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The Columbia, Mo.-based National Freedom of Information Coalition on Jan. 4 announced the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has approved a new $2 million, three-year grant to the NFOIC to launch the Knight FOI Fund and support state open government groups.
Grant money will be used to fund up-front costs such as court costs, filing fees, depositions and initial consultation fees, if attorneys are willing to take cases that otherwise would go unfiled. In addition to the Knight Defense Fund, NFOIC will continue to offer sustainability and project grants for state FOI coalitions.
According to the NFOIC, the need for the fund resulted from the realization that the economic crisis and the evolution of the news media has resulted in declining levels of FOI advocacy.
The Knight Foundation and the NFOIC had a hunch that that support for litigation and for the work of FOI coalitions themselves was threatened by the media economy. So, in the summer of 2009, the organization asked its members to respond to an online survey. When asked whether, in the past five years, the number of open government lawsuits filed by the news media in their state had fallen to varying degrees, 60 percent of groups, or 23 states, reported that litigation had “fallen dramatically.” Another eight states reported that litigation had fallen slightly, meaning that nearly 80 percent of respondent coalitions reported decreasing litigation levels.
For more about the Knight FOI Fund, click:
http://www.nfoic.org/knight-foi-defense-fund
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