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The alarming loss of your right to information
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, California's leading newspaper)
Posted: September 27th, 2015
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article35486796....
The United States has slipped so far with respect to transparency that some open-government groups now rank it behind Yemen, Kyrgyzstan and Liberia. Today, the Freedom of Information Act our countrys signature right-to-information law is alarmingly dysfunctional. It is impeding the ability of the press to do its job. Sharyl Attkisson, a journalist with five Emmy Awards ... asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October for records related to a virus that had possibly killed 14 children and paralyzed another 115. The CDC still hasnt turned over a single document in response. This isnt the first such experience for Attkisson. She recently told a congressional committee that it took the Department of Defense 10 years to respond to a request she made in 2003. It is a sad turn of events that FOIA has become so unhelpful to journalists. Like many other citizens who make requests under FOIA which allows any person to request federal agency records for any reason journalists face backlogs, excuses for withholding, and delays. Non-responsiveness is the norm, Karen Kaiser, general counsel of The Associated Press, told a Senate panel in May. Agencies could do a far better job of enforcing FOIA as it is written. Notably, agencies need to faithfully adhere to a provision of FOIA that allows journalists requests to go to the front of the queue when there is an urgency to inform the public. As it stands, agencies reject these so-called expedited processing requests the vast majority of the time.
Note: Along with having her FOIA requests stalled, Sharyl Attkisson has sometimes been spied on and computer-hacked by U.S intelligence agencies for her investigative journalism. The number of FOIA requests denied by government agencies has been rapidly increasing in recent years.
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