FOIA: The Ombudsman Needs to Grow

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

When Congress improved FOIA last year, it built in some growing pains for the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS). Today, we’re seeing those pains in longer than usual waits for replies from OGIS. The office has reportedly been inundated with requests for assistance as FOIA requesters navigate FOIA. In response, they’ve had to triage the Office’s response to help requests. OGIS was never intended to add another level of waiting to the FOIA process, but FOIA reformers in Congress knew growing pains were inevitable. To fulfill its mission, OGIS will have to become bigger than its current size to [More]

Pentagon (again) seeks help from Congress to keep tactics secret

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

Pentagon hopes Congress will protect tactics, techniques and procedures from disclosure. Military also seeks to protect rules of engagement. Public interest in disclosure could outweigh confidentality, but military gets to decide in Pentagon’s proposal. Defense Department is hoping the third time’s the charm as it once again asks for the authority to withhold from the public certain military tactics, techniques and procedures , the disclosure of which would give an adversary an advantage. The proposal (Sec. 1003 of DoD’s draft legislation), which the Defense Department would like included in the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2018, is narrower than [More]

First Amendment Panel Ranks a Free Press as Most at Risk

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

Reviewers for the second quarter in a row ranked freedom of the press as the most at risk in an assessment of threats to freedoms protected under the First Amendment. The reviewers, including yours truly, gave press freedom another C in the second quarterly report card issued by the Newseum Institute, the center affiliated with the Newseum in Washington, DC that promotes the five freedoms of the First Amendment. Reviewers cited physical assaults on reporters and calls for prosecutions of journalists among other threats to journalists. Threats on journalists appear to be clearly on the minds of the American public. [More]

Newseum Institute survey: Public values independent press, concerned about leaks

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

Newseum Institute’s State of the First Amendment report A Newseum Institute survey on public attitudes toward the First Amendment shows the public still strongly and consistently supports the freedoms of the First Amendment. The survey found two-thirds of respondents (67.7%) agreed “the media should act as a watchdog of the government.” The percentage of respondents agreeing that the news media reports without bias nearly doubled to 43.1% from a year ago. Other results on topics of interest to the coalition: Unauthorized disclosures (“Leaks”). Respondents were not swayed that prosecutors should weigh the public interest from a disclosure when deciding to [More]

Daily Press Briefings are an important exercise in self-governance

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

Diminishing or eliminating the daily White House Press Briefing is a big mistake. In my childhood hometown, the longtime daily newspaper sits along one side of a wide open space that has been the home to civic protest, celebrations, food festivals and relaxed family picnics. Along another side of the town square sits another building of equal architectural and community significance, City Hall. The physical proximity of the newspaper and the seat of local government makes the greenspace a gathering point, a place where people from around the community exercise their First Amendment rights. The resulting civic-mindedness helps define the [More]

White House photographs should be taken by impartial ‘visual journalists’

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

This is another reminder that if you let someone take a selfie with you, you should expect to see it online. Yesterday, on May 10, President Donald Trump met in the Oval Office with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister and allowed the Russian news agency TASS to photograph the event while denying access to American press. Unnamed sources within the White House later said they felt “tricked” and that they did not believe TASS would release the photographs, according to CNN. Press coverage is, and should be, daily at the White House, and that coverage ought to include newsgathering [More]

FIRST Principles Update for May 8, 2017

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

Wikileaks under renewed Justice Department scrutiny In recent weeks, the government has turned up the public relations temperature against WikiLeaks. In late April, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department is seriously examining whether to prosecute WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. CIA Director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks a hostile non-state intelligence service. At the same time, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is “stepping up” the justice Department’s work against leaks, Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports. ‘We are going to step up our efforts and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks,’ the attorney general said. ‘This is a matter that [More]

First Amendment Report Card: C+ for the five freedoms

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

The five freedoms of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution received a C+ grade from a panel of reviewers brought together by the Newseum Institute. The report card is an effort to assign a grade four times each year to each of the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Panelists were asked to assign an individual grade to each of the freedoms of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition. (Disclosure: I participated as a grader.) Read some of the grades and comments or Newseum Institute Chief Operating Officer Gene Policinski’s commentary. It’s important to remember that we were asked [More]

Gorsuch on libel standards

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch explains current standards for libel and First Amendment protections established in New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court decision that established clear protections for newsreporting and speech about public officials. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asks Gorsuch about the standard. KLOBUCHAR: I’m gonna end with freedom of press in honor of my dad. He was a newspaper reporter his whole life and I’m especially concerned in today’s world where we’re seeing these attacks on the media about maintaining the press’s role as a watch dog. Our founders enshrined freedom of the press in the First [More]

FIRST Principles Update for March 21, 2017

Posted onAuthorRick Blum

News Media for Open Government publishes FIRST Principles to update you on some of what we’re following. Lawmakers prod executive branch to implement FOIA reforms. On March 15, 2017, senior senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent letters seeking updates and timetables for completing reforms that Congress put in place last year make the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) work better. Signed by Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the letters were notable for sending a clear message that Senators on a bipartisan basis want to see the [More]