Hmmmmmm, not sure I'll go there with you on this one.

A company's responsibility is to the shareholders, to return a profit and value to the share. It does so by producing valuable, popular products or services at a competitive price high enough to deliver the highest profit to the company. To open a company up with FOIA (and who decides what falls under that and what doesn't...where do you stop), puts proprietary product or operating information into the public domain eliminating the company's potential edge in making a profit.

To open its books up entirely focuses potential investors and consumers on issues that don't necessarily have anything to do with whether the company's product or service is worth buying, or its stock a worthy investment.

While I don't buy the argument that oil companies aren't making oodles of money off the backs of consumers they've conditioned to accept $3.00+ per gallon, nor that executives have to make $400 million a year, I don't think it's wrong for companies to be able to keep some information close to the vest, in the interest of keeping the corporate image as positive as possible.

Make every document accessible and corporations will start shredding everything, or start spending more on staff to manage the requests and responses to allegations, or worse, quit communicating difficult issues internally for fear that potentially damaging news might get out. It doesn't take much for a stock price to be affected or a product or service to lose favor, and the news doesn't have to be true. A document that indicates a potential problem in the company's product, service, finances, operating procedure, hiring practices, etc. could irreparably damage a company before the issue is later proved to be a non-issue.

Just my .02

I have to agree with Michael. Corporations are accountable to the shareholders who have a vested monetary interest. And corporations absolutely should be forthcoming with shareholders. I do see your point, David, about companies whose actions affect many people or society as a whole. But I think there are sufficient checks and balances in place to ensure that those kinds of companies are held accountable for being open and transparent to the extent that their actions affect us. Look at the tobacco industry. They hid vital information that affected many lives for many years. Not so any more.

Thanks for your replies, guys. Believe it or not, I hadn't considered the need for competitive secrets and the complications that would bring. (The beauty of blogs--it's permissible to run half-baked ideas up the flagpole.)

But I still cling to the notion that there should be some types of information that corporations should be compelled to deliver.

I also posted this in a forum on MyRagan.com, and in reply to the point that we should trust consumers to put pressure on corporations, I wrote:

"Yes, you're right. It IS complicated and would cost lots of dough. But consumers are dumb. I know. I are one.

"And reporters, who also can be dumb (I know; I are one), become rightly outraged when a Giant Corporation of whom half the U.S. population is a shareholder and the other half is a customer, simply does not deign to call back, or refuses to offer any information, with the same semi-outraged indignation that your aunt Betty might offer if you asked her her age.

"Such interactions strike me as at least as absurd as trying to figure out a FOIA law for corporations."

Michael, to your point, I would add that investors, too, are dumb; most of them are only half-aware of the companies their 401(k) has them invested in, through mutual funds. I also don't quite understand your point that corporations should be able to hid information "in the interest of keeping the corporate image as positive as possible." Why is THAT in the public interest?

And Robert, you're not using the tobacco company example to SUPPORT your point, are you? It took more than half a century to get a sufficient look behind the curtains, and millions died as a result.

Overall, I guess what I'm saying is that the "private sector" has more and more and more power over public life (an arguable point, I suppose) ... and if that's true, the public ought to have more access to information about what the corporations are up to.

As for how that might be achieved ... I'll leave that to the lawmakers whose campaigns are financed by giant corporations.

David - your point is an honourable, if naive one (not that I'm one to talk when it comes to being naive). Because even with an insane amount of laws, checks and balances and the requirements to release company information, look what happened at Enron.

If a company is honourable they will provide enough information for the public to determine how to interact with them, if at all. And they'll probably do it without the need for laws and FOIA regulations

If a company is not honourable they will find a way to hide things they don't want to see the light of day, and all the laws we can pass won't stop them.

My opinion is that the public needs to turn off Entertainment Tonight and read a newspaper and really get involved in what goes on in the world a bit more. Wasn't it Margaret Mead who said: "Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has."

I think it isn't more laws we need, but a more involved and active populace to get involved and create the kind of world we prefer to live in.

Well, Kristen you're probably right, as far as you go.

"I think it isn't more laws we need, but a more involved and active populace to get involved and create the kind of world we prefer to live in."

But this strikes me as just as naive as my own idiotic idea of the Corporate FOIA.

We are all hopelessly hypocritical—or, to be more kind, of two minds—about "the kind of world we prefer to live in."

What used to be called limousine liberals is now:

• Every moralist who wants a 500 cable channels, none of them raunchy.

• Every Baby Boomer who wishes for nationalized health care in the U.S. but who wastes thousands of dollars getting arthroscopic surgery so he can keep playing basketball.

• Everyone who complains about the sorry state of the public schools or the insane prices of private schools but doesn't consider for a single moment downsizing her life and homeschooling her kids.

• And every asshole journalist who wants Toyota to slow down its business operations and lessen its competitive edge spill its guts to every asshole journalist—but can't believe cars cost so much already!

If we've let corporations—most of which aren't one single wit more "honorable" than they're required to be by law—get too much power over our media, our work lives, our landscapes and our very consciousness, we're each deeply, deeply complicit.

I've spoken at some length with Margaret Mead about this, by the way, and she and I agree: It would be nice if a small group of committed individuals changed the world. But right at the moment, it's not the way to bet.

David, the corporation's right to keep certain information to themselves (to the extent that they can) is NOT in the public's interest...It is in the interest of the corporation and its investors.

Having worked for a corporation in the senior care industry that I believed in and still believe in, I know there were constant specious threats to the corporate image, and any one of thousands of internal memos that might support those threats TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT represents an example of what I mean. The health and perhaps survival of a even a truly good, ground-breaking, system-changing company could be at risk in the name of total transparency.

Hang with me...Hypothetically, a resident of an assisted living residence owned and operated by a national or international corporation "walks out" and disappears. An initial internal document suggests one possibility the company is investigating is whether there was gross negligence on the part of the night staff or a lack of training. Media and consumers gain access to that one document and soon other similar documents where the company is investigating potential problems at several homes (routine investigations whenever all sorts of issues occur), and jump all over the corporation for hiring incompetents and failing to train appropriately, and for failing to keep the place locked up to prevent its poor, senile residents from harm. They assign it to profit motives, of course.

They know nursing homes, and are not well educated on the difference between institutional senior care for the invalid, and more progressive and humane residential living for those still ambulatory, including those with Alzheimer's disease, that preserves the dignity of the resident and prolongs life and quality of that life. Yada yada yada...They don't care to hear those explanations that now sound like spin.

They don't care that there is some dispute over whether the family and their doctor lied about the resident's mental status to help qualify the resident for this desirable lifestyle without being confined to the Alzheimer's unit and it's added cost at an already expensive place; they don't see the distinction or the home should have known anyway. They don't care that the resident had only just moved in a week previously. And they don't want to hear anything negative things said about the poor family who've lost a loved one.

Months later, it turns out the family had lost its patience trying to care for Mom at home when she kept walking out and getting lost; she was such an inconvenience. Decided to put her in someone else's care (dump her -- it does happen, unfortunately). Took her out for an appointment maybe or brought her back home one afternoon for a family barbeque and then just dropped her off later and left without making sure she'd actually gone back in the building. Feeling guilty they lie and say they saw her go in.

Whatever the reason (and I've heard a few from different national providers -- you'd be surprised and depressed), let's assume that the family is more at fault than the company. But sensing an opportunity to gain and in order to further reinforce their argument that they are not at fault, and with pressure from ambulance chasing attorneys, they sue. Other families decide to take this lawsuit as proof of corporate guilt before the case is even tried and pull their parents out, perhaps even sue for perceived neglect themselves.

Months, maybe years later, after loss of business, huge legal expenses, loss of stock value, subsequent sales of homes to counter lost profit, maybe even Congressional testimony, that lawsuit and others are found to be spurious -- it was never the company's fault to begin with though they could and do put in more preventitive measures (some of which reduce the residential atmosphere that is so valued in an assisted living home). But too late, company's suffered and goes under or is sold to a nursing home operator.

Taking your point, if the public, the media and investors are dumb, would you trust them to understand that a single document that hints at a possible issue is not proof positive of something nefarious, and indeed might be countered by further internal investigation that disproves whatever was found in the original document.

The initial story emerging in a crisis is rarely accurate. A corporation going through the appropriate motions to discern exactly what happened, where the fault lies and what actions they can take to prevent something like this from happening again, will generate lots of potentially harmful documents early on.

And, of course, there is our tendency to believe all the negative (i.e. I'll jump all over the suggestion that the company is up to no good), and see only bias in the positive (believe the good things a company says about itself?! Right!).

Nightmare scenario, right? But then that's why even good corporations should and will keep those documents confidential. To prevent the nightmare scenario.

Thanks for indulging me in this response.

Oh, there are plenty of "small groups of committed individuals": Muslim terrorists, Hollywood decision-makers, left- and right-wing extremists, the special education staff in my city. They just play for the other team--and, sadly, most of us, on most days, would rather bitch than fight.

Michael, thank YOU for your detailed scenario, which rings 100% true and leaves me feeling, properly, like a simplistic ass.

However, the only conclusions one is to draw, however, are depressing and do not exactly support the status quo:

• Our society has become an incredibly complex web of systems and laws that are comprehensible only to the specialists in each system and each area of law.

• We're left to trust the specialists and the lawyers who know best, even if they have a tremendous profit motive.

• Whether they find out more or less, citizens must trust corporations more or less the same way their ancestors trusted God.

Beyond solutions to this problem, don't you find this fact a bit troubling, and foreboding?

Jane: you have compared the special education staff in your city with Muslim terrorists. We MUST hear more.

David, how is the scenario you described just above any different from the way life has ALWAYS been for most people? You could take your three bullet points and stick them into text about the Middle Ages or ancient Egypt and they'd be just as true.

Trust and reluctance to make a scene are the grease on the skids of civilization, even when those behaviors are unwise. Only when sufficient numbers of people get angry do bad things change.

It makes me tired and sad because that's exactly how I am, too.

* * * * *

My city's special ed folks are like Muslim terrorists in that they have very rigid, very narrow, very firm beliefs and they're going to act on those beliefs: facts be damned, parents be damned, kids be damned, research be damned, misery be damned. They can't be talked, reasoned, joked, threatened, or cajoled out of carrying out their plan, even if it's illegal. The only thing that works is to find an ally who is stronger than they are.

That scenario, too, is older than time.

Yes, Jane, good point. Let us hope our tiredness and sadness turns into anger at the right times in our lives, and for the right causes.

David

David, I skimmed the last several comments (sorry, Michael, yours was just too long to read thoroughly right now!) :-) and wanted to answer your question about my using tobacco companies as an example to support my point.

Yes. I'm using tobacco companies as an example to support my point. I 100% agree with your statement that they hid information (in fact, lied) for many years about the dangers of their products and millions of people died as a result of using those products. However, my point is that there came a point where "society" (the public) corrected that problem, demanding more accountability, more translucency (if not transparency), and while the government did get involved, it was really public pressure that created a huge shift in tobacco companies' translucency (if not transparency) about their products.

"• Every Baby Boomer who wishes for nationalized health care in the U.S. but who wastes thousands of dollars getting arthroscopic surgery so he can keep playing basketball."

You wouldn't have said that if it were your beloved golf, now would you? (TIC)

Agreed, Robert, but what I'm saying is that the general public brings pressure--whether against tobacco companies or oil companies or car companies--four decades too late.

Say a great reporter like Seymour Hersh, a la Rachael Carson with "Silent Spring," had gotten access to what the tobacco industry knew in 1960. However that was achieved, wouldn't that have been better, and accellerated the shift by decades?

I definitely understand--better now than when I started this thread, thanks all--the complexities of mandating access to company info. But I don't understand the sanguine attitude toward letting things go until the general public gets around to outrage.

I think an underlying problem here is a deep distrust of the press (a distrust I understand, but as a shining if minor member of the press, can't FULLY share) as an intelligent and reasonable arbiter in all this.

However understandable, this distrust wasn't always so. Remember Edward R. Murrow, Walter Kronkite, Woodward & Bernstein?

Diane, great question, actually, TIC or no. Golf--and the land the courses use up and the gas I waste to get to them and the TIME I spend playing (and not parenting, writing, giving)--gnaws at my conscience, even as I love the game MORE EVERY YEAR.

(And my love for golf is increasing slightly faster than the gnawing.)

My favorite quote is from E.B. White:

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

Great point, Vera.

Playboy is translucent, Penthouse is transparent!