Despite FOIA Victory, FBN Finds Government Holds Back

For a government that espouses greater transparency, the Obama Administration’s definition of the term can seem rather opaque.

The overwhelming majority of some 10,000 pages released to the FOX Business Network in the cable channel’s successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury seeking documents related to the Troubled Asset Recovery Program were redacted.

That left thousands of blank documents, whited-out sentences and page after page of little more than lists of email recipients, senders and subject lines.

FOIA experts say FOX Business’s situation -- and frustration -- is hardly unusual.

“This is part of the inherent limitation of FOIA,” said Rick Blum, coordinator of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of media groups. “FOIA is a very powerful tool that allows the public to obtain documents it should get from the government. But there are a lot of problems with it.”

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