A big lesson for big media
By Mark Tapscott

The Heritage Foundation (KRT) Rob Walters, Sean Adkins, Sharon Smith
and Michelle Starr are not household names like broadcast stars Tim
Russert or Peter Jennings. But these four ink-stained wretches in
Pennsylvania are way ahead of the big guys when it comes to digging
out information that otherwise might never see the light of day.

They work for The York Daily Record, and they've set a standard for
using the federal Freedom of Information Act that the Big Media stars
would be wise to imitate. The YDR crew routinely uses more than 250
FOIA requests annually to break important stories for their
newspaper's readers, including:

-Homeland Security officials were so concerned about a threat to
Three Mile Island received only weeks after 9/11 that they scrambled
to get two Air Force fighters to patrol the skies over the infamous
nuclear plant, which is located not that far from York residents. The
threat described a coordinated attack by a TMI insider and an outsider
crashing an aircraft into the facility. Even so, an hour elapsed
before Washington told local authorities and TMI managers about the
threat.

-More than 140 workers and applicants for jobs in critical areas at
TMI tested positive for drug use - including marijuana, cocaine,
amphetamines and alcohol - between 1999 and 2002. Strangely, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission lacks a zero-tolerance policy on drugs.
NRC's alcohol limit, for example is a blood-alcohol content of 0.04
percent - equal to a 200-pound man consuming three 12-ounce beers in
an hour.

-Federal regulators documented 270 incidents of misuse of radioactive
materials that posed threats to public health and safety in 32 states
between 1990 and 2002. Among the 15 in Pennsylvania were incidents of
patients being treated for cancer at hospitals and other medical
facilities in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas. None of the
incidents were disclosed before YDR reported them

The YDR crew's FOIA-driven reporting also regularly produces
significant local stories. For instance, among more than 16,000 unpaid
parking tickets, YDR discovered, were citations of the president of
the York City Council, a council member, the city's economic
development director and a host of other area officials.

Walters, the editor who oversees YDR's FOIA reporting, says
persistence is essential. It took more than a year of effort and an
appeal to Homeland Security officials, for example, but YDR's
information request on the TMI terrorist threat eventually produced
more than 150 pages of documentation.

Among other things, the York reporters learned that TMI's reactor and
radioactive core were most vulnerable the day of the threat because
the plant was being refueled and closing a hatch opened in the process
required three hours.

Another lesson, Walters says, is that journalists always should seek
more than one way to get important information and documents. The
Pennsylvania daily's reporters routinely study an agency's FOIA
request logs to learn as much as possible about what records are kept
by that agency. Their FOIA requests then can go for specific records
known to exist within the agency.

It also never hurts to be creative in using the FOIA, according to
Walters. When a federal agency issues a report on an issue important
to the newspaper's readers, YDR reporters comb through the footnotes
for citations of surveys or databases used by the report's authors.
The raw data for those surveys and databases is then requested via an
FOIA. And the YDR team found that governments have forms for
everything. Sooner or later, every government form is used in a report
or a database that may contain important news for YDR readers, so the
newspaper routinely submits FOIA requests for records and supporting
materials connected with government forms.

Finally, Walters says, an FOIA journalist must be patient. "Though we
work with daily deadlines and breaking news, staff members are urged
to always think long term and about follow-up stories," Walters writes
in a forthcoming article for Nieman Reports. "From experience, we know
that an FOIA request filed today most likely means we won't be
publishing a story using the information we are able to get for a
month or even a year from now."

When was the last time you read in your local newspaper or heard on a
local broadcast newscast that an important story was made possible by
an FOIA? Surveys have long shown journalists aren't frequent FOIA
requesters. Maybe it's time to ask your newspaper editor and TV news
director when was the last time they used the FOIA. If it's been too
long, they aren't doing their jobs.

--- ABOUT THE WRITER Mark Tapscott is director of the Center for Media
and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Readers may write to the
author in care of The Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue
NE, Washington, D.C. 20002; Web site: www.heritage.org. Information
about Heritage's funding may be received by writing to the foundation
and requesting it.

This essay is available to Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
subscribers. Knight Ridder/Tribune did not subsidize the writing of
this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not
necessarily represent the views of Knight Ridder/Tribune or its
editors. --- (c) 2004, The Heritage Foundation Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Information Services