Jackson Needs Truth and Transparency Now — Join Us?

The false campaigning, flyers, mailers, anonymous posts on blogs, radio appearances and so on in the 2009 city elections in Jackson has encouraged many of us to get together and call for more truth and transparency in local government, campaigns, media and on personal blogs.

So today on Election Day, the JFP is announcing the Jackson Truth and Transparency Initiative as a community project going forward. We invite you to join us, regardless of your political leanings. We want your ideas, your energy and your support for this very important initiative.

Going forward, we hope the project becomes a way to encourage Jacksonians to stop spreading so many falsehoods and to factcheck information before putting it out there. We hope to develop a "best practices" for local blogs to voluntarily sign on to pledge that they will not spread unsubstantiated rumors and operate as breeding grounds for anonymous posters to spread lies for their own personal benefit and vendettas. We want to encourage more people to post on Web sites under their own names wherever possible and avoid anonymity, and the abuses that often accompanies it (much as people already do on Facebook).

We want to promote open and transparent government and work together to test public servants to see how well they respond to efforts to bring sunshine into local government and politics. And we plan to develop a "No dirty tricks" pledge that we will ask all politicians to sign onto, pledging that they will help root out and discourage dishonest campaign tricks in their own and others' campaigns.

Please feel free to pledge below to support this project, as well as offer your suggestions.

© Jackson Free Press, Inc.