All significant aspects of life in the United States are affected by the federal government. The news media — including print and broadcast journalists, researchers and scholars — regularly inform the public about the policies and actions of government.

The public’s ability to receive information about government has been significantly enhanced by the federal Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1966. By making all records of government agencies presumptively available to you upon request, the Act guarantees your right to inspect a storehouse of government documents.

Journalists and scholars have used the FOI Act to investigate a variety of news stories and historical events. Their revelations, based on documents they received, have often led to change where change was needed.

The FOI Act has been used to reveal to the public vital information affecting its health and safety.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s responses to FOI requests from a New York Daily News reporter aided his reports months after the collapse of the World Trade Center that Ground Zero was contaminated with asbestos and with other chemicals. Manhattan residents, rescue workers and others were victims of a “web of environmental deception,” the News reported. Five days after the attack, both the mayor of New York and the EPA administrator had declared the area at low risk of environmental danger.

In 2003, the Dayton Daily News reported the results of dozens of FOI requests to the Peace Corps on the risks Peace Corps volunteers, especially women, have faced abroad from violence, accidents, disease and suicide. The responses to dozens of requests to the Peace Corps, in tandem with the newspaper’s own reporting through interviews and travels, showed that the agency’s own statistics masked the dangers to which the volunteers were exposed.

The newspaper previously had used the Act to learn that women in the military endured cavalier responses to charges of rape brought against enlisted men and officers, many of whom had faced multiple charges. It also used the Act to peruse Occupational Safety and Health Administration databases obtained through the Act to identify the most dangerous work places in the country.

In 1996, when a ValuJet Airlines crash in the Everglades killed 110 people, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer had documents in hand showing what the government knew about safety problems at the airline. It had just completed a series of articles on safety problems at small airlines, a series that relied significantly upon records received through FOI requests to the Federal Aviation Administration.

After The Albuquerque Tribune filed requests for information on victims of governmental radiation experiments in the early 1990s, then Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary began a departmental program to identify and make public widespread abuses of past radiation experimentation.

In the late 1980s, an Orange County (Calif.) Register reporter showed that hundreds of servicemen were killed or seriously injured in helicopter accidents relating to their government-issued night-vision goggles. The Pentagon had attributed the accidents to “pilot error.”

In 1985, the Public Citizen Health Research Group used the Act to find that government had identified 250,000 workers in 249 workplaces who faced increased risks of cancer, heart disease and other illnesses because of their work environment — but that it had not notified the workers of the risks.

Other reporters have used the Act to identify wasteful government spending.

In the early 1990s, a request by an Associated Press reporter led to a story about a little known $200 million federal program to advertise U.S. food and beverages overseas. Monies were going to companies such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Pillsbury, Dole, M&M-Mars and Jim Beam — all of whom had substantial advertising budgets of their own to draw on.

The Act has been used for myriad other purposes, such as to uncover important information about the Rosenberg spy trials, FBI harassment of civil rights leaders, surveillance of authors, scientists and composers, international smuggling operations, environmental impact studies, the salaries of public employees, school district compliance with anti-discrimination laws, and sanitary conditions in food processing plants.

Reporters have successfully used the FOI Act to learn about crimes committed in the United States by those with diplomatic immunity, cost overruns of defense contractors, and terrorist activities, including a plan to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during a trip to this country.

Although the FOI Act is an important source of information, reporters should recognize its limitations. Rarely can information obtained through an FOI Act request serve as the sole source for a story. It can, however, be used to verify other sources. For example, a reporter gaining information from an unattributable government source may be able to get the same information directly from the agency directly using the Act. Even if the source was “on the record,” government documents may make the story more accurate and complete.

Sometimes information obtained from a request can simply identify leads or sources for a story which the reporter later can follow up on in person. Some journalists who cover a specific agency routinely make requests to that agency in order to watch for emerging trends and to develop a checklist for story ideas. Some journalists even review FOI Act requests that have been filed by others. Following up on these, either by filing identical requests or interviewing the original requester, can trigger new story ideas.

The possibilities provided by the Act are endless. All that is required is that you use it.

Next section: A brief overview of how the act works