Freedom of information is the law that’s on the side of the journalist, press officers however, are not. Press officers act like human sandbags, their job is to control how much information is divulged to the journalists. Chris’s law is that the more press officers something has the worse it is. Freedom of information however allows us to get round this; there are over a hundred thousand different organisations which are bound by law to divulge information under the freedom of information act. Most will have a freedom of information page on their website where they document the kind of things that they disclose, this is known as the Schedule. The company must then divulge the information requested under the freedom of information act within 20 days. Defence matters are of course exempt from the freedom of information act for obvious reasons, by divulging the location of British troops for example, could cause serious loss of life or at the very least a threat to said troops. This is one of the main defences that companies use to avoid divulging information, they can say that it’s exempt, or that it is too expensive to gather. You can however appeal again for the information but if the information is very sensitive it’ll be fairly hard to gather. This is a good reason to keep appeals to the simplest phrasing, don’t go for over complicated requests. Similarly you shouldn’t investigate anything personal, for example, you cannot request knowing how many people earn more money than you where you work, then publish it. This would leave you wide open to malice.
Examples of things uncovered using the freedom of information act include that the London authority paid out £50,000 to a child who injured himself climbing over the railing to his school. This is despite the fact that he was climbing over to burn down the school, however, since there was no sign indicating that you shouldn’t climb the railings the school was at fault.
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