Using the FOIA

mgaiman writes "Lucy Dalglish, Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, spoke at my school today. She discussed the state of journalism in the post-9/11 world. She said, among other things, that this administration is the most closed she has seen since Nixon. The organization itself is a non-profit journalist rights group. Their site features such things as Homefront Confidential, a chronicling of changes to the openness of information since 9/11, and a guide to using the Federal FOI Act to get access to information. While most /.ers aren't journalists, I thought it would be of interest nonetheless."

Comments

Re:Closed could mean disciplined

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there is no doubt that things have tightened up since 9-11,

Absolutely. But I think the argument is valid that much of the tightening up of information has been done rapidly in a knee-jerk fashion (which, albeit, is the way the government typically operates).

I'd like to see some rational analysis applied to those policies because I believe that open sources of information are vital to the functioning of a well-informed citizenry as a democracy.

The alternative is to migrate completely to the model used in the People's Republic of China, where various bits of information on AIDS cases, suicide rates, stock ownership by the Red Army commanders, etc. are considered "state secrets".