What's the 411? (FOIA) #informcitizens

 Reporters are one of the most important factors in the news. However, if they do not have access to the facts, how can they report it? It has been almost 60 years since the FOIA has been passed by President Johnson in 1966. FOIA or the Freedom of Information Act allows access to all federal records not including the nine exemptions. One of the exemptions is that it could restrain a party from having a fair trial. Hence the purpose of citizens being randomly picked for jury duty. There have been many historic news events that have been reported but would not be possible without this act. An example that falls into this is 9/11. ACLU states, “The USA PATRIOT Act, which the President signed into law only weeks after the September 2001 attacks, dramatically expanded the government's authority to monitor the activities of people living in the United States.” (Paragraph 1) Many citizens found this traumatizing because they did not know how much surveillance was on them. I feel like this was more for Middle Eastern Americans. These men and women were being attacked verbally and also physically during this time. Women had their hijabs taken off in public. There was a story about a girl who was Middle Eastern in an American high school. She was asked to leave the room because the teacher said it was too emotional for the other students to see her. The teacher implied she might make the other students uncomfortable. The protection that they failed to receive was horrific. However, the government decided to not release Osama bin Laden pictures of his death to Judicial Watch. The Judicial Watch went to court several times to request the images of bin Laden but was denied because more eyes could cause an attack. President Obama revised this act in 2016 to improve citizens’ knowledge of what is going on in the government #goobama. As we look into 2023, we can see the improvements happen. With the Coronavirus, citizens were updated daily with information and reporters kept things up to date. Hopefully, things will stay improving. #coronavirus

https://www.aclu.org/other/patriot-foia.