The newspaper business is rather competitive, especially among publications within the same region or state. But as hard as news organizations battle to break news stories, they often unite when it comes to fighting for the public’s right to know.

Such a case is happening right now involving a mid-level appeals court’s ruling that information about public pension systems can be kept private.

The Citizen has joined several other newspapers and newspaper trade associations in filing a “friend of the court” brief with the state Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, regarding this ruling.

The case is being fought not by a newspaper, but by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a government watchdog group that has provided a terrific public service through its SeeThroughNY.net website, which has data on how taxpayer dollars are spent on government payrolls, pensions and contracts.

But in trying to gather information from the New York City Police Pension Fund, the Empire Center was blocked. The fund claimed it could withhold names of the pensioners for privacy and security reasons. An Appellate Division panel upheld that stance, and now the Empire Center is trying to take the fight to the Court of Appeals.

The ruling in this case is already leading other government entities to withhold information about additional pension funds.

Seeing this troubling development, newspapers are trying to get a message to the court about the importance of overturning this ruling.

Led by lawyers from the Hearst Corp., which owns the Albany Times Union, a group of newspapers filed a 22-page brief with the court this week. The other organizations joining the effort include The Citizen, Gannett Co. Inc., the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New York Times, Buffalo News, Utica Observer-Dispatch, the New York Press Association and the New York News Publishers Association….

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