to survive & stay whole & safe …

Thus, Fear talks us into accepting the unacceptable.

Shadow Governing

Directly and indirectly, public institutions have since claimed rights to keep so many things secret — and even if they’re not overtly making such claims, they’ve grown accustomed to conveniently doing portions of their work in the shadows.

Public documents and information is routinely kept off the table unless someone notices it’s missing, or unless it’s begged for through Freedom of Information requests. Questions to school and town officials are simply ignored or avoided with non-response, despite perpetual claims of “transparency.”

Still more frightening, many local elected officials — despite having been chosen to represent the voters — refuse to publicly share their thoughts and opinions about …. well, anything!

Instead, in many cases they will claim a board or commission chair must alone speak for them, that they are not allowed to give their opinions or share separate of their group, which is utterly ridiculous and frightening in a so-called democracy.

The oddly comical number of unanimous votes I’ve witnessed over many years covering elected bodies in and out of Westport feels like a sad example of this opaque version of transparency that’s fed to the public.

So rather than demonstrating active interest in really seeing that the public is informed — doing what one would hope is a requisite part of their responsibility — some people who are elected or hired to public positions (which are innately positions of power) instead adopt a sort of contemptuous view of the public, the press and the whole process.

They look upon this responsibility to help keep people informed as a detestable hindrance to their duties.

It’s a slippery-slope example of the ends justifying the means, because all these people I’m speaking about are probably fine people with largely good intentions.

But that’s not the point, nor an excuse, for the very nature of the responsibilities with which they’ve been entrusted demands not simply that they be accountable, but that they communicate.

-30-