US wants stronger FOI Act for bloggers

Posted by Martin Stabe on 19 March 2007 at 13:40
Tags: Freedom of Information

While the British Government is planning to make changes to the UK Freedom of Information Act’s fees regimes that would eviscerate the law’s utility for journalists, the US Congress is working on a bill that would strengthen its American equivalent — particularly for independent journalists and bloggers.

The British government is planning to impose a fees regime that takes no account of the public interest in any given FOI request, is cracking down on those pesky “serial requesters” — many of whom as journalists — that make extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act.

American FOI policy, by contrast, actively encourages journalists’ requests on the grounds that they are likely to seek disclosures that are in the public interest. “Members of the news media” have access to a preferential fees regime — and have the option to request a complete waiver of fees for requests made in the public interest.

In recent years, however, this approach has irked freelances and bloggers who have had difficulty accessing the privileded status of a journalistic FOI requestor. But now the US House of Representagievs has passed a bill would stengthen the US FOI Act in several ways, including a provision that would bar agencies from rejecting bloggers’ request for the fee waiver on the grounds that they have no affiliation with a mainstream news outlet.

The bill, known as the Freedom of Information Amendments of 2007, will now be considered by the Senate, where former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has already pledged his support.

That’s quite a contrast to the British legislation with a similar name. The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2007 is a backbencher’s attempt to reduce the effectiveness of the UK FOIA by exempting Parliament from its provisions altogether.

Update 20/3: BBC FOI specialist Martin Rosenbaum has more on this over at Open Secrets. He points out that under the proposed changes in the UK, individual bloggers would actually have more access to FOI than institutionally-accredited journalists.

Tags: Freedom of Information