Restricting “freedom of information” revelations
Newspapers are outraged at a cunning new plan by government departments to undermine FOI requests: releasing the information to everyone.
Channel Seven FOI editor Michael McKinnon says the philosophy of disclosure trumpeted by the federal government in its reform to the FOI Act is being undermined by departmental document dumps. He doesn’t necessarily have a problem with the carbon price dump — there were multiple FOI applicants — but he does have a problem when there is only one applicant and documents are made public.
“There is clearly a public interest in journalists doing FOI,” he told Crikey. “Journalists are motivated to get exclusive stories. That’s what we do.”
And News Ltd agrees:
Sean Parnell, FOI editor at The Australian, agrees. He says there is a theory among some bureaucrats that, by releasing document under FOI to everyone, media outlets will be less inclined to submit subsequent FOI applications.
“This is one of the unintended and perverse consequences of the new laws, and specifically the government’s failure to legislate a minimum grace period for applicants to publish their documents,” he told Crikey. “Rather than encourage agencies to freely and proactively release documents, the new FOI regime is allowing Treasury, and anyone else with the ’same day public release’ policy, to control the timing and impact of publication resulting from FOI.”
See, that’s the attitude I’d expect from those who perceive themselves as the “gatekeepers” of the public’s right to know. As if they just won’t BOTHER trying to find important stories and making FOI requests, if they don’t get to plaster “exclusive” all over the top of them.
Is that really true? Is the benefit the public gets from this additional enticement for media companies to spend time and money chasing government departments greater than the benefit it gets from not being restricted to what those media companies choose to reveal to it once that information is not-fully-released? Is the real reform required here to make FOI requests easier and cheaper for anyone to make?
Somehow I doubt that it’s the public interest that’s at the forefront of McKinnon and Parnell’s employers’ minds.
What is it with the Right and “unintended consequences”?
Hmmm maybe the problem is with profit-driven media in particular and Capital in general…nahhhh couldn’t be that.
Here’s a test children:
Use the following phrases in a paragraph:
’24 hour news cycle’
‘gotcha stories’
‘FOI documents’
‘Yarralumla flower bill’
‘right to know’
‘sense of proportion’
‘credible media’
Matthew Franklin might rise to your challenge thus:
“Under the relentless pressure of the 24 hour news cycle we are forced to favour gotcha stories over substantive revelations in FOI documents. Therefore the Yarralumla flower bill, Judges travel costs and so on prevail over the public’s right to know the important news about their government. It’s our job to maintain this sense of proportion as the only truly credible media in Australia.”
I would suggest a voluntary code of conduct for media organisations in these situations. It just needs everyone to agree that when information is released under FOI, the journalist or organisation that made the original application gets exclusive access to it for 48 hours. Everyone else promises to leave it alone. If it is so important I am sure everyone will sign up to it, and anyway voluntary codes of conduct work so well. Just ask the tv stations and the junk food industry. My other suggestion is for the media to just suck it up princess and get back to work. Also I have an excellent idea for water soluble fish.
I was told last week by a person who will remain nameless that it is
1. too difficult to wade through already publically available information like senate estimates.
2. not worth telling the truth about some stories – like the scandal of the last 11 years where we are locking in poor Indonesian fishermen for not people smuggling but for making us uphold our own laws.
3. good refugee stories won’t get up if the owners and shareholders don’t like them.
And so on and so forth.
What part of the word Freedom in FOI don’t these news outlets understand?
The “free” part I guess.
SHV, well done. You just wated to name Him, didn’t you?
Your prize pack of Royal Wedding Commemorative Edible Chocolate Anuses (a real product, btw) will be winging its way to you. While in Sydney, cast and crew stay at the Sebel Townhouse. Gowns by Mitzi of Vienna of Adelaide, hair by Valmai.
It’s such a horrible pharse, “suck it up . . .”, but seems entirely apposite in this instance. First Dog, I think someone beat you to the water soluble fish.
Yes, as I believe Channel 7 did recently, if this gets through how are the media going to be able to claim “secretly leaked information” when in fact the information was released to them through FOI.
I see their point, and I don’t doubt that the policy to release FOI goodies to the public does at least give the relevant minister a bit of schadenfreude, but I have two problems with releasing “secret” documents to just one media outlet:
(1) I don’t trust media outlets to report anything straight. If they’re the only ones with the goodies, how can I tell if, say, the oz is reporting the information accurately or in full? Because I sure as heck don’t trust them to do that on certain sorts of stories. If I were a minister, I’d much rather give the information to the public at large than give it to a single media outlet to be selectively quoted and spun to fit their own business agenda. Can anyone imagine the hun or terror ever NOT distorting crime statistics or budget details?
(2) The current wikileaks fiasco of leaking dribs and drabs to favored news outlets for maximum newsworthiness and to keep wikileaks in the public eye seems relevant somehow. Nobody knows what’s actually to come – we just have to wait and see what the anointed want to tell us when it suits their narrative. It sort of makes a farce of their public philosophy.
Sometimes I wonder if the value of a press “exlusive” is that nobody can check the facts. Something that johnathan has said on media watch is (roughly) “there’s no prize for being the first to be wrong”. The trouble is … I don’t think that’s true. If your objective isn’t to inform but to influence, then getting in first with a spun version of the truth is actually worthwhile – particularly if you can saturate half the country’s papers with that version at a time when nobody else can check the story.
“‘Yarralumla flower bill’”
Ugh. God, that story annoyed me. Government house spends a bucket on flowers. It always has. In fact, it has a full-time florist (I believe) on-site. It has its own flower gardens to grow flowers for arrangements. It’s nothing new. Why? Because it’s not really a house – it’s a building that’s used more or less constantly for state functions. And the grounds are truly awesome. I’m less sure about this bit … but I have heard that previous employees have included the parents of a certain very successful star of hong kong action movies (who’s been very good to Canberra, particularly ANU).
I bet the white house goes through a bit for decoration, too. How about dredging up the carpet-cleaning costs of parliament house – that’d be awesome. Or Amanda Vanston’s Italian wine budget?
MoC-My precise point;this is the kind of trash the FoI requests are being made about. The media would have us believe they’re all Woodward and Bernstein, about to blow the lid off deep-seated corruption, or expose cover-ups.
Nice goss, even if it’s not true. Michelle Yeoh was Moomba Princess one year.
One Trackback