Journalism 101-Just Google It
Journalism 101: Google it. If a young journalist student in the state of Michigan would have googled information about his state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), he would have avoided the unnecessary headache of learning that nothing in this life is free.
A poor young fella by the name of Chris Robbins wanted to know why his high school was blocking the social media website Pinterest, but allowing access to other sites.
So Robbins, who writes for his student newspaper the Perspective, sent a FOIA request to school officials.
They in turn responded with a $7,917.15 bill. And when Robbins appealed the school’s decision, the school mailed him a bill for $8,806.
School officials told Robbins that members of the staff must be paid for the work they are doing in gathering the information he requested.
Welp, the school officials are right. People don’t work for free. The state of Michigan recognizes this.
And it is for this reason that the state legislatures wrote a section within Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act law that allows public institutions to collect money in order to pay their employees for the work they do in searching and obtaining records for individuals or groups.
Section four of the law allows public institutions to charge a fee to search and obtain the records that have been requested.
The law also allows public institutions to charge a “good faith deposit” fee if the cost to obtain the information is greater than $50.00.
The law, however, does not allow public institutions to charge high fees like the school did. It is The clearly stated within the law that a public institution is not to charge a fee that will be higher than the lowest paid, hourly wage worker whose job it is to retrieve the information.
Yet despite this fact, the school officials held firm to their decision. Recognizing that there was no way out of paying the high fees, Robbins decided the best thing to do was to throw in the towel and amend his complaint to not include the information pertaining to the blocked websites.
The school officials were, in the words of the Duck Dynasters, “happy, happy, happy.” They wrapped up the information in a big pretty red bow, gave it to Robbins, and sent him on his un-Merry way.
A poor young fella by the name of Chris Robbins wanted to know why his high school was blocking the social media website Pinterest, but allowing access to other sites.
So Robbins, who writes for his student newspaper the Perspective, sent a FOIA request to school officials.
They in turn responded with a $7,917.15 bill. And when Robbins appealed the school’s decision, the school mailed him a bill for $8,806.
School officials told Robbins that members of the staff must be paid for the work they are doing in gathering the information he requested.
Welp, the school officials are right. People don’t work for free. The state of Michigan recognizes this.
And it is for this reason that the state legislatures wrote a section within Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act law that allows public institutions to collect money in order to pay their employees for the work they do in searching and obtaining records for individuals or groups.
Section four of the law allows public institutions to charge a fee to search and obtain the records that have been requested.
The law also allows public institutions to charge a “good faith deposit” fee if the cost to obtain the information is greater than $50.00.
The law, however, does not allow public institutions to charge high fees like the school did. It is The clearly stated within the law that a public institution is not to charge a fee that will be higher than the lowest paid, hourly wage worker whose job it is to retrieve the information.
Yet despite this fact, the school officials held firm to their decision. Recognizing that there was no way out of paying the high fees, Robbins decided the best thing to do was to throw in the towel and amend his complaint to not include the information pertaining to the blocked websites.
The school officials were, in the words of the Duck Dynasters, “happy, happy, happy.” They wrapped up the information in a big pretty red bow, gave it to Robbins, and sent him on his un-Merry way.
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