The Media History of FOIA and a Journalism of Transparency: Early Reactions in the Trade Press to the Law's Adoption and Revision

Abstract

This is media history of the early days of FOIA as covered by American journalism’s main trade publication, Editor & Publisher, with secondary (and often retrospective) coverage in publications such as the Society of Professional Journalists’ Quill, the American Journalism Review and the Columbia Journalism Review. It focuses on the initial journalistic discourse about and surrounding the realities, aspirations and potential of FOIA-in-practice in the U.S., from the summer of 1966—when it was reluctantly signed into law by President Johnson—through its initial revisions in and after 1974, to the end of the 1970s. This study utilizes close reading, placing discussions of FOIA by working news people in context helping scholars, activists and journalists appreciate the legacy and future of FOIA.