Enlisting citizen journalists in FOI
By Doug Fisher
South Carolina has completed
another freedom of information audit, and the results are depressing,
though not surprising.
A quarter of the elected officials surveyed said they discussed
matters in closed sessions that should have been in the
open. More than a quarter of the police and sheriff's offices
flouted the law by failing to provide records that should be
open for the asking, with no other requirements. In many cases,
outrageous copying fees bar easy access.
Equally distressing is that a review of other states' FOI audits
at the University of Missouri's Freedom
of Information Center suggests South
Carolina is no worse than most other states and may well be better
than many.
Unfortunately, not much has changed from a 1999 audit I helped
supervise at AP. But since then has come the emergence of "citizen
journalism" and the idea that our readers can also be collaborators.
Those news organizations that care deeply about open records
and meetings need to harness that force.
From coast to coast, news organizations are opening their Web
sites and, in some cases, their pages, to these citizen
journalists or community reporters. California's Northwest
Voice, Denver's
Your
Hub and South Carolina's TheColumbiaRecord.com are
just a few. Independent sites are also emerging and in
some cases becoming community forces, such as Westport
Now in Connecticut,
Backfence.com the Washington suburbs and The
Forum in Deerfield,
N.H.
South Carolina is a center of these experiments with The Columbia
Record, run by The State newspaper; Bluffton
Today, Morris Communication's
innovative site that combines staff reporting and online contributions
to produce a community print edition; and Hartsville
Today, a
joint project of The Messenger and the University of South Carolina
journalism school.
As news turns to more of a conversation with readers, it seems
likely other experiments will follow. With them will come a core
of contributors likely to be more active when it comes to seeking
information, and who are more likely to have difficulty getting
it.
The South Carolina audit, for instance, found that many "public" records
were freely available to reporters but not to regular folks – those
same folks who are becoming our citizen journalists.
We try to get all readers to recognize that closed meetings
and records affect them. It's not easy to raise a sustained public
outcry, however, and I fear that too often we are seen in city
hall, the courthouse and the State House as media whiners, another
special interest group.
We need this committed core of contributors to push home the
point of broader interest in open government. Call it enlightened
self-interest.
How can we harness this force? To start, give them the tools
they need. Make an FOI link a prominent part of your Web site.
Link to the state law and to a simple explanation of what to
do if they feel they are being denied access.
If your state has done an FOI audit, link to the stories.
Give people a way to report problems. If you have Web logs or
are considering them, also consider an FOI "blog" to
which anyone – the public and your staff – can contribute,
not only pointing out problems but giving kudos to local officials
where due. Follow up those tips. Praise for an official who consistently
serves the public interest can be a powerful form of peer pressure.
If concerted action is needed, send out alerts to your regular
contributors asking for help.
Many community newspapers already do an admirable job of bird-dogging
obvious violations among local agencies, but those violations
will continue unless politicians perceive it is not just "the
media" showing interest. If we make freedom of information
part of the emerging news conversation, we may find we have many
more allies in that battle than we realize.
