Decline of FOI?

Young journalists across Canada continue to use freedom-of-information laws to break stories, which is heartening given the roadblocks increasingly put up by secretive governments. FOI today is regarded less as an exotic branch of journalism and more of a regular tool.

But there are ominous signs of weariness over laws with no teeth and a playing field tilted toward government opacity.

Annual statistics on media use of the federal Access to Information Act show a decline since 2013-14. In that year, media filed 8,421 requests, or about 14 per cent of all requests. In 2020-21, they filed 6,698 requests, or 4.6 per cent of the total.

These statistics, gathered by Treasury Board, aren’t fully reliable. Some reporters refuse to divulge their media origin when making requests (though many departments still record them as media anyway). And COVID certainly impacted the ATIA system, dampening the number of new requests for all categories.

But I suspect there has indeed been a genuine decline in media filing.

Legacy newsrooms have downsized as longstanding business models are undermined by digital competition, including Facebook. These newsrooms have lost some seasoned journalists who used FOI regularly. Strong enterprise FOI work at digital upstarts, such as Ottawa’s Blacklock’s Reporter (blacklocks.ca) and theBreaker.news in British Columbia, is helping to fill the gap.

Journalism schools have been lax about teaching FOI to a new generation, which makes the pioneering classroom work of Jim Bronskill, David McKie, Sean Holman, Fred Vallance-Jones and a few others so valuable.

Young reporters who do take up the FOI challenge face huge hurdles. Worsening delays for responses to requests make it hard to deliver timely stories, especially when it can take more than a year to get results. Complaints to information ombudspersons can add another year. No freelancer can live on that unreliable information flow. FOI, at best, can only be supplemental.

This new generation of reporters also changes jobs more frequently. An FOI request filed for one newsroom may get a response a year later, when the journalist has moved on. Who owns that request? And will there be anyone to take up the story in the originating newsroom? Is the request relevant to the interests of the journalist’s new employer? Growing delays in FOI response times can disrupt continuity in reporting, especially in the gig economy.

FOI today also demands more energy and time to monitor the progress of requests that departments are only too happy to place on hold, or conveniently toss into the ignore basket. As users well know, constant fighting with bureaucrats can be terribly draining. Are more journalists just giving up?

It also must be acknowledged that some governments are doing more “pro-active disclosure,” that is, posting online certain documents of their choosing and according to their timetable. Federal cabinet mandate letters are a prime example. These are clearly sanitized records, designed for public consumption and vetted to remove controversy. I worry that these easy-access and generally useless documents are luring some journalists away from FOI work.

There’s no quick fix to the apparent decline in media use of FOI laws.

Legislation needs to be toughened, of course, though it seems every time an FOI law is “reformed,” the net benefit accrues to government.

Journalism schools need to do a better job of preparing young journalists for the stark new realities of FOI reporting, and giving them better strategies.

Editors need to show patience and support for the FOI struggles of their staff.

We all need to do a better job of informing the public about the many ways governments sabotage freedom-of-information laws.

And as a profession, we need to set aside our competitive instincts about fellow journalists and share with them more tips and tactics – and celebrate each other’s success stories.

May 14, 2022