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USA Today
March 13, 2015

New players join newspapers in using FOIA requests
By Kevin Johnson and Kevin G. Hall, USA TODAY and McClatchy Newspapers


A recent review of thousands of federal court records conducted by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that media organizations were filing fewer lawsuits challenging federal government secrecy than in past years. The study, which compared the last four years of the George W. Bush administration with the first term of the Obama administration, found that news organization lawsuits dropped from 22 to 18. This stood out against the total number of FOIA suits brought by all plaintiffs, which was higher during the first Obama term than the last years of Bush's tenure. In a separate examination published late last year, Syracuse researchers found that more FOIA lawsuits – 422 – were filed against the federal government in fiscal year 2014 than in any year since 2001. Despite that volume, the report found that The New York Times was the only so-called "legacy'' news organization to have brought several legal challenges in federal court.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
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