All Blog Posts from Public Eye

As any journalist can tell you, dealing with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) can be enough to make you wish you’d gone into a different line of work.

It all sounds so simple at first: If you want a document or piece of unreleased but legally available information from the U.S. government, you submit a FOIA request. But government agencies are, unsurprisingly, reticent to cooperate with journalists or other individuals seeking information that could make them look bad, so the response is almost never what you’re hoping for.

Instead of a few pages of documents or a neat summary of what you’re looking for, you might face long response times, be offered incomplete documentation, or be told that to pay high fees. You might get buried in so much paper that it becomes extremely difficult to find what you first requested. You might never hear back at all.

Which is why it’s good news that Congress has passed legislation to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act. If the president does not veto the bill, it would mandate that agencies respond to FOIA requests within 20 days – and be punished if they don’t – and create a system for tracking requests, among other innovations.

“Currently, delays, staggering legal fees and mountains of red tape undercut FOIA’s usefulness for citizens and journalists,” David Cuillier of the Society of Professional Journalists in a statement emailed to Public Eye. “This bill is crucial for helping FOIA work better, which in turn, helps democracy work better.”

In recent years, agencies' response time to FOIA requests has decreased, and the Bush administration has not exactly shown a propensity towards making information publicly available. In 2001, for example, President Bush signed an executive order allowing presidents to delay the release of many of their records indefinitely.

It is thus something of an open question whether the president will sign the legislation, which reflects a compromise crafted after the White House and Justice Department objected to some of the details, including restoration of a provision that agencies release information unless they determine it will do harm. (After Sept. 11, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had instructed agencies to err on the side of not releasing information.) The Associated Press speculates that Mr. Bush might simply ignore the bill, which would have the effect of causing the new rules to go into effect after 10 days.

“This pocket-veto-in-reverse would give Bush some political cover, allowing the FOIA bill to become law without taking the affirmative step of endorsing it,” notes the AP.

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

Matthew Felling: Many reporters have a few politicians or individuals they cover. But in a sense, you have 535. What challenges or opportunities does that present?

Sharyl Attkisson: The challenge? There are so many stories going on up here on a given day, I couldn't possibly cover them all. It’s difficult to cover all the machinations of the members and the committees. The opportunity? There are so many stories going on up here on a given day. Another benefit is that you will always be able to find someone willing to talk to you.

Matthew Felling: You’ve been the Capitol Hill correspondent for over a year. How has reporting changed since the 2006 elections? What was the before and after like?

Sharyl Attkisson: I think in many ways it's the Democrats, now in the majority, who've had to make the biggest attitude adjustment. They just weren't used to the media appearing to "come after them" or challenge them the way Republicans have been challenged all the years they held the majority. In fact, some Democrats and their staffers appeared surprised if not offended when they took over leadership and we asked them the type of tough, challenging questions that we'd been asking Republicans when the GOP was in the majority. One example was when we asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to explain her alleged desire for a bigger, more expensive jet to fly her to and from California at taxpayer expense. I've probably asked Ms. Pelosi for an on-camera interview 40 times in the past couple of months and she has never granted me one, on the jet topic or any other – even on matters that are positive for her party. The fact is, whoever is in the majority has to spend more time than the minority justifying what is or isn't getting done on the hill and will be questioned harder by the public and the press if it appears they aren't following through with promises. They're a bigger target for attack and criticism because they're in essence "running the show." But I just think this caught some Democrats by surprise.

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A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll today suggests that just 27 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is doing its job. That's down from a 36 percent approval rating in January.

This poll comes out the day after the Associated Press reported on a Pew poll that found that 49 percent of respondents "correctly answered that Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the House." Another data point found that about three-fourths of respondents knew that the Democrats control the House.

The two polls left me wondering: If fewer than half of those polled by Pew even know the identity of the Speaker of the House, what -- if anything -- should we make of peoples' opinions about Congress? To what extent are they responding to what Congress is actually doing, and to what extent are they just sharing a general dissatisfaction with politics in general?

I turned to Kathy Frankovic, Director of Surveys for CBS News, and Mark Blumenthal, otherwise known as the Mystery Pollster, for some answers.

"This probably is more of a general measure of what people think of that institution called Congress," he said. Blumenthal told me that there is a sizable chunk of respondents who are plugged into what's going on and are responding based on that, but that there are also a fair number that are responding based on something far more vague.

One can, he noted, extrapolate larger trends if one looks closely at the data – for example, if liberal Democrats have turned sharply against Congress, you can read something into that. But a headline alone leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

Frankovic said that the drop in approval for Congress could probably be traced to the failed immigration bill. "I'd put the blame on the fact that there has been a lot of debate and nothing passed," she said. "It probably isn't policy as much as the perception that they bicker, they debate, and nothing gets done."

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The Skinny Today: The Pentagon is very upset about the successful test of an anti-satellite missile by China. Plus, it's cool and hip to be an ethical member of Congress. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

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The Skinny Today: Congress gets skeptical, threatens to legislate. Condi heads to the Hill, Senators get hostile. Posh and Becks relocate to L.A., U.S. tabloids rejoice. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

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The Skinny Today: Cue the "Rocky" theme as Democrats take over Congress. Plus, 2007 brings more personnel changes; and NPR listeners are indeed 173% more likely to buy Volvos. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

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The Skinny Today: Joy to the world, the 110th Congress begins today. And the irony of Democrats' proposed ethics reforms is not lost on newspapers. Also, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte will become deputy secretary of state and Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli is ousted, in exchange for a $210 million severance package.

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The Skinny Today: The New York Times looks back on how sectarian violence undermined the president's blueprint for turning over security to the Iraqis. Plus, non-bipartisanship in Congress. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

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