FOIA This!

FOIA This! — Digging Out Government Spending

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Tracking down local government expenses is a recurrent theme for many successful freedom of information requests. Some recent examples suggest that quite a variety of information is potentially available — about credit card charges, salaries, retirement parties, and even costs of leak investigations. Have a great story you developed using a FOI/RTI request? Send it to us at freeinfo@email.gwu.edu. We’re currently looking for examples regarding immigration.

Profiles

FOI’s Man in the Middle East

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In 2007, Jordan became the first country in the Middle East to enact freedom of information laws — and Musab Al-Shawabkeh is the award-winning journalist who has been taking full advantage of it.

FBI

A Funny Thing Happened on Our Way to FOIA

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After nine years and over 60,000 requests, MuckRock — the Massachusetts-based news site that specializes in using the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — has been witness to some pretty impressive efforts to keep public information from the public. In the spirit of Sunshine Week, they compiled some of the weirdest, wildest and downright hilarious redactions they’ve received since launching in 2010.

freedom of expression

Hungarian Journalists Build New Site After Controversy

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In 2014, Hungarian investigative journalist András Pethő wrote an exposé about a series of expensive overseas business trips taken by the chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the popular website Origo.hu. Within days of the story’s publication, Origo’s editor in chief, Gergo Saling, resigned – apparently due to political pressure on Origo’s parent company, Magyar Telecom. Pethő and much of the rest of the site’s news staff quit soon afterwards in solidarity. The walkout led to much scrutiny of Origo and Hungary’s press freedom climate, both in Hungary and internationally.

Data Journalism

GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Sex in Parliament, Peace and Press Freedom and Vanishing Global Water

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 14 to 20 finds @FinancialTimes highlighting @NASA data on high risk drought areas across the globe, @infogram juxtaposing press freedom with global peace rankings and @BBCNews showing how smuggling mobile phones is a rampant problem in English and Welsh prisons.

Data Journalism

GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Dealing Brexit, Following the Money, Swiss Greens, and a Kyrgyz Park Scam

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from October 21 to 27 finds a panel of leading data visualization practitioners discussing the practice of visualization in an age of disinformation, Kloop exposing how Kyrgyzstani authorities privatized large swaths of a public park with no oversight, and The Guardian highlighting the minimal changes between former British prime minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal with current PM Boris Johnson’s new deal.

Data Journalism

This Week’s Top Ten in Data Journalism

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from September 25 to October 1 has @FT mapping the route in a day of a London Uber driver, #NICAR18 registration opening up, @Lattif charting Africa’s internet shutdowns using @atlascharts and loads of German election data visualizations.