[LINK] Online news - actual documents

[Alex (Maxious) Sadleir]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at janwhitaker.com> wrote:
> The Age today has a story about a 2009 killing in Afghanistan where
> Australian forces killed an armed man and 5 children in a house. The
> story is mostly about the media communication strategy of the
> military about the event, otherwise known as 'spin'. What I thought
> relevant to Linkers is the fact that the Age has published not only
> their own story, but the strategy document itself that was obtained
> through FOI. It's not prominent on the page, just a little link
> labeled FOI next to the Age story on the online front page at the
> moment (WILL disappear once the online version moves on).
> http://images.theage.com.au/file/2011/12/17/2845817/foi.pdf

Since 1st May 2011, the Government departments themselves are meant to
make FOI documents available within 10 days of their release (baring
privacy etc.). Plenty don't to their own detriment; some applicants
are understandably filled with joy to be able to post editorialised
extracts of the documents on their websites when the departments will
never publish the original.
Also for many departments "making available" is online PDF (complete
with black hi-lighter) when they do want you to read them and on
request by mail when they don't.