Push Back Crowdsourcing Action needed after Collecting IRE Awards The FOI-hostile Supreme hard-to-gather data Best of 2012 111101011011101010100111010101110Court Decision P. 3 2 P. 3 0 P. 6 Journal SPRING 2013 TRACKING ANIMAL MISTREATMENT The bizelliphotography.com Journal SPRING 2013 Bizelli | Michael 4 HOPEFUL FOR CHANGE, BUT FEARFUL OF THE ‘effect’ By Mark Horvit 5 IRE NEWS 6 IRE AWARD WINNERS 15 UPLINK Transportation data breaks down activity at local airports By Jamie Grey KTVB-Boise, Idaho 29 COLLECTED WISDOM A documents state of mind By James B. Steele 30 IRE INTERNATIONAL Sveriges TV turns to crowdsourcing for tough-to-gather data By Helena Bengtsson Sveriges Television 16 INVESTIGATING 23 BIG BUSINESS 32 FOI FILES KEEP OUT! Supreme Court ANIMAL WELFARE Zoos prize baby elephants, backs state record laws that Redefining our responsibility to afflict the but at what cost? exclude nonresidents comfortable and comfort the afflicted By Michael J. Berens By David Cuillier By Deborah Nelson The Seattle Times University of Arizona University of Maryland 26 BIG GAME 34 SNAPSHOTS FROM OUR BLOGS 18 BRUTAL BEGINNINGS A saga of greed, politics Data reporting digs up true histories and the death of a wild jaguar of Palm Beach puppies By Dennis Wagner By Jennifer Sorentrue and Pat Beall The Arizona Republic The Palm Beach Post (Fla.) 28 IRE RESOURCES 21 BROKEN HORSES Horse-racing data points to animal deaths and injuries By Griff Palmer The New York Times The FROM THE IRE OFFICES Journal Hopeful for change, but SPRING 2013 fearful of the ‘effect’ BY MARK HORVIT Volume 36 | Number 2 want to be optimistic. MANAGING EDITOR The Obama Administration recently enacted a new policy that instructs federal agencies to store data Megan Luther I in a way that makes it easier to get it out to the public in a usable format. ART DIRECTOR This is, potentially, fantastic. A big stumbling block to obtaining meaningful government data is the Erica Mendez Babcock way in which it’s stored and made available. There are approximately 2.3 zillion ways to render docu- CONTRIBUTING LEGAL EDITOR ments and data useless to the public if you really want to. Sam Terilli The new initiative addresses this problem. A lot of open government leaders are enthusiastically on board. I want to be excited about this. But… EDITORIAL ASSOCIATE AND STORY EDITOR This is something government agencies could have, and should have, been doing all along. Sometimes Aaron Cooper they don’t do it because they don’t know how. Often, though, it’s because they don’t want to. IRE And as we’ve seen throughout the Obama Administration, talk of openness and transparency often haven’t led to meaningful long-term action. IRE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR In fact, too often, those of us who’ve been hopeful have ended up like the kid who rips the wrapping Mark Horvit paper off of a gift and finds a box that makes him believe he’s getting exactly what he wants – say a new BOARD OF DIRECTORS iPad or the latest video game. But when he opens it – socks. PRESIDENT I’m not talking about the administration’s on-the-surface troubling war on whistleblowers, or the case David Cay Johnston author, columnist, lecturer that broke in May involving the Justice Department’s obtaining Associated Press phone records. There are no shiny bows on those. VICE PRESIDENT It’s the much more insidious trend of releasing new government access policies that appear to be bold Andrew Donohue Knight Fellow, Stanford University new steps but often end up offering only more of the same. And while this new policy could be an iPad, parts of it look suspiciously like socks. TREASURER Lea Thompson For example, nestled in the middle of the “definitions” section is something called the “mosaic effect.” broadcast journalist/producer Here’s the administration’s definition: “The mosaic effect occurs when the information in an individual dataset, in isolation, may not pose a SECRETARY Sarah Cohen risk of identifying an individual (or threatening some other important interest such as security), but when The New York Times combined with other available information, could pose such risk.” EXECUTIVE MEMBER And the entry goes on to require that government officials consider this when deciding whether data Mc Nelly Torres is public or not. Florida Center for Investigative Reporting “Before disclosing potential personally identifiable information (PII) or other potentially sensitive infor- mation, agencies must consider other publicly available data – in any medium and from any source – to CHAIRMAN determine whether some combination of existing data and the data intended to be publicly released Manny Garcia El Nuevo Herald could allow for the identification of an individual or pose another security concern.” Wait a minute. Does this say government officials must weigh whether any other publicly available Robert Cribb The Toronto Star data anywhere might possibly create some sort of identity or security concern? And if that wisp of a pos- sibility might exist, they can potentially put the data off limits? Yep. Leonard Downie Jr. This is a battle IRE has fought with this administration before, most recently on a dataset of individual The Washington Post cases of doctor discipline. It’s been scrubbed clean of names that had been available for years, but the Ellen Gabler administration took it out of circulation because in some cases journalists and others had been able to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel combine the list with lots of legwork to ID a doctor. Josh Meyer Sarah Cohen, IRE Board member and New York Times data guru, stresses that the policy doesn’t explic- Northwestern University itly bar the release of personally identifiable information. Matt Waite “But its emphasis on the mosaic effect could, in effect, close off records crucial to any accountability report- University of Nebraska-Lincoln ing,” Cohen says. “If the federal policy is to avoid any bit of information that could, in some extraordinary Stuart Watson circumstance, identify a person, we risk losing all access to records with names, zip codes or deaths. There WCNC-TV, Charlotte would be no way to hold subsidy programs up to scrutiny, to examine workplace accidents or detentions.” Alison Young The bottom line, according to Cohen? “By raising the mosaic effect, federal officials will be under USA Today pressure to keep more secret, out of fear that their perfectly releasable records might help lead to truly private information.” The IRE Journal (ISSN0164-7016) is published All of us who care about access and transparency are hopeful that this new open data initiative is the four times a year by Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc., 141 Neff Annex, Missouri School of Journalism, beginning of real, meaningful change. Columbia, MO 65211, 573-882-2042. Email: journal@ ire.org. U.S. subscriptions are $70 for individuals, But as long as the decisions on what to make available rest with the officials who hold the data, there’s $85 for libraries and $125 for institutions/businesses. plenty of reason to remain skeptical. And vigilant. International subscriptions are $90 for individuals and $150 for all others. Periodical postage paid at Jefferson City, MO. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Mark Horvit is executive director of IRE and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. He can be IRE. USPS#451-670 reached at [email protected] or 573-882-2042. © 2013 Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc. 4 THE IRE JOURNAL IRE NEWS MEMBER NEWS Greene, Hamby win WHCA award Columnist Charles Davis named dean Ronnie Greene, Chris Hamby and Jim Morris received the of University of Georgia’s journalism school White House Correspondents Association’s 2013 Edgar A. Poe Longtime IRE Journal FOI columnist and University of Missouri professor Award at the association’s annual dinner in Washington on Charles Davis has been named dean of the University of Georgia’s Grady April 27. College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Davis has enlightened IRE members with his FOI column in every issue They earned the award for The Center for Public since 2000. Integrity’s ongoing “Hard Labor” series, which “revealed how “Charles has the ability to effortlessly cut through obfuscation and corporate irresponsibility and lax regulation contribute to bureaucratic smokescreens to get to the essence of an issue,” IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit said. “His columns have helped IRE members make thousands of worker deaths, injuries and illnesses in America sense of the often senseless world of government accountability, and his each year,” according to the Center. voice will be missed.” The FOI column will be turned over to David Cuillier, who co-authored The Edgar A. Poe Award honors “excellence in news coverage with Davis “The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records.” of subjects and events of significant national or regional Davis will start at UGA in July. importance to the American people,” according to the WHCA. “I’d like to thank the IRE community for everything they do, and for making me much better at my job through the years. I have learned so much from IRE members, and have worked with countless journalists over the years on Correction tackling government secrecy issues. My respect and admiration for the hard, Susan Phillips won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for often thankless work that journalists do daily to keep us informed has only her work on “StateImpact Pennsylvania.” She and Scott Detrow grown ever larger through the years. I’ll miss the daily contact with IRE staff, but I’ll never be too far from the issues that animate us all,” Davis said. reported the project and were honored along with Chris Amico and their colleagues at CAP WITF-Harrisburg, Pa., WHYY- Philadelphia and NPR.