In the latest Reporter's Toolbox, Climate Central senior science writer John Upton defines investigative science reporting’s major role, and shares his personal nine ways to do the job better.
The speed and ease of this Canadian revolution by incoming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau belies the "common wisdom" among many jaded reporters and PR professionals that muzzling of U.S. government scientists and officials is somehow inevitable and woven into the culture of government.
New expert background reports of interest to environmental journalists and the public have been published by the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which runs satellites collecting geodata both classified and unclassified, has put up a new Web page with Arctic information. It just went up, and it's as little geeky, but it shows promise for longer-term utility.
Congress, you may remember, has exempted itself from the requirements for open government — and that included a ban on publishing taxpayer-funded explainers by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists, you can read them anyway.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on offshore Gulf fracking, and was refused by two Interior Department offshore drilling agencies, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. CBD sued, and the lawsuit was settled June 2, 2015.
Congress does not release reports done by the Congressional Research Service to the public, even though taxpayers fund them. Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project, you can read them anyway.
The expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in Canada by the multibillion-dollar Houston firm Kinder Morgan is, to say the least, controversial. So it did not help instill public confidence when Canada's National Energy Board on Jan 16, 2015, ruled that Kinder Morgan did not have to make public its emergency response plans for spills and fires.
Winnifred Bird and Jane Braxton Little, a former SEJ mentor program pair, describe (with humor!) the process of how they turned their shared interest in the Fukushima disaster's affect on forest ecosystems and rural communities into a successful writing collaboration.
