News outlets are less inclined to take legal action for open government, but citizens are becoming more active, national survey finds

"While a lack of resources has made news organizations increasingly less inclined to file freedom-of-information lawsuits, citizens have a growing interest in government transparency and are becoming more active in asserting their right to government information," the Media Law Resource Center and the National Freedom of Information Coalition report after an informal, online survey conducted Aug. 9-15. It confirmed continuation of a trend first noticed in 2009.

"If ordinary citizens are becoming more aware of their access rights, and more assertive regarding them, it is indeed a reason to be gratified," said Ken Bunting, executive director of NFOIC. "However, if news organizations are trending toward being less gung-ho in an area once regarded as a matter of responsibility and stewardship, there is the frightening potential that journalism could suffer, as could the health of our democracy." For the NFOIC release and links to the study documents, click here.

After the 2009 survey, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation created the Knight FOI Fund to pay initial expenses and fees for open-government lawsuits that the fund considers worthwhile.

Obama administration failing to meet open government goals, Knight survey finds

The Obama administration is failing to fulfill its promise of improving Freedom of Information responsiveness by federal agencies, according to a Knight Open Government Survey by the National Security Archive, released March 13 for Sunshine Week.

In a news release, the Knight Foundation reported that fewer than half of the federal agencies have complied with a presidential memorandum Barack Obama signed in January 2009 instructing federal agencies to “usher in a new era of open government.”

The Knight Open Government Survey found that 49 of the 90 agencies had made concrete changes in their procedures to process requests for government records covered by the Freedom of Information Act. A year earlier, the number was 13. The news release said after the 2010 survey was released "The resulting national headlines sparked a new White House call to all agencies to show concrete change."

“At this rate, the president’s first term in office may be over by the time federal agencies do what he asked them to do on his first day in office,” commented Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which funded the study. “Freedom of information laws exist to help all of us get the information we need for this open society to function. Yet government at all levels seems to have a great deal of trouble obeying its own transparency laws.”

Read the entire report here.