Publication Items

As a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant continues to spew radiation into the environment, journalists and people across the world are getting an unwelcome lesson in how secrecy can threaten people's health and safety. A New York Times team finally on March 16 did the story on the withholding of information. Read their coverage, as well as others.

According to the AP, the Chemical Safety Board, which has been monitoring the testing, wanted further tests to confirm whether a fundamental design flaw may have contributed to failure of the blowout preventer's control pods

Before picking up stories based on journals in the environmental sciences, reporters might pause to ask about those journals' policies on transparency and potential conflict of interest. And then ask about enforcement, and any relevant conflict declarations on the article in question.

In the case of Milner v. Department of the Navy, the court rejected an expansive interpretation of the FOIA exemption on personnel matters. And in another FOIA case decided March 1, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations do not have a right of personal privacy that can prevent the federal government from disclosing records about them.