Hot off the press!

Darce reported in an earlier posting that the Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia had lent its name to a petition in an effort to convince the Bulgarian government not to weaken its FOI laws. This was not in vain as reported below by the Access to Information Programme (AIP) Foundation, "established on October 23, 1996 in Sofia, Bulgaria by journalists, lawyers, sociologists, and economists who work in the area of human rights. They joined efforts to promote the right to information and initiate a public debate on related issues."

We congratulate them on their success. Keep up the good fight!

As a result of the initiated active public debate with the involvement of a large number of Bulgarian, foreign and international nongovernmental and governmental organizations, Bulgarian media, journalists, public figures and experts, the advocacy of AIP, and the will of some political parties represented in parliament, the initially proposed amendments were considerably changed in a positive way.

Full Article


Cheers,
Greg Pemberton
RTKNS Web Admin

On CBC online, Tony Burman has started off a new blog called CBC Inside Media. The starting post from him is called 'How do we protect the crucial role of investigative journalism?' Tony is currently 'Editor in Chief of CBC News — which includes news, current affairs and Newsworld. He is CBC's chief journalist, in charge of editorial content on radio, television and the internet'.

I have included a comment Darce posted to Tony's first blog entry on investigative journalism below.

Cheers,

Greg Pemberton

RTKNS Web Admin

Tony, more journalists have to be aware that an important tool for
investigative journalism is freedom of information legisation. Yet during 11 years as the information commissioner for Nova Scotia I noted how few journalists use the Act. This means that governments (all 14 of our
governments have freedom of information legisation)feel little pressure from journalists to live up to their obligations to be as open and accountable as the law requires.

This is one of the reasons I decided,on my retirement, that Nova
Scotia should have a Right to Know Coalition. With the help and encouragement of a dedicated group of volunteers we now have one. Among the things we do is offer journalists training in how best to use freedom of information legislation. We offer assistance as well to individual journalists in making applications for information and, if
necessary, to prepare appeals. Those who use the freedom of information act know how frustrating it can be. But there is a lot of evidence it can also be rewarding.

I recommend all newsrooms put Alasdair Roberts' "BLACKED OUT -
Government Secrecy in the Information Age" within easy reach of all their journalists.

Catch our website: www.nsrighttoknow.ca

Darce Fardy

Posted May 31, 2007 09:17 AM