With improved internet services, citizens and journalists are filing more Freedom of Information Act requests than ever but often meeting with government agency brick walls. MuckRock is coming to the rescue with a plan to catalog every exception to the freedom of information laws used by agencies. More information about exemptions and delaying tactics will enable those filing to hone their appeals. (Motherboard, July 14, 2016, by Jason Keobler)
In 2015 the federal government processed 769,903 Freedom of Information Act requests but granted only 22.6 percent of the requests. It denied over 345,000 requests but only got 14,639 appeals. The MuckRock project intends to create a “Google for FOIA rejections” to help journalists and others understand the process. (NiemanLab, July 14, 2016, by Joseph Lichterman)
MuckRock’s Michael Morisy said he was inspired to start the project by the difficulty to obtain police body camera footage. It seemed ironic to Morisy for government agencies to block release of the footage when the body cams recording the footage were intended to provide transparency and accountability. (Columbia Journalism Review, July 14, 2016, by Chava Gourarie)