The availability of government data has soared over the last decade — offering a huge opportunity for watchdog journalists to find stories that advance the public interest. The environmental beat is the Saudi Arabia of data (yes, that means vast, rich, accessible, and untapped reserves).
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is promising to toughen libel laws to get back at news media who "write purposely negative and horrible and false articles." Especially those that criticize him. Photo: By Marc Nozell (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0].
The Senate Energy Committee last November approved a different version of the bill which seems to include an exemption from fees and permits for "news gathering." But whether it will pass on the floor or get reconciled with the House bill in an election year is unknown.
"Federal officials have rejected a complaint by an entomologist who charged that the government has tried to suppress negative research findings about a widely used pesticide, in a complex case involving monarch butterflies, scientific freedom and the safety of the nation’s food supply."
"Two state agencies leading Oregon's emergency response to toxic air pollution concerns in Portland have known for a month that a soil test at Cleveland High School found high levels of arsenic and lead contamination. Yet neither the Oregon Health Authority nor the Department of Environmental Quality have shared the soil result with Portland Public Schools, which instead learned about it Friday from The Oregonian/OregonLive."
"Gov. Rick Snyder said Monday his office will release thousands of pages of emails his staff sent or received related to Flint’s water supply switch and subsequent contamination dating back to 2011."
Michigan officials still say they cannot conclusively link an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease to Flint’s contaminated water supply, partly because sputum cultures were not collected from patients. But the possibility of a link was raised in internal government emails as early as October 2014, and state officials did not inform the public of the outbreak until last month.
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