Right to Know

The right to know evolved in two distinct periods. In its preconceptual form, it was a right to be educated about the purposes of government and to be informed about the actions of government as formulated by John Milton, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Wilson, and James Madison, among others. In its contemporary understanding, the people's right to know is a mechanism to empower people through education and knowledge so they can watch over governments and industries and improve their lives regarding health, safety, economic, and environmental concerns.

After the failure to expressly include a right to know in the U.S. Constitution, the first attempts to establish a right to know as law came from a few legal scholars and journalists during the 1950s. Harold Cross, a retired attorney for a newspaper, made the term right to know popular with the publication of The Public's Right to Know. Three years after of the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 (FOIA), another statute carrying a different version of the right to know was enacted as a direct consequence of the efforts of the Environmental Movement: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969. However, the right to know in NEPA, as in FOIA, was still not fully developed.

The ideological concept of the right to know has never been fully recognized by the Supreme Court or clearly stated in a federal law until the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) of 1986. It's important to highlight both the preventive and participatory characteristics of the right to know in EPCRA as they represent a good first step to empower citizens to act directly in the policymaking process. EPCRA differentiates from previous laws like the FOIA in that it brought a right to petition the government for information but not a right to know with the preventive and participatory characteristics. Furthermore, EPCRA also included private corporations into the mix of entities that needed to make the information available, recognizing them as part of the group of institutions that directly affected the public interest.

Susan Hadden (1989) developed a contemporary four-level concept of right to know applied to environmental risks that provides a solid summary of the concept as it relates to public relations and other communication fields. The basic level has the purpose of ensuring that citizens can find information. The risk reduction level aims to reduce risks, preferably through voluntary industry action but also by government if necessary. The better decision-making level allows citizens to participate in the decision-making process, and the alter balance of power level empowers citizens to participate in the decision-making process in the same or higher standing than government and industry.

Community right to know fits in the overall construction of marketplace advocacy. Ultimately right to know is about advocating social justice communication for environmental issues, risks and crises, and moving beyond the sovereignty of consumer choice as one of the guiding communication mechanisms.