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How Often Does The News Media Bring FOIA Lawsuits?

The FOIA Project at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: “Just how active is the news media in taking federal agencies to court when they don’t promptly turn over the records being sought? Hard data to reliably answer this question has been extremely limited. FOIAproject.org today announces an ambitious initiative aimed at filling this void. Starting with the case-by case records on virtually every FOIA suit now available on FOIAproject.org, the project team examined and classified each of nearly nine thousand individual names of plaintiffs for cases filed in federal district court since the beginning of FY 2001. The result is what we have dubbed “The News Media List” now available at: http://foiaproject.org/plaintiff-media-list/.  This never-before available interactive tool not only identifies each media organization and reporter, but also provides direct access to a variety of details about every case. For more recent cases, a useful synopsis is given, along with descriptors of the specific issues involved. Click on a “case detail” link to pull up the court docket, the actual complaint and court opinions (where available), and an up-to-date listing of the events and proceedings that have taken place. To see who the most active FOIA media filers are, using this interactive tool you can sort by media name, or by time period and media category…”

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