Inside Story: Freedom of Information act can be a great source
YESTERDAY’S front page revealing how many Northampton middle school sites remain unsold eight years after they closed was a classic example of a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, a tool which is increasingly used to great effect by journalists nationwide.
Tthe Freedom of Information Act has delivered its fair share of corking stories – and, it has to be said, complete turkeys – in the past.
Established in 2000, the FoI Act gives the public “right of access” to information held by organisations such as Government, local authorities and the police. As a consequence, many such bodies have FoI officers dedicated to handling requests, not from news journalists – at least predominantly not – but from ordinary members of the public.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said last year that the Act was the biggest regret of his premiership, due in part to the fact the public took the opportunity to ask questions in extraordinary numbers. In the past year, for example, typical Joe Public requests have included questions to Northamptonshire Police about how many UFO sightings had been reported over the past 10 years and to County Hall asking how many of the council’s vehicles had been filled up with the wrong type of fuel in the previous two years. The first was thrown out on the grounds it would take “12,000 hours” to complete and the second elicited the earth-shattering figure of four.
Organisations such as the Taxpayers Alliance and Big Brother Watch, pressure groups looking into Government spending (read waste, very often) and civil liberties are regular contributors of exhaustively researched FoI inquiries involving sometimes hundreds of different organisations simultaneously.
A newspaper like the Chronicle & Echo cherry picks the information relevant to us and puts the difficult questions to the people at the top.
Some of the time people – including reporters – submit Freedom of Information requests when the information is actually freely available. So much data is now stacked onto websites these days, it’s remarkable how much you can dig out with a bit of simple sniffing about.
What the FoI Act has enabled us as journalists to do is find information that much quicker than it might otherwise have taken.
Used sparingly, they can be a fantastic source of stories producing genuinely eye-catching headlines, very often involving, for example, council expenditure on anything from bottled water to management consultants or, from a Wootton Hall perspective, weapon seizures to arrests in Bridge Street.
Freedom of Information requests remain a useful tool in a journalist’s armoury, but, as any good hack will tell you, nothing beats having contacts who serve up the stories and guide you around the occasional minefield of information. And disinformation.
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Adams RANT
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 05:40 AMlast year (2011) Northampton Borough Council responded to 546 requests in 2006 this was only 183 requests
Cely
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 02:09 PMLet's face it. The truth is the Chron use it to compose stories without leaving their cosy offices. I would not be surprised if the Chron has several backup stories obtained in this manor and they only use them when it has been a slow news day. What the people of Northampton want is up-to the minute news, not a survey of the number of times an organization has done something in the last few years.
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