The Washington Post did a deep dive on an adenovirus breakout at the University of Maryland. The story tackled why it took the university 18 days to alert students about the virus back at the end of 2018. It’s worth a read, but the back story of the reporting and roadblocks on the way is something that anyone who cares about quality reporting should be aware of.
When using public records in the past we’ve sometimes been asked to pay for the price of photocopies or a small fee to process the request, but what happened with the Post reporters seems to be beyond the norm. Amy Brittain, one of the reporters who wrote the story, says they couldn’t get all the records they wanted for the story because the University quoted them an unreasonable “fee.”
Brittain goes on to say:
No, we did not pay the fee. @slarimer engaged in months of negotiations with UMD attorneys to try to reduce the fee to a *reasonable* amount. In the end, we agreed to accept only a tiny fraction of what we initially sought. Our final cost was $690.
Why does this matter? Public institutions routinely put up roadblocks for reporters and members of the public trying to seek information that sheds light on their actions and the consequences of those actions.
Kelly McBride from the Poynter Institute told News & Guts:
Charging reporters an exorbitant price to gather public records is a worn-out strategy to avoid public accountability. It almost always fails, either because the public agency looks so ridiculous they back down and put a realistic price on the bill, or because a judge tells them to get their act together.
We asked Katie Lawson, the Chief Communications Officer for the University of Maryland about the “price” the paper was quoted and she told us “Any records – including emails – must be reviewed prior to release.” She said, “After the first 2 hours of time, the MPIA (Maryland Public Information Act) permits the University to assess costs related to the collection, review, and preparation of records. Costs are calculated using the hourly rates of the staff involved in fulfilling the request.”
In this case, Lawson says, “the Washington Post’s initial PIA request would have required review of more than 25,000 pages of email communications, which requires about 850 hours of employee time.”
But Brittain adds:
I’ve been a professional reporter for nearly a decade and I have *never* seen a public records fee as high as the one that the University of Maryland cited for e-mails and records related to mold, adenovirus and ultimately, the death of a student.
We are fortunate to work at a large news organization with resources to wage these battles. And still, we were only able to review a tiny portion of the total emails that we know exist and that we are legally entitled to under the Maryland Public Information Act. @StateMaryland
If the Washington Post can’t afford exorbitant fees, what are the smaller news outlets supposed to do?
