Kelly Hinchcliffe interviews Joaquin Sapien about his decision to go public over his public records battle with a stonewalling New York City agency by posting a story on ProPublica: "When government agencies deny or delay our access to records, they are not just making our professional lives difficult, they are doing a disservice to the citizens who pay their salaries. They are infringing on the public’s right to know, and that’s really what this story is about."
Freedom of Information
Justin Elliott voices his frustration over waiting years for replies to Freedom of Information Act requests, and he blames the current administration: "President Obama himself waxed poetic about FOIA on his first full day in office in 2009, issuing a statement calling it 'the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government' … But Obama hasn’t delivered." Also, how the administration blocked FOIA reform.
The federal Freedom of Information Act marks its golden anniversary this year, and John Dyer writes about the journalists who use it and the obstacles they face: "Even as FOIA remains vital and relevant, cultural shifts in the past 50 years have exposed its shortcomings, sometimes in ironic ways." Also, a high school journalism student gets an $8,000 bill for a records request. And the biggest threat to the press in 2015.
Trudy Lieberman provides multiple examples of how the last three presidents have gradually muzzled federal health and science agencies in the interest of political messaging: "These grievances aren’t unfamiliar, of course — journalists are forever complaining about government flacks. Still, it wasn’t always this way. Reporters who have covered Washington for decades talk of a time when they could reach almost anyone at the agencies, even an agency head, by phone."
The Freedom of Information Act allows the news media to seek a faster response when asking for urgently needed records, but that request is almost never granted, Erin Carroll writes: "In 2014, agencies denied 87 percent of the 9,981 so-called 'expedited processing' requests made under FOIA … And the rejection rate at certain agencies is far higher. The Securities and Exchange Commission granted only three of the 253 expedited processing requests it received last year."
Whatever competitive edge accrues to a Freedom of Information Act request could soon vanish as seven federal agencies start putting records online as they're distributed to FOIA requesters: "Of course, it has always been possible to scoop other journalists digging through government documents," Poynter's Benjamin Mullin writes. "But this new policy will eliminate some of the guesswork involved in figuring out what rival publications are up to."
Jonathan Peters discusses a half-dozen court cases in which the government has sued someone who filed a public records request. The cases could have a chilling effect, Peters writes: "In some of these cases, the government feared being sued itself, and initiated litigation to try to force the court to decide whether the records were public. Still, in each case, there was a risk that the free flow of information would be chilled because of the government’s actions."
Erik Wemple writes about a Vice News reporter's struggles to pry some reports out of a Pentagon office via the Freedom of Information Act. Reporter Jason Leopold took the government to court and negotiations ensued, Leopold told a congressional hearing: "Then this happened: 'Recently they said that "We’ll give you some documents as long as you promise to never file a FOIA request again and don’t have anyone else file a FOIA request on your behalf,"' testified Leopold."