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IRE recognizes Sunshine Week
(March 12-18, 2006)

Members of Investigative Reporters and Editors are among the greatest users of FOIA and Sunshine Laws in the pursuit of journalism, keeping government and business accountable, and being a watchdog for the public interest.

In addition to using FOI and Sunshine Laws, IRE members share how they used them to get the documents and data for daily, beat and long-term stories. In tipsheets, sessions at seminars and conferences, and in its publications, IRE illuminates how to obtain the information needed for good journalism.

In its contest form for the IRE Awards, entrants even answer these questions so other journalists can learn from their experiences: "Major types of documents used and if FOI requests were needed. Did you have difficulties obtaining any electronic information you used? How did you resolve this? Did you use FOIA for data under state or federal law."

Below is a list of resources from IRE and other organizations to help journalists make the best use of sunshine laws. Please let us know if you need help or training.

Tipsheets
Here are just some of the tipsheets from the IRE Resource Center to help you get through, over and around the barriers that government officials put up. These tipsheets were prepared in conjunction with IRE workshops and conferences by experienced journalists. Many of them are available free online to IRE members. If you need to order a tipsheet, contact the IRE Resource Center at rescntr@ire.org or 573-882-3364.

OVERVIEW
Public Access: it's really quite simple
Alan Miller, 2005

Unearthing documents, sourcing & legal considerations
Andrew Leckey, 2005

Unsung documents: new and surprising paper trails
Mike McGraw, 2005

Tips for document hunters
Terri Langford, 2005

20 tips for using open records laws
Jennifer LaFleur, 2005

Navigating the paper trail
Brent Walth, 2005

5 tips on public records
Sean Robinson, 2004

Access to electronic records
Reporters Committee, 2004

Legal issues
James Grimaldi, 2004

Using the FOIA law to obtain electronic data
Jim Heaney, 2003

Attacks on the freedom of information and how to fight back
Christopher Smith, 2004

The lost stories: laws, regulations and decision eroding FOI
Jennifer LaFleur, 2004

20 tips for using open records laws
Jennifer LaFleur; Joe Adams, 2004

Using FOIA to get the documents
James Grimaldi, 2003

Tips for Freedom of Information Act Requests
Glenn Smith, 2003

STATES

The public's right to records and meetings (Indiana)
Jerry Lanosga, 2004

Tips for investigating state & local gov't: know what you want and how to get it (Ohio)
David Knox, 2003

Basics of the PA and NJ public records laws
Michael E. Baughman, 2005

Filing a successful open records request (New Jersey/Pennsylvania)
Rose Ciotta, 2005

FOIA/public records law/third party discovery tools (State of Washington)
Bruce E.H. Johnson, 2004

Highlights of the NC open meetings law
Cathy Packer, 2005

Tips for getting public records in Texas
2004

Federal FOIA and Cracking State Laws
Barbara Fought, 2003

20 Tips for using open records laws
Ken Ward, 2003

The public's right to records and meetings in your region
Carl Prine, 2003

Making the Most of FOIA and Records Laws

Jennifer LaFleur, 1999

Open Records Primer: Title 51, Sections 24A.1-22 (Oklahoma)
Joey Senat, 2004

SPECIFIC BEATS

Hitting the mark on homeland security stories
Sean Holstege, 2005

Overcoming the confidentiality barrier (Child Abuse)
Jerry Lanosga, 2005

Organizing a multizone investigative project (Education)
Matt Carroll, 2004

FOI Report: Physicians and greater access, E-mails and cookies: Electronic tests of open records (Medical)
Charles Davis, 2001

Resources

Writing open records requests:

Learn more
Want to learn more about FOI issues and uses? Every Better Watchdog Workshop and Unleashing the Watchdogs Workshops includes sessions on using FOI. These sessions include experienced journalists and attorneys offering practical advice for incorporating FOI into the newsroom.

Other IRE workshops and conferences also include sessions on issues and strategies relating to access to public information. See a full list of training opportunities.

Open Records Audits
The IRE Resource Center has many stories about open records audits conducted by news organizations. Many of these stories include questionnaires completed for the annual IRE Awards that detail how the story was produced, including FOI strategies and techniques. To order copies of these and other stories, along with the accompanying questionnaires, contact the IRE Resource Center at rescntr@ire.org or 573-882-3364. (Find out how your news organization can conduct its own audit.)

Story No. 21475
The Indianapolis Star, 2004
State of Secrecy II is a follow-up feature of another statewide open records audit more than seven years ago. This report looks at what changes have been made to make it easier for common citizens to have access to public information. The investigation found that the open records law was still being violated, and citizens were usually unaware of the law.

Story No. 21313
The (Cleveland, Ohio) Plain Dealer, 2004
Inspired by a report by The Associated Press, reporters from The Plain Dealer and other Ohio publications performed an audit of Ohio public records. They discovered that many local officials accomodated only half of the legal public document requests they received.

Story No. 21542
Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, 2004
Reporters for 29 newspapers in Florida began auditing more than 200 local agencies to find that the public officials did not understand or simply ignored public records law. Reporters who posed as civilians were denied access to public records by more than 40 percent of the agencies audited.

Story No. 20785
KNXV-Phoenix, 2003
Reporters set out to see how accessible local government is to local citizens. A local taxpayer was hired to go undercover and ask more than 30 governments, school districts, and police agencies in the viewing area for records. These requests included financial records, documentation of reimbursements, and e-mails from top public officials. Government officials improperly denied access to records and used intimidation factors, along with harassment and arrogance when they were asked for records.

Story No. 20670
Montana newspapers, 2003
A group of newspapers worked together to take stock of how easy it is for citizens to get access to public records. They sent volunteers to public agencies in all of Montana's counties to collect specific pieces of information. They found that private citizens have a much tougher time accessing the information that is gathered in their interest.

Story No. 20705
Carroll County Times (Westminster, M.D.), 2003
This yearlong project tested state agencies' compliance with Maryland's Freedom of Information Act. The result was an extensive series of articles looking at different aspects of the state's open records laws, and testing which agencies were complying and to what extent. The results showed that people only had about "a 60 percent chance of getting what they are legally entitled to, and often they will face improper questioning about who they are, why they want the record and who they work for." Electronic records proved even harder to get: "none of the state agencies tested...would provide public records in electronic format, and none would give out public information included in a database."

Story No. 19534
Arizona Daily Star, 2002
This three-day series, published simultaneously in newspapers across Arizona, is the result of a six-month effort by media organizations across the state. Auditors from 21 media organizations were sent to 187 police departments, sheriff's departments, planning and zoning offices and school district offices. Findings revealed that agencies other than police complied with almost every request for public records, but auditors often faced resistance with law enforcement -- including one agency that logged a suspicious person report on an auditor just for seeking a record, then ran a computer check on him and trailed him around town.

Story No. 18261
Chronicle of Higher Education, 2001
The Chronicle investigates violations of the Alabama sunshine law by public university boards in the state. The story details circumstances surrounding multiple closed meetings of officials at Auburn University, the University of Alabama and the University of West Alabama. The report details lawsuits alleging violation of state freedom of information acts then pending against public colleges or public college foundations in Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri. In Arizona, Florida and New Jersey public-college lobbyists have managed to curtail or limit the expansion of open-records or open-meetings laws.

Story No. 18573
The (Tacoma, Wash.) News Tribune; The (Vancouver, Wash.) Columbian, 2001
Newspapers in Washington teamed up to test local governments' compliance with public records laws. Posing as average citizens, journalist went to police and sheriff's stations, boards of health, and city and county governments requesting documents clearly available under open records laws. Levels of compliance varied and many agencies refused to give out records or charged more than was lawfully allowed.

Story No. 18708
The Joplin (Mo.) Globe, 2001
The Joplin Globe explores how the public is treated when making requests for public records. The package reveals that some local government agencies in Missouri fail to comply with public records laws. One sheriff's department refused to release any records, and one city suspected the researcher of being engaged in "improper criminal discovery." The city of Pineville, Mo., failed to respond to a written open records request for more than three months. The paper discovered the Joplin city council had been improperly meeting in secret during dinner sessions.

Story No. 16999
The (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Gazette, 2000
Colorado's daily and weekly newspapers set out to learn if citizens could get simple information guaranteed under the state's open records laws. One-third of the agencies failed to produce public records.

Story No. 16500
San Francisco Bay Guardian, 2000
In the Bay Guardian's 14th annual FOI issue, the weekly highlights how public officials, including San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, are getting around a public records initiative only three months after it was passed. Accompanying articles include compliance of the Sunshine Law by nonprofits, current legislation and resources for obtaining public records.

Story No. 15999
Asbury (N.J.) Park Press, 1999
An investigation by seven New Jersey Gannett newspapers found that local government officials "routinely fail to provide public records to citizens who request them, violating the state's Open Public Records Act." The New Jersey Newspaper Group sent surveyors to town halls, school board offices and police departments in 213 towns, covering roughly a third of the state's communities. The three-part series looks at how other states handle public records, the types of roadblocks citizens have to overcome to obtain public records and the stories of individuals who tried to get public information but were thwarted by the government.

Story No. 16076
Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, 1999
The paper reports that "For too long the people of Wyoming have accepted intransigence from their public officials over access to public records. Indeed, the state law is among the weakest in the nation." When working on a story about restuarant inspections, a health director's actions provided "a perfect opportunity to wage a fight for public documents (and openness in the government meetings and courts) and to explain to readers that public records are theirs, that they have a right to access them, that they have a right to be in governmental and court hearings, and that their ability to function as citizens hinges on their right to know."

Story No. 15983
The Wichita (Kansas) Eagle, 1999
"The project tested access to public records and compliance with Kansas Open Records Act in all 105 Kansas Counties. Requested were county commission minutes, city bills approved for payments, high school coaches' total compensation and standard offense reports from county sheriffs. Of 420 requests, 35 were denied outright. About a third of the denials were by sheriff's offices. Eight percent of all requests were partially filled; for example, visitors were allowed to look at a document but not copy it, or were given salary numbers on a Post-It note instead of the document describing the salary's structure. But more than half of all agencies pressed their visitors for information on their employers and their reason for requesting the document -- information not required by law. Visitors to sheriff's offices were generally greeted with suspicion, and occasionally with hostility."

Story No. 15509
Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal, 1999
Local government agencies made a fairly strong showing in a public record survey, but most need to brush up on the finer points of the law.

Story No. 15961
Community Newspaper Co. (Needham, Mass.), 1999
"The Community Newspaper Company dispatched a team of more than 100 reporters across the state to test public officials' compliance with the state's law on open records and uncovered widespread violations... Under the direction of the newspaper's projects editor, Chris Szechenyi, each of the reporters asked for a uniform set of public records. The results were then compiled in a spreadsheet and analyzed. In addition, Szechenyi made a separate set of public information requests to ten state agencies and the governor's office."

See more FOI audit stories.

Stories that used open records laws
Here are just a few of the stories in the IRE Resource Center that made extensive use of or explained open records laws and requests. Many of these stories include questionnaires completed for the annual IRE Awards that detail how the story was produced, including FOI strategies and techniques. To order copies of these and other stories, along with the accompanying questionnaires, contact the IRE Resource Center at rescntr@ire.org or 573-882-3364. (Get ideas for covering FOI issues.)

Story No. 20711
Sioux Falls, S.D., Argus Leader, 2003
The Argus Leader discovered a slew of pardons and commutations that former Gov. Bill Janklow had sealed from public view under a little-known state law. After appealing to the Attorney General, the records of Janklow's actions became public, and the scope of his pardons was brought to light. Janklow commuted more prison sentences than any other governor in the nation during his last two terms.

Story No. 20787
York (Pa.) Daily Record, 2003
This is a collection of FOI stories. Post 9/11, the police and federal and state governments have erected barriers to public access to data. Over a 12-month period, the newspaper used FOI to acquire records that would help people understand the government's efforts to keep them safe. The stories include how the paper acquired information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to track the use of nuclear material in the area. FOI information has been used to report other stories that earlier went unreported.

Story No. 20875
The Washington Post, 2003
These stories use FOIA to reveal the expenses on a government credit card issued to a former official in the Office of Property Management. This led to the opening of other expenditure records for other departments, such as the police and health department.

Story No. 20783
The Bakersfield Californian, 2003
The paper used open public records to investigate government. Reporters used records to reveal that state employees, such as school principals, were making twice the state average. They also found that firefighters were raking in money as part of their overtime commitments. The second set of stories investigates the multiple murders in Bakersfield in which the suspect was an elementary school vice principal. Another story covers how the newspaper has defended an unprecedented restraint attempt by the county grand jury.

Story No. 19473
The Press of Atlantic City, (N.J.), 2003
In response to a revamping of the state open records laws, the Press published this guide for citizens on exactly what the law involved. The guide outlines exemptions to the law, how to make a request, a list of public documents, and even includes a typical open records request sheet.

Story No. 19482
San Francisco Chronicle, 2002
"The Campus Files" is the product of a nearly 20-year battle to obtain documents detailing the FBI's unlawful surveillance and harassment of liberal faculty and students at the University of California-Berkeley. This eight-page special section reveals that California's governor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ronald Reagan, in conjunction with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA "campaigned to destroy the career of UC President Clark Kerr" as well as cover up their activities. Chronicle reporter Seth Rosenfeld began his FOI fight in 1981, when he was a student at the UC-Berkeley School of Journalism.

Story No. 19487
Charleston (W.V.) Gazette, 2002
About a year and a half after federal regulators were supposed to release the results of a two-year study of mountaintop removal coal mining's environmental impacts, the paper published a series detailing the study's findings — after a dogged FOI fight to obtain the report. In addition to publishing the series, the Gazette posted the entire report on its Web site, which revealed that "without tougher limitations, mountaintop removal would destroy more than 230,000 acres of Appalachian forests."

Story No. 19508
The Detroit News, 2002
A collection of three series in which FOI was used extensively. The first series delves into the executive officer of Wayne County, Edward McNamara, and his misuse of county funds. McNamara more than tripled the number of political appointees while serving his office: 112 of his appointees took in more than $100,000; at least 50 of these appointees received cars; 117 others were paid a monthly allowance of $400 to $500 for vehicles. The second series revealed how Wayne County and Detroit went from trying to stop slumlords to becoming slumlords themselves. After seizing around 2,000 homes to keep them out of slumlord hands, the county and city spent $17.3 million fixing up 32 houses. Many of the promises that were made prior to taking the houses never came to be. The third series showed that the new runway at Detroit Metropolitan Airport had serious problems with its concrete. Forty-five percent of tests on the concrete failed to meet FAA and Wayne County standards. There were no immediate safety concerns for the $225 million runway, but it would have a shortened life span because of the concrete's poor quality. See Story No. 18626 for more information on the airport series.

Other stories in the IRE Resource Center dealing with FOI issues

For more information, contact:
Beth Kopine
Resource Center Director
IRE and NICAR
E-mail: beth@ire.org
Voice: 573-882-6668
Fax: 573-884-8151