For the Record: Celebrate the Fourth with FOIA
Get in the spirit of the holidays by making your own public records request or taking some inspiration from your fellow MuckRockers.
Release Notes: Knight Election Hub, more OCR tools and expanded raw email access
Over the past few weeks, the MuckRock tech team has focused on several key updates and additions. These include the development of the Knight Election Hub, which offers vital resources to U.S. newsrooms for comprehensive coverage of the 2024 elections.
Elected officials are opting out of secret Koppers community meetings about air pollution.
The Illinois EPA has created a Koppers resource website, with documents related to all four Illinois EPA violations, due to “significant public interest” in the facility. And the state attorney general’s office said it received more information from the Illinois EPA related to Koppers’ alleged violations in December, saying in a statement that it is “evaluating the matter.”
Admiral Grace Hopper’s landmark lecture is found, but the NSA won’t release it
In a vault at the National Security Agency lies a historical treasure: two AMPEX 1-inch open reel tapes containing a landmark lecture by Admiral Grace Hopper, a giant in the field of computer science. Yet this invaluable artifact remains inaccessible, trapped in an obsolete format that the NSA will not release, stating that the agency is unable to play it back.
Support MuckRock this July!
With support through small donations, MuckRock has continued its work in transparency, making records more accessible to the public and using public records in our editorial projects.
Projects See all
-
FOIA 101: Tips and Tricks to Make You a Transparency Master
★ FeaturedWhether it's your first request or your first request *today,* it never hurts to go over the basics. MuckRock's compiled a lot of FOIA advice over the years, and with this project, it's all in one place. -
Smoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret
★ Featured“Smoke, Screened” is an investigative series by The California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian on the large environmental impact of a little-noticed deregulatory tool found in the Clean Air Act. The provision in the Clean Air Act has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to strike pollution from clean air tallies in more than 70 counties, enabling local regulators to claim the air was cleaner than it really was for more than 21 million Americans. The loophole allows regulators to forgive pollution, and avoid costly cleanup work, caused by “natural” or “uncontrollable” events, including wildfires. -
Dangers in Our Air: Mapping Chicago’s Air Pollution Hotspots
★ FeaturedChicago’s air quality is among the worst in the U.S., and the city has several local hotspots for particulate matter 2.5 — the tiny particles that come from diesel trucks and industry and enter people’s lungs and blood, causing significant health problems. Between April 2021 and March 2023, the tech company Microsoft installed and monitored 115 air quality sensors across Chicago. We worked with Chicago newsrooms, including the Cicero Independiente, WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, to analyze this data for a series of stories on the city’s comparatively poor air quality. We then installed our own air quality sensors in Chicago neighborhoods that lacked coverage in the Microsoft network — and looked for trends and spikes in pollution. -
Uncounted: An investigation of U.S. death certificate errors and the undercount of COVID-19 deaths
★ FeaturedDeath certificates have long been prone to error. During the pandemic, they've gotten worse, resulting in thousands of uncounted COVID-19 deaths. "Uncounted" is a collaboration between MuckRock, the USA TODAY network and dozens of local newsrooms around the country. We found that short-staffed, undertrained and overworked coroners and medical examiners took families at their word when they called to report the death of a relative at home. Coroners and medical examiners didn’t review medical histories or order tests to look for COVID-19. The result is a skewed picture of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.