Brief #10: Freedom of Information Act

In late March, the FBI arrested Terry James Albury, a longtime agent in its Minneapolis field office, for allegedly providing classified documents to The Intercept. The Intercept is an investigative nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism. While tracking him down, the bureau crossed a red line that will sour relationships with journalists and whistle-blowers, with negative consequences for everyone. The classified documents in question, on their own, should concern anyone who cares about civil liberties. A set of policies and procedures, the documents outline how the FBI can access journalists’ phone records without search warrants or subpoenas approved by a judge. This is despite a 2013 promise, at the time, by Attorney General Eric Holder to reform rules about spying on reporters after the Department of Justice secretly obtained phone records from "over 100 Associated Press journalists" according to The Washington Post. Holder’s reforms only applied to subpoenas in criminal investigations.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Federal Government's Freedom of Information Act should not be confused with the different and varying Freedom of Information Acts passed by the individual states. Many of those state acts may be similar but not identical to the federal act. The FOIA was put in place shortly after the illegal unconstitutional act of MK Ultra performed by the CIA, which most of the evidence was burned and some of the surviving documents became classified in 2001. Others, most notably late former President Lyndon B. Johnson, believed that certain types of unclassified government information should nonetheless remain secret.

The solicited documents also identify loopholes in FBI rules allowing undercover agents and informants to infiltrate and spy on members of churches, political organizations and universities which is something, The Washington Post claims that The Intercept said, that even the FBI acknowledged was a “risk to civil liberties.” The FBI used as evidence against Albany FOIA requests made by The Intercept. According to an affidavit for a warrant obtained by Minnesota Public Radio, “on or about March 29 and 30, 2016, a presumed U.S. Person representing an online media outlet … made two separate requests for copies of specific documents from the FBI pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.” The FBI is able to tell who accesses documents on its network. After The Intercept published the documents, the timing of the earlier FOIA request allowed the FBI to pinpoint Albury as a likely source. “Albury accessed the document on February 19, 2016, approximately one month and ten days prior to the FOIA request” and made images, the affidavit said.

Brief #9: College Media

Thinking back over the last 500 years, Americans have managed to recover from the severe outcomes of social differences, sexual freedoms, and even racial oppression. We may be still in rehab, but with so many different characteristics trying to blend in as one united nation, you can't expect change without conflict. It is normal for humans to not know something about everything. It is a characteristic that we have to not only learn to accept, but we have to have the will to seek more information rather than to react erratically. One of the most controversial topics today falls along the lines of sexual identity and sexual preference. The LGBTQ+ community has made many advancements in several communities through education, service, and awareness. In the light of providing  education from every aspect and point of view, Kennesaw State University has decided to host a Queer Research Day. The students of KSU have created a partnership between the LGBTQ Student Programs, Department of Social Work and Human Services, and the Presidential Commission on LGBTQ Initiatives in order to "challenge normalcy".

According to CollegeMedia Network, the QRD event sprung from the attention KSU got for "telling it's students that 'ne, 've,' 'ey,' 'ze' and 'xe,' are gender-neutral pronouns in a pamphlet, so their hosting of this conference should not be a surprise." CampusReform explains that it will include workshops like "An Exploration of Queer Representation in Fairytales" and "Queer Developmental Approaches to Working With Young People" while also giving attendees the opportunity to "share their 'queer research' and explain how they are 'addressing queerness' in their work."

Although the Conference gained a lot of publicity and success, there were a few fights against the progression. There were 2 "free speech" lawsuits filled alleging discrimination against conservative students in the month of February. Campus Reform says that "the lawsuits accuse KSU of using vaguely-worded policies to restrict speech that administrators deem 'controversial,' as well as maintaining a capricious four-tiered classification system for student groups." Both lawsuits were issued by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF); the first was on behalf of a Christian student group called the Ratio Christi for being subject to a "free speech zone", and the second claimed that there were unconstitutional "security fees" for inviting Katie Pavlich, a conservative commentator, to campus by the YAF or the Young Americans for Freedom's Kennesaw chapter.

Brief #8: Investigative Journalism

Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, better known as Iowa Watch, published a statewide investigative story in the spring of 2016 on a disparity in how high school science teachers discuss climate change in the classroom. Nearly half of teachers surveyed by Iowa Watch journalists teach climate change “as theory, informing students about the variety of thought that exists.” The rest of the responses fell evenly across a variety of strategies for treating climate change as fact, and Iowa Watch’s work corroborated the findings of a larger national study published by Science that same season.

The Iowa Watch story ran in several prominent state newspapers, including The Des Moines Register and The Waterloo Courier, and prompted concerns that students could complete their high-school experience with an inconsistent understanding of human impact on the environment. The absence of administrative measures to monitor how discussions of climate change play out in science curriculum shocked educators, students, and parents alike.



ICYMI: “She identified herself as a reporter. He then walked behind her and punched her in the side of the head”

But inside that story lingered another. Aside from the light supervision of Lyle Muller, Iowa Watch’s executive director and editor, and Brian Winkel, a journalism teacher at Cedar Falls High School, the piece had been researched and written by high schoolers. Over the course of three months, Tana Gam-Ad, Olivia Fabos Martin, and Sarah Stortz contributed on-the-ground reporting to that initial story (which Muller collected and stitched together), and became the first participants in Iowa Watch’s efforts to produce collaborative, investigative report in high schools around the state. Muller, a veteran reporter himself, saw the program as an opportunity to escort the next generation of journalists into the field, but also as a strategy to cover relevant stories that might otherwise go unheard. In the process of that intensive coursework and reporting, Muller hoped administrators would recognize the vitality and necessity of “extracurricular” journalism courses, and think twice before sacrificing them to frequent budget cuts. He confided his feelings to Columbia Journalist Review: “I wanted to prove that high school students can do this,” says Muller. “I wanted to prove that they were capable of producing reporting that people would pay attention to, and that high school journalism programs are worthwhile and important.”