Investigative Reporters and Editors has released the list of finalists for its inaugural Golden Padlock Award honoring a U.S. government agency for its unrelenting commitment to undermining the public's right to know.

• JobsOhio: Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the state legislature are nominated for creating a non-profit economic development entity exempt from public records disclosure laws, despite its financing by state grants and bond sales backed by $100 million in profits from the state liquor store monopoly. JobsOhio was spun off from the state's Development Services Agency and staffed by former agency employees at much larger salaries ...

The California legislature has added wording to the state budget bill that open government advocates say would devastate the state's public records laws.

The added language would allow government officials to turn down records requests without written record of the basis for denial. Officials would no longer need to cite legal reasons for withholding information. The 10-day deadline for officials to respond to public records requests would be removed. Officials would no longer be required to provide electronic records in the desired format of the requester, nor would government workers be obligated to help members of the public understand ...

The Department of Justice has expedited IRE's request for records pertaining to the surveillance of news organizations and has assigned an officer to handle the request. Last week, IRE reported that it had filed the request and that the DOJ had sent a letter of acknowledgement but had not assigned the request a reference number nor had it assigned a FOIA officer to the case.

The Department of Justice has not yet made a decision on IRE's request for a fee waiver. The agency also noted the request falls under "unusual circumstances" because it involves consultation with other ...

The revelation last month that the Department of Justice seized phone records from the Associated Press turned out to be just the begining of major disclosures about government surveillance, which according to recent reports includes mass collection of phone and internet server data by the National Security Agency.

But the Department of Justice surveillance targeting news organizations carries dangerous consequences for journalists, according to the president of IRE.

“This is what police states do, not governments of the people,” IRE Board President David Cay Johnston said at the time of the Associated Press reports. “Journalists have a duty to watchdog ...

News of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of phone records and internet server data is breaking fast. Yesterday The Washington Post and The Guardian released records that show the U.S. Government has been collecting a vast cache of data spanning audio and video chats, emails, and stored files under a surveillance program known as PRISM. The news comes just days after The Guardian released a copy it obtained of a secret court order for telecommunication company Verizon to provide the NSA with telephone records of millions of U.S. customers.

The revelations have dominated the news ...

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, which operates the WisconsinWatch.org website, faces a threat from the state legislature that could kick the nonprofit organization out of its home at the University of Wisconsin.

The center, a pioneering effort in regional nonprofit investigative reporting, is run by longtime IRE member Andy Hall, and has conducted more than 100 investigations since its founding. A committee of lawmakers voted early Wednesday to add "a provision to the state budget expelling the Center for Investigative Journalism from University of Wisconsin offices," according to a report on the Center's website.

 The center is ...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers itself to be one of the nation’s foremost scientific institutions, dedicated to transparency and evidence-driven policies.  It is fair, therefore, to ask this question: What happens when the CDC brazenly ignores the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), taking more than five years to fulfill a journalist’s information request, which by law should take “approximately a month”?

Speaking from experience — absolutely nothing.

In July 2007, I submitted a simple request for emails and resumes from three CDC employees. This information was needed for background research associated with the Lyme disease documentary ...

The Associated Press reports that the Department of Justice secretly obtained two months worth phone records from its reporters and editors. AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said in a letter to the department that the records obtained were beyond the scope of any specific investigation, and called the actions a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. Read more at the AP ... 

New York State this week announced the addition of millions of records to the state’s data transparency website, open.ny.gov, which launched during Sunshine Week of 2011. New York’s is one of 39 state open data sites, according to data.gov. At least 39 county and city governments have similar portals.

The records span multiple state agencies and include, according to the news release, includes the following records:

• Campaign Contributions, Expenditures, and Committees: Over seven million
     records of campaign contributions and expenditures dating back to 1999,
     along with a complete list of candidate committees registered with the ...

After the Obama administration promised it would “strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government,” it has since carried out an unprecedented campaign against federal government whistleblowers.

Since 2009, six government officials have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, a World War I era act that had only been used three times before the current administration. The New York Times, ProPublica, The New Yorker, The Nation and others have all documented various aspects of the administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers.

This week, Bill Moyers’ site provides an overview of the six ...