 |
|
The government charges money to fulfill FOIA requests. These fees can be ridiculously, prohibitively expensive — sometimes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. By law, “representatives of the news media” are supposed to get fee reductions or fee waivers for FOIA requests.
But before last year, some government agencies, particularly under the Obama administration, had taken to defining “representatives of the news media” in a highly restrictive manner, denying fee waiver and fee reduction requests to advocacy organizations, government watchdog groups and nontraditional news outlets.
In one instance, the Department of Homeland Security tried (and later failed) to deny news media status to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an esteemed organization with an established history of examining government documents in a way that routinely precipitates media coverage.
|
|
|
|
