"WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is refusing to turn over documents related to enforcement of environmental laws at wind farms where dozens of eagles and other protected birds have been killed, House Republicans charged Wednesday."
Got an idea for an environment-related story or a book proposal? SEJ and Capital Public Radio offer you the opportunity (Apr 11, 2014, 5-7 p.m., in Sacramento) to get some feedback on your ideas and meet up with fellow SEJ members. You’ll have two minutes to pitch stories to a panel of news and magazine editors and three minutes to pitch book ideas to a publisher’s representative. RSVP by Apr 9th.
The fellowships covered most of the costs of attending SEJ's 2014 Annual Conference in New Orleans for 11 mentoring pairs selected through a special application process. Thanks to the vision and generosity of all who contributed in Elyssa Rosen's memory for making this special opportunity possible.
An extensive Associated Press analysis of Freedom of Information Act performance, based on legally required FOIA reports and statistics, was just one of many this week. Other Sunshine Week coverage also tried to take a broad view of how the federal government was doing on the openness front. Spoiler alert: not so good.
Some major U.S. journalism organizations are increasingly fed up with federal public affairs offices acting "more like prison guards than gate-keepers." The latest outbreak of frustration was at a March 19, 2014, panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Read comments by panelists — who agreed that the situation would not get better without organized and creative pushback from journalists.
It was a crisis. Charleston, WV, residents had just been told not to drink city water because of a chemical spill upstream of its intake. It would seem routine to call the US EPA and ask for information or comment — and that's just what prize-winning Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. did. He waited a week for EPA to get back to him on the record. SEJ wants to know why such communication delays at EPA have become the norm.
Spin control and the security state may have taken large bites out of the First Amendment in recent years, but the pushback celebration known as Sunshine Week has never been more robust. Pushing for open government is a trend. Nowhere is this more true than on the environment and energy beats.
