Overzealous administrators and bureaucrats

Other stories are lost due neither to new laws nor to court actions, but federal administrators who take it upon themselves to restrict information, particularly that which they think could in any way be useful to someone with a malicious motive.

In July 2001, Ralph Haurwitz and Jeff Nesmith did a series of stories in the Austin American-Statesman looking at pipeline safety around the country. As a result of the series, federal agencies with pipeline oversight have increased efforts to update regulatory activities and rulemaking, Haurwitz said. In addition, the Texas Railroad Commission levied its largest fine ever against a company responsible for an accident in Abilene, Texas.

Some of the data they used, including pipeline incidents and company financial information, is still available today. But other information concerning pipelines in environmentally sensitive areas can no longer be obtained.

"Today, if a reporter wanted to do a particular analysis dealing with these areas, it would be difficult to do it because the information is no longer public," Haurwitz said.

The potential for closure of these and other types of "critical infrastructure information" worries journalism organizations.

"I think if the government gets its way it's going to be an awful lot harder to do what we've been doing," said James Bruggers, president of the Society of Environmental Journalists and an environmental reporter for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal. "I'm not sure what the overall benefit is. The fact that a lot of this information has been made public has made communities safer."

On Oct. 12, 2001, the Federal Depository Libraries received a request, on behalf of the U.S. Geological Survey's associate director for water, to destroy all copies of a CD-ROM publication: Source area characteristics of large public surface water supplies I 19.76:99-248 USGS Open-File Report no. 99-248. The CD-ROM contained databases and electronic maps of surface water intake locations, streamflow and other characteristics of surface water. The government said releasing the information would put America's water supplies at risk, as terrorists could use it to find vulnerabilities.

Although that specific CD-ROM has not been used widely by news organizations, data about ground water has been a resource for many news stories. In 1990, The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch uncovered more than 100,000 potential contamination sources for West Virginia ground water. In 2000, the Los Angeles Times used city records to trace the origins of high levels of chromium 6 found in ground water.