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Making FOIA-Requested Data Public: Too Much Transparency For Journalists?

Posted by timothy on from the so-stagger-the-release-and-everyone-benefits dept.

schwit1 writes: From The Washington Post's Lisa Rein comes news that the federal government is launching a six-month pilot program with seven agencies to post online documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. That means that information requested (whether by a journalist, nonprofit group or corporation) asks for the records under FOIA, it's not the just the requester who will get to see the results, but also the public at large. What's the problem with that? For journalists whose province is the scoop, it could mean less incentive to go through the process of asking for the record in the first place. Washington Post Investigations Editor Jeff Leen says in the story that public posting could therefore "affect long-term investigations built on a number of FOIA requests over time." An excerpt offers a similar defense of documents being released only to the requesting party: "FOIA terrorist" Jason Leopold has big issues with the approach. "It would absolutely hurt journalists' ability to report on documents they obtained through a FOIA request if the government agency is going to immediately make records available to the public," writes the Vice News reporter via e-mail. Leopold has already experienced the burn of joint release, he says, after requesting information on Guantanamo Bay. The documents were posted on the U.S. Southern Command's Web site. "I lost the ability to exclusively report on the material even though I put in all of the work filing the requests," he notes. Another reason FOIA requesters might be annoyed by a general-release policy: filing FOIA requests isn't free.

14 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Cry More by Br00se · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Once the information has been collected and vetted to make sure it's eligible to be released under the FOIA, it should absolutely be released to the public. The government has no duty to protects a requester business model.

    1. Re:Cry More by penix1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You evidently didn't read the last line in TFS. FOIAs aren't free to file. They cost money to prepare and turn over. Add to that the restrictions on time to produce (10 days in my state. No idea what the federal time limit is) as well as the maze that is the legal exemptions on a FOIA request and it gets quite expensive. What news agency is willing to be the first to fork over the money just to have the means to recoup the funds pulled out from under them? I think this idea is brilliant if you want to curb the FOIA requests you receive.

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    2. Re:Cry More by HairyNevus · · Score: 5, Informative
      How much, exactly? Some of the links from the FCC website wouldn't display for me, but I found these two quotes to be interesting:

      News media requesters, however, are entitled to a reduced assessment only when the request is for the purpose of disseminating information.

      and

      VII. Fees There is no initial fee required to submit a FOIA request; in fact, in the majority of requests made to DOJ, no fees are ever charged. The FOIA does provide for the charging of certain types of fees in some instances. For purposes of fee assessment only, the FOIA divides requesters into three categories. The first category includes commercial-use requesters, [...] The second category includes educational or noncommercial scientific institutions and representatives of the news media, who are charged only for duplication fees, and who are provided the first one hundred requested pages free of charge

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    3. Re:Cry More by DarkOx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I having trouble feeling sorry for the journalists. Yes the scoop is important but we are not selling papers by having young boys shout "EXTRA" from the street corners anymore. Any novel facts uncovered will be repeated by 100s of blogers the moment the story drops anyway. A huge portion of the would have been in the old days readership/viewership will get that news from there anyway. So whats the big deal if the facts usually accompanied by with more chaff than most folks are willing to sort thru drop one more place?

      Where journalism is useful is analysis. They still have a leg up there. If you have been working a story you for which you had to file those requests than other facts and sources must have lead you there. You already have a bigger picture view than anyone else. You know what material you are looking for in those documents. The rest of us just have a 1000 pages of US Forestry Service reports and questions, for example.

      I don't by a paper to learn the "CIA has over 300 black sites" I buy a paper because I expect an article that will tell me not only are there 300 black sites, but what a black site is, how they are used, some reasons I should be concerned about that and may be reasons I should not be, what the broader implications for international law enforcement and political relationships are, etc. If my interested ended with a few odd facts the only news I would need are Slashdot summaries anyway.

      On the flip side this will be a nice resource to have that will make linking to original source materials be they to support a news story, scholarly paper, Internet rant, or whatever much easier. That will be a good thing, but it will mean for the issues your really do care about you'll have direct access to the evidence itself to for your own judgments. I think this could be very valuable.

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    4. Re:Cry More by McGruber · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What news agency is willing to be the first to fork over the money just to have the means to recoup the funds pulled out from under them? I think this idea is brilliant if you want to curb the FOIA requests you receive.

      The real danger to news agencies is that The Daily Show, National Public Radio's On the Media program and other media critics will be able to see all the documents that the reporters were given, but did not report on.... so, IMHO, this new FOIA policy will really help to expose the biases of many mainstream news agencies.

    5. Re:Cry More by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Are you willing to increase your taxes paid by 20% just to staff enough people for my "UFO" and "Anal probe" requests in 30 different ways to every single agency i can think of so i can prove all UFO sightings are government conspiracies an all alien anal probes are means to punish and discredit people who are thorns in the side of the government or some crony company they support? Or should something like the department of health and human services spend a good portion of their budget on these rather than their stated missions? I can see it now. FEMA fails to respond to some natural disaster stating their budget was already burned through fielding FOIA requests.

      I agree with you in principle, I just look at the practical application of it. Probably unlike you, I do see a need for some secrets to remain in government. I think it's mostly to national defense and comments or advice given but not adopted over political matters. For example, issues like the civil rights act or giving women the vote could have turned out differently if everything we now know was instantly available when it transpired.

    6. Re:Cry More by pepty · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This argument reminds me of a few years ago when private weather forecasters were trying to kill off the National Weather Service's websites and public forecasts so that they wouldn't have public competition when presenting NWS data and analysis.

  2. FOIA isn't meant to support a business model. by DG · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FOIA is about releasing information held by public agencies to the public. We all "own" it, we have a right to see it, and if we ask, we can.

    That's the public "we". Putting in a FOIA request doesn't make that information "yours" and a business model that depends on you adding an additional layer of secrecy is fundamentally flawed. The public has no interest in helping to maintain your flawed business model.

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    1. Re:FOIA isn't meant to support a business model. by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes.... we all own it, BUT the journalists might not request it in the first place, since they have to pay for the request, If they lose the ability to use the results in their business to get the story early.

      What I would support is a 7 day exclusivity period that can be requested for an additional fee; where the requestor will get their results of the FOIA requests, But the guaranteed public release will be temporarily delayed after the requestor receives the files and gets a 7 day headstart..

      If the journalist cannot find something to report on within their 7 day headstart, then probably there was no "scoop" to get.

    2. Re:FOIA isn't meant to support a business model. by Alan+Shutko · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If journalists stop asking because they could expend all the time, money and labor to dig up the information without being able to get any reward on the expose, then the public will be hurt. Since fewer people will be asking, less information will be released.

      A short delay before putting the information public would leave an incentive for journalists to keep investigating, while still making all of the results available to the public.

  3. Info should be Releases When Produced by rshol · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ALL information,all documents,all emails that would be subject to FOIA requests should be put on the web as they are produced. We should not have to ask for the information, it should already be there.

  4. Seems like there's a simple middle ground solution by Minupla · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do a timed release. Once the FOIA request is completed, the requester gets X months of exclusivity to publish, and then it gets released publicly. This preserves the inventive for the journalists, while at the same time ensuring that even FOIA requests that don't produce something sexy enough to publish still become public access at the end of the exclusivity period.

    Min

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  5. Re:Shows where the heart is by HairyNevus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As an AC pointed out Snowden's raw leaks being made public didn't stop reporters from selling stories on that information. I'm just calling bullshit on this idea that FOIA requests being published publicly automatically...will somehow hurt any reporter's story. If they're worried about another reporter poaching the info and publishing before them, they need to be better at their job. Have all the background written up and ready to go by the time the FOIA is being filed, then pull an all-nighter to finish the story when it comes out. Simple.

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  6. Re:Seems like there's a simple middle ground solut by thrich81 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Totally agree with you. This model is similar to scientific data acquired via federally funded research. The data belongs to the public but the researchers who proposed and did the research work get exclusive rights for a reasonable period of time in order to give them incentive to do the work in the first place.