STF NA MÍDIA

dacted document for FoI release.
According to a report last
year from Robert Hazell
(pdf), a former civil servant
who is now a politics professor
at University College
London, and Dr Ben Worthy,
the FoI act has not undermined
the ability of civil servants
to give frank advice, as
Blair claims, nor affected
government record-keeping.
But they concluded that while
the act has achieved its
core objectives of greater
transparency and accountability,
it has done nothing to
achieve three of its four secondary
objectives (improved
decision-making and
better public understanding
and participation in government)
and has hindered progress
towards its fourth (increased
trust).
They said most news reports
based on information obtained
through FoI had the effect
of reducing trust. "This
is because of the media s
predominantly negative reporting,
exacerbated by government
resistance to media
requests, and pre-existing
low levels of trust."
Maurice Frankel, the director
of the UK Campaign for Freedom
of Information, believes
the act is working as intended,
and that the greatest
improvement in recent years
has been in the performance
of the information commissioner
s office (ICO), which
upholds the act and handles
complaints that information
is not being disclosed. Complaints
to the ICO which had
taken up to four years to resolve
and now being handled
in as little as six months, he
says.
The ICO also monitors the
speed with which public bodies
respond to FoI requests,
focusing on those that fail to
answer in 20 days as the law
requires.
Most of the repeat offenders
are local authorities, although
a recent ICO monitoring e-
xercise also examined the
performance of two police
forces – Surrey and City of
London – and the Equality
and human rights Commission.
Only one central government
department was
included in the exercise: the
Department for Education.
JUSTIÇA NO EXTERIOR •
THE GUARDIAN (LO) • NEWS • 20/9/2011
Metropolitan police drop action against the Guardian
Scotland Yard forced into abrupt climbdown over attempt to make Guardian reporters
reveal phone-hacking sources
Owen Bowcott and Vikram
Dodd
The Metropolitan police has
dropped its attempt to order
the Guardian to reveal confidential
sources for stories
relating to the phone-hacking
scandal.
The Met had been hoping to
force Guardian reporters to
reveal confidential sources
for articles disclosing that the
murdered teenager Milly
Dowler"s phone was hacked
on behalf of the News of the
World. But after an intervention
by the Crown Prosecution
Service and widespread
outrage, Scotland Yard was
forced into an abrupt climbdown.
The Met claimed that one of
the paper"s reporters, Amelia
Hill, could have incited a
source to break the Official
Secrets Act and broken the
act herself.
At an Old Bailey hearing
scheduled for this Friday, the
Met had been due to apply
for a production order to obtain
all the material that the
Guardian holds that would
disclose sources for the
newspaper"s coverage of the
phone-hacking inquiry this
year.
S T F N A M Í D I A • 2 2 d e s e t e m b r o d e 2 0 1 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P Á G I N A 2 4 6