Comments on the ATIA News
Story Index database
The ATIA
News Story Index is an incredible resource of the news stories produced by
journalists and others using Canada’s access to information law. It not only
showcases the invaluable role this law has played in generating some of the
most probing news stories over the last 35 years. It should also serve as an
incubator for news story ideas for up-and-coming journalists.
- Toby Mendel, lawyer, executive director, Centre for Law and
Democracy, Halifax
This is
an enormously useful initiative. For years, many in the right to information
community have noted a need to do a better job of explaining to the public why
transparency mechanisms are so important. This database helps to demonstrate to
the world what journalists, civil society advocates, and virtually everyone
else who works in the public accountability business knows: that a robust right
to information is critical to supporting strong public oversight over our
institutions of governance.
- Michael Karanicolas, lawyer, Wikimedia
Fellow, Yale Law School
Nowhere will you find a more
complete collection of evidence that so clearly demonstrates how access to
government records matters to real people, good governance, and democracy.
Stanley Tromp’s compilation is a treasure trove for
journalists looking for story ideas, and more importantly, provides definitive
proof to the entire world that access to information laws work, that they must
be protected, and that they must be improved.
- David Cuillier, associate
professor, University of Arizona School of Journalism, and president, U.S.
National Freedom of Information Coalition
Too few reporters use FOI laws, and
those hardy souls who do venture down that path can quickly sour on the
process. Governments have tremendous power over information, and will not
willingly relinquish it, no matter what a transparency law requires.
Journalists struggle in a grossly unequal war of attrition, as legions of
public servants search for excuses to deny and delay.
Stanley Tromp's
heroic work reminds us - not just those in the news business but all Canadians
- that dedicated journalists have never given up the fight and have sometimes
emerged victorious. They have uncovered stories of corruption, fraud,
incompetence, waste, threats to health and safety, and more. Those stories are
gathered here as a reminder of the importance of this branch of journalism, as
a morale booster to weary reporters, and surely as inspiration to new
generations to take up the struggle themselves. Thank you, Stanley, for this
monumental undertaking.
-
Dean Beeby, former CBC and
Canadian Press FOI journalist
Stanley Tromp is one of Canada's foremost advocates for
access to information. This database is
an excellent resource for anyone who is working to advance the ideal of open
government.
- Alasdair
Roberts, lawyer, Director, School of Public Policy, University of Massachusetts
Amherst
The ATIA News Story Index is a great
and inspiring resource for anyone who is unfamiliar with Canada’s access to
information system, or familiar with it and frustrated by its many loopholes
and flaws. It not only highlights the hard work that many journalists
have done using the system (flawed as it is) to reveal information government
institutions were trying to hide, it also points to many other situations and
institutions in Canada that need to be investigated in the same way, and also
reveals the many loopholes and flaws in the system that need to be corrected.
-
Duff Conacher, Co-founder of Democracy Watch
This
is fantastic stuff Stanley. Thanks so much for compiling it.
- Sean Holman, associate professor of
journalism at Mount Royal University
Great work, Stanley! These records
serve as a "morale booster" for those of us who struggle to keep
using ATI while trying to pass along its virtues -- warts and all -- to a new
generation of journalists. Thanks for sharing these wonderful resources.
They provide proof that the system can
work.
-
David McKie, CBC reporter and journalism professor, Carleton
University
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