How FOI and data are supporting journalistic enquiry

TWENTY LFB members attended virtually for a deeply informative coffee morning on 9 May. It began as a discussion on scheduling and soon evolved into powerful exchanges on the future of investigative journalism, particularly the growing role of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, open-source intelligence and government transparency tools in exposing uncomfortable truths.

We highlighted the transformative potential of FOI and demonstrated the user-friendly website WhatDoTheyKnow.com, showing how journalists can submit anonymous FOI requests to government bodies across the UK, no matter their institutional backing.

Strategic approaches to getting results include asking precise, time-limited questions; building on existing requests; and coordinating multiple inquiries to avoid exemptions.

Case studies from the field underscored this practical guidance. Journalists discussed how recent FOI submissions led to discoveries such as the Home Secretary’s sit-down with UK Lawyers for Israel before restricting protest – and continued UK arms exports to Israel, despite political declarations to the contrary, which were exposed through tracking shipping records and export data.

We also explored how journalists can leverage UK government transparency publications such as the List of Ministers’ Interests and the Ministerial Meetings and Hospitality Logs that can reveal uncover lobbying efforts and corporate influence.

This preceded two three-hour workshops led by Matt Salusbury later in May, on the use of FOI and of the General Data Protection Regulation. For details, and links to future training events, please visit www.londonfreelance.org/training

© Mariam Elsayeh

London Freelance Branch training