Publication Items

The WatchDog has long whined about Congress' mystifying refusal to let taxpayers read Congressional Research Service reports the taxpayers have paid for. A June 17, 2015, editorial in the New York Times called the situation "absurd," expressing hope that a new director of the Library of Congress (home of the CRS) would manage to get the policy changed.

The issue re-ignited recently when astrophysicist and climate change denier Willie Soon, affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was revealed to have taken funding — but not disclosed it — from fossil fuel interests. Now the Smithsonian Institution has said it will tighten its guidelines for disclosure of funding by its researchers.

SEJ co-founder Rae Tyson delves into the reasons why talented individuals stop working for the purveyors of news, following the recent defection of two veteran reporters — New York Times’ Matt Wald and Dina Cappiello of the Associated Press. Photo (l-r): Former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Dina Cappiello and a fellow AP staffer. © AP/Charles Dharapak.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on offshore Gulf fracking, and was refused by two Interior Department offshore drilling agencies, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. CBD sued, and the lawsuit was settled June 2, 2015.