Journalists in the UK have been engaged in a frightening battle over their access to data – and this week, the lid started to come off.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have been a staple of British news reporting, similar to FOIA requests in the U.S. But in July, the UK's cabinet office publicly announced it was sponsoring the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information to scrutinize rules laid out in the 2000 Freedom of Information Act. Now, since the Commission's proposed amendments to the Act were made public late last week, Britain's media landscape has been flooded with petitions, emotional speeches and general confusion about the implications of the proposed changes that many journalists and media organizations say will restrict their ability to get information.

The changes would potentially establish money charges for FOI requests, and would give ministers more power to deny those requests. FOI requests have, in recent years, been crucial for breaking high-profile stories in the UK: the MPs' expenses scandal; children forced to wait three years for mental health assessments; the government-proposed “Snooper's Charter” requiring phone and Internet companies to track user history; police use of 500,000-volt stun guns on under-13s and the mentally ill; and the frequent “disappearance” of children from council care, among other stories.

“The Freedom of Information Act established the broad principle that public bodies must release information if the public interest in doing so outweighs the public interest in it remaining secret,” wrote the Press Gazette a petition launched last week that had received over 35,000 signatures at the time of this writing.

In a submission to the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information, Press Association editor Pete Clifton warned that the proposed changes could create a “Divine Right of Ministers to echo the Divine Right of Kings so beloved of Charles I.” He went on: “This decision, it seems, is being used as a pretext for a wide-ranging review of FOI, with the clear intention of limiting its operation. Introducing a ministerial veto which could override the decision of a court following an unsuccessful appeals process by a government department would have the effect of bringing about a major and unjustified constitutional change.”


In unequivocal terms, a spokesperson at the National Union of Journalists told Occupy.com that “the NUJ is fundamentally opposed to restricting freedom of information in the UK," and rejected the proposed changes to press freedoms on basic democratic grounds.

"We want to defend the existing provisions and would like to see the FOI Act expanded and improved," said the spokesperson, who preferred to remain unnamed. "Journalists use FOI on a daily basis as part of their work; there have been a vast number of public interest stories off the back of FOI requests, and the information that has been revealed has led to positive and meaningful change in society. The NUJ along with more than 100 other media organizations, campaign groups and individuals wrote to the prime minister in September and expressed serious concerns about the government’s approach.”

Darryl Chamberlain is one journalist who has used the current FOI legislation to great effect. Chamberlain has worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation and the financial website Money Saving Expert. He also writes two local blogs in southeast London: 853, which investigates local issues, and a community site called Charlton Champion. “I've used FOI to find out about dealings in my local council, Greenwich Council,” he told Occupy.com, and “I've discovered that it spent £20,000 earlier this year on a private function to celebrate having a new ceremonial mayor.

"I've discovered where cash from new developments is going, and exposed the ex-council leader's refusal to work with the London mayor's cycling commissioner on safety improvements," he adds. "My most successful FOI was to Transport for London, which revealed the very, very low ridership on its cable car across the Thames; in one week last year it recorded no regular commuters at all.”

Addressing the House of Commons last week, Conservative MP Chris Grayling said Britain's journalists are guilty of “misusing” the FOI act. Keith Ireland, Managing Director of Wolverhampton Council, found himself in the news over the weekend for insisting in a council meeting that “the vast majority of requests come from media across the country, be that the BBC, local media, or media in general. They come from people who are out to create trouble for councils and students who are too lazy to do their own research. Others come from big companies who can’t be bothered to look up the data and want to know when contracts are on for re-evaluation. It is a really costly exercise. The original principle of FOI is not what is happening in reality.”

But according to the Press Gazette, writing on behalf of the Society of Editors' "Hands Off FOI" campaign, the news-gathering process is vastly more complex than people think. “Investigative journalism is time-consuming, expensive and sometimes difficult to justify for news organizations which are under financial pressure. It needs to be nurtured and encouraged, for the benefit of society and democracy, not subject to FOI charges which would be effectively be a tax on journalism.”

The National Union of Journalists agrees. “Of course there is a cost to FOI, but then again there is a cost to all elements of democratic government," said the NUJ spokesperson, "because democracy comes at a price.”

Chamberlain admitted he believes the current FOI system may be “open to abuse,” but that it comes from all corners and not just lefty “troublemakers" as politicians try to depict them.

“I've seen software companies use it to tout for work, and you find people sticking in requests to large numbers of authorities without doing basic research,” he told Occupy.com. “If local government was properly transparent, this would be less of a problem. But MPs and councillors also clog up the system with some stupid questions. That's what happens in a democracy. If the Tories do clamp down on FOI, perhaps their backbench MPs should be charged for each toadying query they make at Prime Minister's Questions, because they waste our time and money, too.”

A spoof news website that many Brits are fond of visiting, The Daily Mash, has further blurred the lines between the mainstream press and official government releases that pass for news in an ever more self-censored era. If journalists are now afraid of – and lashing out against – the host of anti-free press measures the UK government has proposed, imagine the response once the press is silenced in the ways the government is proposing.