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The SEJ WatchDog Alert

The WatchDog Alert (formerly WatchDog TipSheet from 2008-2019) was a regular source of story ideas, articles, updates, events and other information with a focus on freedom-of-information issues of concern to environmental journalists in both the United States and Canada.

WatchDog was compiled, edited and written by Joseph A. Davis, who directs the WatchDog Project, an activity of SEJ's Freedom of Information Task Force that reports on secrecy trends and supports reporters' efforts to make better use of FOIA.

Topics on the Beat: 
Journalism & Media
Public

Latest WatchDog Alert Items

June 11, 2014

  • "Who Gets A Press Pass?" Report Explores Media Access

    Experienced journalists know that a press credential is often critical to gaining physical or virtual access to news events and information. It's an aspect of information access rarely covered by the news media themselves. A new report from the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard looks systematically at who gets a press card and who does not.

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  • Judge Orders Exxon To Produce Records on Leaky Arkansas Pipeline

    ExxonMobil lost a bid to keep federal regulators and prosecutors from getting records which might show criminal negligence in its operation of the pipeline that spilled oil into the Arkansas community of Mayflower in March 2013. The judge also threw out Exxon's motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the company.

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  • When Is a Policy Not a Policy? When Reporters Want To Talk to EPA Staff

    For some years now, under multiple administrations, journalists who have called EPA scientists and other experts asking to talk to them about matters large and small have almost universally been told something like, "I'm not allowed to talk to news media without Press Office permission." Yet EPA officials maintain they do not have a press policy. SEJ's WatchDog filed June 10, 2014 the first of what will be an ongoing series of FOIA requests to get to the bottom of this ironic situation.

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May 28, 2014

  • You Can Hide Oil Trains From the Public, But Not From Terrorists

    As 100-car trains of explosive crude oil snake through U.S. cities and river gorges, the railroad industry continues to tell the public they are being kept secret from terrorists. But now a series of articles by Rob Davis for the The (Portland) Oregonian seems to have caught the railroads and the feds in their own contradictions.

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  • Reporters Curious About Tar Sands Not Very Welcome in Canada

    Reporter Emily Atkin of the Climate Progress blog told recently of flying into Fort McMurray, Alberta to see the tar sands and being hassled for some 45 minutes by "security" officials because she was a journalist — including being told "We might have to send you back to the States."

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  • Will EPA Go Further in Pushing Fracking Fluid Disclosure?

    The agency is exploring some of its legal options for improving transparency about fracking fluid. One sign that EPA might be thinking of using its existing Clean Water Act legal authority came when the publication DeSmogBlog published on May 28 a leaked EPA draft suggesting it was considering doing precisely that.

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  • "SPJToolbox" Catalogues Vast Gumshoe Resources

    If you are a serious journalist and have not yet discovered the "SPJ Toolbox," you are in for a treat. The website offers useful sources for a wide range of topics of interest, especially to investigative reporters. Topics include protecting sources, privacy, data visualization, digital verification, transcription tools, rights-free photos, mobile journalism, public records, copy-editing, and more.

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May 14, 2014

  • Journos Fight Feds To Keep Drones As News Tool

    More than a dozen news media organizations filed a brief May 6, 2014, arguing that the Federal Aviation Administration is violating the First Amendment with its limits on drones. The media groups were intervening in the appeal of a judge's overturning of a $10,000 Federal Aviation Administration fine imposed on Raphael Pirker, a videographer who shot a promotional video of the University of Virginia campus.

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  • News Media Roll Eyes at Obama Openness Pledges

    Some of the eye-rolling was chronicled in a May 1, 2014, post in the blog Mediaite. It quoted New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson calling the Obama administration "the most secretive White House I have ever dealt with." The story came out just a couple of days before the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

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  • Toolbox: FWS Showcases Completed National Wetlands Inventory

    You might have noticed that Republicans, real estate developers, farmers, and others have gotten steamed lately about U.S. EPA's effort to define its jurisdiction over U.S. waters. Whatever your views on this controversy, it will mean a lot of good local stories. Now there's an improved data tool for gathering information about those waters that may not be big enough to row a boat on, but still are critical to the environment.

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