News story on WTAD

Last week when I got back from vacation, I was reading through the blog of a fellow Quincyan who is concerned about the job we in the local media are doing. That would be ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS OUR BENT, an excellent survey and review of what we media types are doing (or not doing) in the region.

He mentioned a missed story, namely the Better Government Association's study, released in late October, of Freedom of Information Act compliance by Illinois government bodies.

FIND IT HERE: http://www.allthenewsthatfitsourbent.blogspot.com/ and titled "Another missed story", and the BGA study is at http://www.bettergov.org/policy.html .

It was not a pretty picture: 62 percent of agencies contacted with FOIA (pronounced fo-ya) requests either denied the request, failed to respond in the required amount of time (7 business days), or didn't respond AT ALL.

I went to the BGA site, downloaded everything and set to reading.

ATNTFOB was right: it was a missed story and it needed to be reported. While it took me 10 days to talk to all the Adams County agencies involved, as well as the BGA's investigator Dan Sprehe (pronounced spray), the work is now done and, Mary Griffith willing, should air in two parts during the Morning Show news (6-9am) on WTAD, AM 930.

Thursday (11/9) and Friday (11/10) are the expected air dates for the two parts. Thursday will be the background and general results; Friday will look mostly at Adams County with some reportage on other Western Illinois counties. Sometimes I DO so wish I was in the print media so I could delve deeper into these things...Rodney, how about you or Doug pick up on this, or Ed?

I will say that the BGA report is not quite as cut and dried as it seems (and Mr. Sprehe agrees), and that many agencies had some good reasons for their failure. However by all the evidence the BGA did bend over backward to give the benefit of the doubt to the agencies involved, and they did run into some serious resistance (though not, as far as I can tell, in Western Illinois).

I hope you'll give the story a listen. Your comments and thoughts will be welcomed here.