How Times Reporters Use the Freedom of Information Act
By Jake Lucas, NY Times, July 21, 2018
Scott Pruitt’s resignation as head of the Environmental Protection Agency this month was preceded by a steady drumbeat of revelatory stories — from The Times and others — about his misuse of government resources. Some of the most remarkable of those stories were underpinned by information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.
The law, first enacted in 1966, and significantly strengthened after Watergate in 1974, gives the public the right to access records from any federal agency, with a handful of exceptions, and states have similar open-records laws that grant the same general right at the local level.
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