How journalism works 2
Last night's revealed the keen interest of officials from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the idea of a casino on the site of the Dome, a new twist to the latest John Prescott tale.
This revelation stemmed from documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. So was this a speedily made and answered FOI request from Newsnight? No - actuallly the documents had been sitting for months on the website of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
It was Newsnight's political reporter David Grossman who recalled that DCMS had made FOI disclosures about the Dome in the past and had the bright idea of looking through them to see if they would shed new light on the role of Prescott and his officials.
He found .
It's an interesting outcome of the existence of disclosure logs, used by some public authorities to put their FOI disclosures on their websites. At first some journalists regarded them suspiciously as a device to try to deny journalists their FOI scoops. It's becoming increasingly clear - see also this - that disclosure logs are a valuable journalistic resource, at least for the more assiduous amongst us.
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On looking at the document so assiduously found on the DCMS website, I note that several portions have been blacked out.
Presumably this was done by the DCMS.
What were they hiding?
Yes, the blacking out was done by the DCMS. What were they hiding? That I don't know.
Still - utterly amazing that there is this level of disclosure. Shows that FoI is having an effect to a certain extent.