Transparency
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January 25, 2010 12:08 PM
The Press Angle of the Fed’s Backdoor-Bailout Cover-up
Geithner's New York Fed responded to a FOIA by withholding more information
Whatever Tim Geithner's New York Fed was trying to hide in the AIG backdoor bailout was so volatile it was deemed worthy of national-security-like classification, and the Fed reacted to media FOIA requests for information by withholding more information.
Reuters, gets the scoop on emails that detail the discussion between the Fed, AIG, and the SEC.
The SEC,...
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January 14, 2010 04:23 PM
Administration says Open Gov Directive on track
With about a week to go before their first deadline, the Obama administration is saying that the Open Government Directive, the keystone effort to increase online access to government data, is on schedule.
In a public webcast on Thursday morning, Aneesh Chopra, the administration’s chief technology officer, said that officials were meeting weekly to keep progress on track....
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January 12, 2010 04:09 PM
Deep Trouble
Halperin and Heilemann’s game-changing attribution
Is there a single journalistic quirk more likely to cause post-publication tsuris than the varying taxonomies of “off the record,” “background,” and “deep background”?
This week’s reason to raise the question, is, of course, the controversy surrounding the comments of Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Or more precisely, the controversy behind the controversy: Was Reid “burned” when his quotes on...
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January 06, 2010 11:32 AM
Source says: President likes Puppies, Rainbows
In CJR's just published report card on the Obama administration's first year transparency record, I gave the White House an "F" for habitually doling out information and quotes to reporters via off the record background briefings. While noting yesterday's high-level meeting on the Christmas bomb-attempt, this morning's Politico playbook provides a perfect example of how absurd...
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January 05, 2010 12:00 AM
Report Card
Obama’s marks at Transparency U.
In the year since President Obama took office, he has made significant progress on transparency and access issues. Still, there have been plenty of missed opportunities and much work still to be done.
State Secrets
Background: Since it was formally recognized in a controversial 1953 Supreme Court case, the state secrets privilege allows the executive branch to exclude, usually without...
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December 18, 2009 02:47 PM
Q&A: Bill Leonard
A former government classification watchdog explains a year-end deadline
You’ve heard of the climate deadline looming in Copenhagen, and the health care deadline looming on Capitol Hill. But this season, there’s another deadline coming up that—shhh—hasn’t gotten much attention.
If no changes or amendments are made to the Bush administration’s standing classification policy, at the stroke of midnight on December 31, countless documents that are twenty-eight years old or...
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December 15, 2009 04:12 PM
Not Quite Classified
The Obama administration’s Task Force on Controlled Unclassified Information has, per the president’s request in a May 2009 executive memorandum, returned a set of recommendations for reforming a lesser known aspect of government information policy. (PDF here)
Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and the closely related Sensitive But Unclassified information (SBU) do not meet the government’s...
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December 14, 2009 04:21 PM
The Shield after Senate Judiciary
A victory was notched, but the battle’s not won
Last Thursday, the journalism organizations at work on a shield bill won two victories in quick succession.
In just about five minutes, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected an amendment that would have restricted the journalists and writers eligible for the shield’s protections, and then voted to report the bill to the Senate floor.
While the final stage of the...
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December 14, 2009 04:09 PM
Settlement Reached on Bush Emails
Perhaps the most Byzantine of all Bush-era records scandals draws a step closer to ending today with the announcement by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive that they have reached a settlement with the White House in the matter of millions of emails that went without proper archiving from 2002-2005.
As the Archive points...
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December 10, 2009 09:43 AM
Senate Judiciary Considers Shield Bill, Part III
The hearing has ended with the committee passing the bill. You can still read the once-live tweets from me and the Society of Professional Journalists below.
Continue readingClick the play button below to see live tweets from me and the Society of Professional Journalists as the Senate considers the Free Flow of Information Act. You can stream... -
December 08, 2009 03:33 PM
FOIA after the Open Government Directive
Measure, monitor, and improve
With today's launch of the Obama administration's Open Government Plan, we’ve passed another milestone on the path towards a new era of transparency.
And while governmental promises to emphasize transparency and collaboration are easily made, the Obama administration has made it clear that they plan to make a serious go of it—in part because while making the announcement, key officials...
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December 08, 2009 10:19 AM
Open Government Plan Launches Today
At 11am, the Obama Adminisitration's in house senior techies--Aneesh Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer, and Vivek Kundra, the Chief Information Officer--will be presenting the administration's Open Government Plan. Today's announcement brings to life Obama's charge, given on his first full day in office, to his staff to craft a directive that will harness technology to foster 'transparency, public...
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December 07, 2009 12:44 PM
“A closed meeting on openness”
The AP has a hard-edged story bringing the news that a hall full of federal employees will be attending a Freedom of Information Act training meeting today put on in part by the Office of Government Information Services. But, the AP pointedly notes, the meeting will be closed to outsiders—presumably including their reporters.
Seeing what’s...
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December 03, 2009 10:06 AM
Senate Judiciary Considers Shield Bill, Part II
The hearing has ended, but click the replay button below to see once-live tweets from myself, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Chris Anderson, a professor at the College of Staten Island.
Continue readingClick the play button below to see live tweets from me and the Society of Professional Journalists as the Senate...
Special Feature
Transparency
The struggle to open up government
Stories and other material on government transparency from the Columbia Journalism Review, from the January/February print magazine with Web-only supplements.
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Desks
The Audit Business
- New Financial Sheriff in Town, Part III Times highlights SEC’s latest crackdown—on an Estonian brokerage
- Audit Notes: Bloomberg Backs the Buck; WSJ on Future State Taxes; Big Money vs. Student Loansharks; Mortgage Banker Schadenfreude, etc.
The Observatory Science
- “Waves in a Shallow Pan” Has climate coverage in the MSM lost its authority?
- Dumb Blonde Story Sunday Times botches the science in piece on the “princess effect”
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Unforced Error at Salon “O’Keefe’s race problem” story goes astray on key detail
- Is Health Reform Dead or Alive? Wanted: a newsmaker to give us the word
