James H. Smith, a stalwart in Connecticut journalism, has spent decades championing the cause of transparency and open government.
As a former president of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information (CCFOI) and a retired editor, Smith has been instrumental in preserving public access to government records. In this interview, he reflects on his career, the importance of Freedom of Information and the challenges journalists continue to face.
Interview by Brandon Cortés, SCSU JRN ‘25. Answers have been condensed and edited.
What inspired you to advocate for the Freedom of Information Act?
It was part of my career. Journalism is the basis of the First Amendment, free speech and free press. You can’t have a free press without freedom of information. We need that information, and we can’t let the government hide it from us.
Has advocacy for FOI in Connecticut made a difference?
The law goes back 50 years. The Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information (CCFOI) goes back 70 years. It was founded in 1955, 20 years before then-Gov. Ella Grasso passed the law.
Some real important journalists started CCFOI: Carter White of the Meriden Record Journal and Bill Foote of the Hartford Courant began CCFOI, and we fought for freedom of expression and to get government information. And it took 20 years for the government to catch up with us. But it was thanks to Ella Grasso.
How have you shaped your views on government transparency?
One quote from Ella Grasso, who helped establish the FOI law, stuck with me. I asked her why she wanted to be governor, and she said: “Because I care deeply and intently about the people of this state. It starts with the religious conviction of knowing my neighbor as myself. One has to make a judgment on the purpose of life, and it is my strong conviction that I have to serve my fellow men.”
That’s why she ran for governor, and I feel the same way about my career. What journalists do is serve society. And we can’t serve society if the government is hiding information from us. So we fight to get it.
What are some challenges journalists face with FOI?
The hardest nut to crack are police departments.
God bless the police. They keep the peace and they arrest the bad guys. But in the process of doing it, sometimes they screw up. If we didn’t have FOI laws, we couldn’t get the documentation of what happened at those events. And you have to fight for it.
Before Connecticut had an FOI Commission, there was really no way to fight for it except to sue through the courts, which took forever. So now that Ella Grasso gave us an FOI Commission, we could take the police to the commission. And it wasn’t just police, but government officials all over the place try to make information secret that they should not.
Looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest challenges for maintaining government transparency?
The fight will never stop. Once a human being becomes a government official, they love secrecy. I don’t know why. It’s a democracy for goodness sake. It’s a government of, by and for the people. But when some some people gain power as a congressman or senator or a General Assembly member, they have the power to shut off so that only they know about it. And there will always be a need for organizations like CCFOI to fight that.
How would you define Freedom of Information in just a few sentences?
It’s to lift the veil of secrecy, which is the title of Mitchell Pearlman’s book. And the veil of secrecy is very, very real.
Whether it’s France or Ukraine or Russia or the United States, governments try to control information. In a democracy, the people who vote for who’s going to govern them need that information.
And so the fight will never end. Connecticut needs CCFOI to make sure that the information citizens need to make informed decisions is available to them.