Bloggers making Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the CIA will likely get them processed for free under new rules that broaden the definition of who is part of the “news media,” according to the Editor and Publisher trade publication.

Professional journalists have long been able to request free processing of their FOIA requests of the intelligence agency. As a general rule, they don’t have to pay fees for searching and retrieving files, although they may be charged for duplication costs.

Earlier this year, the CIA proposed a sliding fee scale that would likely have required at least some bloggers to pay for FOIA processing. But in an announcement in the Federal Register last week, the agency said it decided in the face of both negative and positive criticism simply to redefine “news media.”

“Since there was no support to proceed with the proposed rule as originally drafted, rather than implementing the sweeping changes set forth in the proposed rule, we have a more modest change by simply adopting the definition of ‘news media’ contained in the March 27, 1987, Office of Management and Budget FOIA Guidelines,” Edmund Cohen, chief of Information Management Services for the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in the Federal Register.

This is the definition of the “news media” the CIA is adopting for FOIA purposes:

“Representative of the News Media refers to any person actively gathering news for an entity that is organized and operated to publish or broadcast news to the public. The term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news media entities include television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large, and publishers of periodicals (but only in those instances when they can qualify as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for purchase or subscription by the general public. These examples are not intended to be all-inclusive. Moreover, as traditional methods of news delivery evolve (e.g., electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media would be included in this category. In the case of ‘freelance’ journalists, they may be regarded as working for a news organization if they can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that organization, even though not actually employed by it.”

Makes one want to start filing FOIA requests on a number of topics, doesn’t it?

Tags: Blog News

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