Mass Communication Dinner 2010

Tips for filing a Freedom of Information request

1. Date the letter

The agency has 15 days to respond to your request. The date on the letter starts the clock.

2. Address the letter to the head of the agency

Start at the top. In the case of elected school board officials with a hired superintendent, address the superintendent.

3. Mention the S.C. Freedom of Information Act

This is not required, but could make the agency take your request more seriously.

4. Be specific about what public records you want

Give certain dates and types.

5. Ask that copying fees be waived

They can still charge you, but you can ask to be notified of an estimated charge when they call to discuss the request.

6. List your phone number

Request that someone from the agency call you to schedule an appointment to look at the records or figure out another way to send them.

7. Send the letter through certified mail and request a return receipt

This is not required either, but if you expect any controversy over when the letter was received, this will help your case.

8. Save a copy of the letter

This will also safeguard you if there is any controversy over when the letter was sent.

Compiled with information from www.scpress.org

225 hidden exemptions to South Carolina Freedom of Information exist

Chunks of asphalt have been destroying drivers’ cars on part of I-26 and the Mark Clark Expressway in the Charleston area, according to a story by the Post and Courier’s investigative team.

That team is trying to find out how many claims have been filed with the Department of Transportation (DOT). The reasoning of the journalists: the DOT is a state agency, and those claims should be available under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act (FOI.)

But the DOT won’t release the claims. Their reasoning: they’re taking the claims as a request from their lawyer, so the information falls under attorney-client privilege.

Organizations like the South Carolina Press Association and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Project Sunshine are in place to help journalists who encounter resistance to FOI requests.

Bill Rogers, executive director for the S.C. Press Association, said the claims should be public record.

"The money and number of claims has nothing to do with attorney-client privilege," Rogers said on the organization’s Web site. "How do we know it's not the department's employees filing the claims? It all needs to be open."

Like the DOT in this case, agencies often try to deny public records to journalists by citing exemptions to the FOIA, even if they are a stretch.

USC graduate student Katie Beck found 225 exemptions to the South Carolina FOIA in her research. These exemptions don’t include the ones listed in the actual FOIA. Those 225 were found in other laws. Most deal with privacy, according to Beck’s thesis.

The courts in South Carolina have generally been in favor of disclosing information, according to Beck’s research. Beck argues that putting so many exemptions outside of the FOIA means the courts will interpret them more broadly. This could lead to other agencies keeping public information private through those exemptions.

Courts in South Carolina have been especially strict with law enforcement agencies, according to Beck’s research. In 2004, a court ruled that the York County Sheriff’s Department was a public body, even though the department argued it wasn’t.

The FOIA does allow access to a wide range of information. The South Carolina Press Association provides journalists and citizens with an explanation of the law.

SC Freedom of Information Act

Coca-cola colonizes Mexico

"Coca-colonization."

That's what two researchers are calling the transformation of remote areas of other countries into junk-food-eating communities.

In their 2004 study in Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Thomas Leatherman and Alan Goodman, researched how tourism brought about this change in eating habits. Coca-cola, a U.S. icon, has an especially pervasive presence in the Mayan communities that are now tourist areas, according to their research.

Changing community

Tourism now supports these Mayan communities and provides jobs for their residents. Many of the residents are construction workers, tour guides or maids.

The Mayan people realize how tourism has changed their community, according to the article. They also realize how important tourism is to providing them with jobs.

But without as many people working on local farmland, the Mayans don't eat as much local produce. Instead they turn to the unhealthy snacks and sodas brought to big and small stores in the area at least once a week.

'Comidas chatarras'

The Spanish name for all the junk food the Mayans now eat is "comidas chatarras." The malnutrition of the Mayans has led to stunted growth and obesity.

In their survey of the eating habits of the community, Leatherman and Goodman found:

• overall child growth has grown in the past decade, but child growth has been somewhat stunted
• children were overweight considering their weight and height, but no children were obese
• 86 % of urban women are overweight
• 50% of urban women are obese
• diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death in Yucatan

The researchers speculate that a Yucatan population that is already overweight and obese will only continue to have those problems because the children don't have good nutrition and are overweight.

No say

The Mayan people are being used for cheap labor at the tourist attractions and "only set an ethnic backdrop at tourist sites," Leatherman and Goodman say.

They suggest that one way to improve the health of the Mayan people is to let them have a say in the government bodies.

Religious discrimination complaints grow

The first ammendment prohibits the United States government from making any law that would prohibit the free exercise of religion.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of regligion, as well as race, color, sex or national origin.

But businesses and companies still discriminate religiously against workers. From before 2001 to 2008, the number of religious discrimination charges filed in the United States has increased by more than 30 percent, according to a USA Today article. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission received 3,273 charges of religious discrimination in 2008.

It’s not just people of religions that are new to the United States. Thousands of cases were filed. Among them were complaints filed by Christians.

A Missouri woman was fired from her small town public library in 2003 because she refused to work on Sundays, according to a Fox News article. Three years later, Connie Rehm, a Lutheran, regained her job after a judge ruled in her favor in court.

But Christians aren’t the only ones discriminated against in the workplace based on religion.
Muslims, the fastest-growing religious group in the United Sates, according to the State Department, have been increasingly discriminated against since Sept. 11.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in June 2009 against Essex County for firing a Muslim corrections officer for wearing a head scarf with her uniform.

Being fired simply for following a religion is unacceptable. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantees that employees won’t be discriminated against based on religion. The United States government should make sure businesses are adhering to that law.

Muslims have faced harsher discrimination in the workplace – from employers and fellow employees.

After the train bombings in India, one Muslim woman received an e-mail from a co-worker that began “Dear Muslim,” according to another USA Today article. A study by Yale professor Mona Amer shows that Muslims have worse mental health than Americans in general.

No one in the United States – a country that was founded by people escaping religious persecution – should experience anxiety or stress related to religious discrimination.

If the United States government is going to condemn other countries, like Bulgaria, for religious discrimination, it needs to take a look at the problem in its own country first.

Americans left behind in globalized world

There are 4,000 reasons Americans should know about the world pointing at us.

Missiles, that is.

It would take only 20 minutes for a missile to reach the United States from Russia, Christopher Van Aller, a political science professor at Winthrop, told his American Foreign Policy class.

The students in his 500-level political science class, however, are among the few Americans who know a significant amount about the geography, history and politics of the world.

A shocking 20 percent of 18- to 24-year-old Americans think Sudan is in Asia, according to the 2006 National Geographic-Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy. An even higher 48 percent of young adults surveyed thought the majority of the population in India is Muslim. (Take the quiz yourself.)

Americans have a mind-set that Stephen Brooks, author of “As Others See Us,” calls one of isolationism. That isolationism is composed of ignorance, insularity and indifference, he says.
Some international students at Winthrop University apparently have this same view of Americans.

Brandi Baker, a junior elementary education major, works as a peer mentor. One of her students from Canada told her many Canadians think Americans “live in a dome.”

A large reason for the mind-set of isolationism stems from the lack of global learning in schools. That’s why organizations like National Geographic and the National Council for Geographic Education have started campaigns to support the teaching of geography to students of all ages.

The view Americans have of the United States as the example for all other countries in the world to follow simply can’t continue to exist in a world in which globalization is increasingly important.

The curriculum for American schools needs to include lessons on the world, starting with geography at a very young age. Knowing where countries are located is the base to understanding more about them and the connections between them all.

Americans rely mostly on television as their source for national and international information about current events, according to the book “As Others See Us.”

This can be dangerous because the coverage of international events on American television networks isn’t necessarily proportional to the importance of events and issues across the world.

For example, the death of Anna Nicole Smith received more coverage than all other countries except Iraq, according to a presentation by Alisa Miller, the CEO of Public Radio International. (See video above.)

The economy has affected the number of foreign bureaus news networks can afford, Brooks said in his book. But television networks are covering these pop culture topics rather than international news because that’s what American viewers are interested in.

An increase of global learning in American schools would spark students’ interest in world issues. Young adults today have seen the effects of not knowing about the world. That's why we need to support global education so that younger generations aren’t left behind in a world consumed by globalization.