The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) is an essential tool for the journalist seeking to hold public institutions to account. But for those handling FOI requests from journalists, the challenge is to balance minimising the resource burden on the organisation with maintaining opennesss and transparency. This requires a good understanding of journalists’ motivation, tactics and pressures.
In the latest episode of the Guardians of Data podcast we are joined by Martin Rosenbaum. Martin spent 16 years at the BBC as the organisation’s leading specialist in using FOI for journalism. Over that time, he broke major stories, trained reporters, and took cases all the way to tribunal hearings. His investigations have covered everything from private conversations between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, to the policing of Greenham Common protests, to the flaws in the honours system.
Martin is also the author of Freedom of Information: A Practical Guidebook – a comprehensive, hands-on guide that explains the law, the process, and the tactics for using FOI effectively.
In this podcast episode, we talk about:
- How journalists use FOI to uncover the truth and inform the public
- The tactics that make the difference between a successful request and a dead end
- How FOI has evolved since its introduction
- And what information professionals can learn from the media’s use of this powerful tool
Whether you work in information governance, public service, or the media, or you simply believe in transparency and accountability, this conversation will give you practical insights into how FOI really works and why it still matters today.
Listen on your preferred platform via our podcast page, or download the episode directly.
This podcast is sponsored by Phaselaw – a purpose-built solution for document disclosures, like subject access requests and FOI requests. Instead of redacting PDFs one by one, or forcing litigation software to do a job it wasn’t designed for, with Phaselaw you get collection, review, and redaction in one workflow. Teams across the World are using it to cut response times from weeks to days.
For Guardians of Data listeners, Phaselaw is offering a two-month free trial; run it on live requests, see what it does to your backlog, decide from there. No card, no commitment.
Head to https://www.phase.law/guardians to claim your free trial.
Previous episodes of the Guardians of Data podcast have featured Tahir Latif talking about responsible AI deployment, Jen Persson, a privacy campaigner, explaining the privacy implications of the Government’s new plans for children’s data, Naomi Mathews and Ibrahim Hasan explaining the law on filming people in public for social media and Olu Odeniyi analysing recent cyber breaches and discussing the lessons learnt.
