URBANDALE, Iowa – IowaWatch is taking nominations for the Stephen Berry and Randy Brubaker Free Press Champion awards. The awards are being presented this year after a break in 2020 due
Sunshine Week will be observed across the nation next week. In Iowa, the sunshine next week will be obscured by clouds --- at least when it comes to citizen access to videos recorded by law officers on their squad car cameras and body cameras during incidents in which police shoot someone or when of
Regrettably, some high-ranking government officials either are not paying attention to how taxpayers’ money is being spent or, more accurately, misspent --- or they are taking a cavalier well-it’s-not-my-money attitude, opinion columnist and Iowa Freedom of Information Council executive director Ran
I sometimes think government officials overlook the important role the public plays in our system of government.
That was my takeaway last week from the monthly meeting of the Iowa
When is Iowa going to catch up with the rest of the nation? Every week or two, another case makes headlines around the United States when a police officer acts in a way that many people find troubling.
Costs and time spent defining what qualifies as an open record in Iowa are the biggest impediments to gaining access to information about how government functions and the way public money is spent. The cluster of rules defining public records in Iowa can be confusing or leave room for uncertainty. W
A new Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity survey on state government transparency and accountability is out, and Iowa did not fare well in the State Integrity Investigation.
The grade might stun you — Iowa receiving a D-plus for government transparency from the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity Monday morning, Nov. 9, in a government transparency
Iowa’s practices to ensure transparency in lobbying earned an F in a recently released State Integrity Investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization.
A former Muscatine Community College student newspaper editor and that paper’s former faculty adviser were awarded the IowaWatch Free Press Champion Award for working Iowa journalists or journalism educators at the annual IowaWatch Celebrate a Free Press and Open Government banquet in Des Moines.
Iowa has some of the oldest and broadest laws favoring free information and open government, but sometimes those laws aren't followed. We'll talk with those charged with keeping the information flowing.
The State Integrity Investigation, a national investigation last year by news organizations that included IowaWatch and The Gazette of Cedar Rapids into how open government is in all 50 states,
