folo

Aha, we get only one installment for Day Seven of “Mississippi: The Secret State,” and it’s not by a reporter. Instead, Ole Miss journalism professor (and executive director of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information) Jeanni Atkins files FOIA gives people access to workings of government for 40 years, which begins with a non-rhetorical question:

OXFORD — Rarely do we think much about the sources of information swirling around us in the battle to sway people to accept a certain point of view on social issues and public policies. The massive public relations machinery of government, spin doctors on talk shows and in interviews, speeches of government officials and bloggers bombard the public with partisan positions on issues.

At the state and local level, we’re also confronted with rhetoric and spin and are left to wonder what is fact and what is simply opinion. Where does the truth lie? How do we sift through the verbiage to find the nuggets of truth?

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law – albeit apparently reluctantly – a revolutionary piece of legislation 12 years in the making that transformed the process of learning the truth about government decision making.

The Freedom of Information Act – referred to as FOIA (foy-yuh) – put in the hands of citizens the tools to pry open the closed doors of government. Over the past 40 years, information squirreled away in documents hidden from public view has been disclosed that has contributed immeasurably to knowledge not only about the workings of government but the dangers to public safety and health that need to be corrected.

Mississippi enacted its own Public Records Act in 1983. Access to government records in the state also shows how tax dollars are being used or misspent and decisions made that are either beneficial or detrimental to the needs of citizens. Public records laws, in short, are a means to hold government accountable.

Atkins tells what happened when FEMA refused FOIA requests for names and addresses of recipients of $1.2 billion in Katrina assistance, claiming that such a disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”: the federal appeals court in Atlanta ordered the jerks to release the documents.

“The public interest in evaluating the appropriateness of FEMA’s response to disasters is not only precisely the kind of public interest that meets the FOIA’s core purpose of shedding light on what the government is up to,” the court ruled, “the magnitude of this public interest is potentially enormous.”

The court stated: “In light of FEMA’s awesome statutory responsibility to prepare the nation for, and respond to, all national interests, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks, there is a powerful public interest in learning whether, and how well, it has met this responsibility.”

Now Atkins reels off examples of “the millions of pages of documents obtained through [FOIA] requests [to] illustrate why it matters to you that these access laws exist.”

Advocacy groups use the federal and state public records laws to learn about health and safety issues and utilize these documents to lobby for change.

Information obtained through FOIA requests have revealed adverse effects of drugs, hazardous waste dumping, negligence of companies resulting in worker accidents, defects in Firestone tires and environmental dangers such as air and water pollution.

The Public Interest Research Group released findings based on FOIA documents that nearly a third of industrial facilities and government-operated sewage treatment plants significantly violated pollution discharge regulations.

The most dangerous work places in the United States were discovered in records obtained from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Despite assurances following 9/11 that there was no danger to workers at the Ground Zero site, for example, government records revealed environmental deception by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA reassured the public that the air was safe when, in fact, it was contained with dangerous asbestos and other chemicals that resulted in illness and death of workers involved in the cleanup. Disclosure of these records enabled workers to get government assistance for treatment.

Intense pressure on the Food and Drug Administration by the tuna industry was revealed in records obtained from the FDA. The non-governmental organization Environmental Working Group found that although tuna contains significant sources of mercury, the FDA failed to mention tuna in initial warnings to pregnant women about the effects of mercury in fish on the mental development of children. The FDA revised its guidelines about fish consumption after the NGO disclosures.

Hundreds of veterans were finally able to receive disability and health benefits that had been denied to them after the Deseret Morning News in Utah published documents showing Army scientists exposed hundreds of soldiers to germ and chemical warfare tests. The Pentagon had denied using nerve agents and deadly germs in experiments on soldiers and refused disability payments but reversed their policy after these FOIA disclosures. …

And there are more where these came from. Atkins appends a link to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Web site —

http://www.rcfp.org/foiact/index.html

— and, even better, provides a sidebar with multiple examples of other states’ approaches to handling open-records requests. Dang, check out some of the fines and jail sentences — those are some teefies!