As the Trump administration faces criticism for demolishing the East Wing of the White House, the whitehouse.gov website was updated to highlight Democratic presidential scandals, both factual and fake.
But not all changes to government websites are as easily spotted as this.
The Sunlight Research Center, a non-partisan source of expertise for local news organizations, can help track websites, elusive data, people, and business networks, as well as offer strategies for filing complex public records requests.
Anna Massoglia, Sunlight’s director of investigations, and Elizabeth Clemons, training and tools director, shared tips and resources with National Press Foundation’s Federal Action, Local Impact journalism fellows.
Tracking disappearing data
Massoglia said the center can help monitor government data sets, some which are at risk of being altered or archived out of public reach.
“There’s very innocuous pages that sometimes can disappear or be altered or changed,” Massoglia said. “That’s something that is worth tracking before it becomes an issue so that you have those archive versions to look back on as well … I just saw a page from OPM (U.S. Office of Personnel Management) go away and because it’s in the internet archive, I was able to find the old version of the page. And so every day there’s something that you might not expect to become an issue. So if you rely on something regularly, it’s important to start now to set up archiving or set up notifications. I would recommend as soon as possible rather than waiting until it is at risk.”
Journalists can search (and, in many cases, save) archived government materials through:
- Data Rescue Project
- Internet Archive Wayback Machine
- Data Curation Network’s Directory of Datasets
- MuckRock Document Cloud
- National Security Archive (GWU)
- Data.gov archive
Some free tools journalists can use to get notified of changes:
Data Curation Network also offers free online training on how to vet and archive data properly.
As the government shutdown grinds on, many of those data sets will become “stale” as staffing is unavailable to update with the most recent information.
“Traditionally with government sources, we have been able to look at them as a credible source and cite them … in a different way than you would when a random person says something, from journalistic standards,” Massoglia said. “There are usually less reasons to question official government numbers … there are starting to be more reasons to question some of them. I think keeping that in mind as you are describing information, without unnecessarily drawing conclusions or rising conspiracy theories, it’s a really hard balance to strike between lending credibility to something that might not have credibility or causing a panic that doesn’t need to be there.”
Sunlight Research Center Can Help Smallest of Newsrooms
The center offers an array of free and paid services, including some that can be tailored to accommodate newsrooms of five or less.
“We have small, medium and large requests,” Massoglia said. “A small request could be something like: ‘I want to know all of the property records of this candidate everywhere that they’ve owned property,’ or ‘I want to know the campaign finance history of this specific donor,’ or ‘I want to know all the top donors to this specific candidate in a certain way.’ It’s one component of a person or an organization. A medium-sized project might be a little bit more robust. Where … we could say, do an overall background on a candidate” to include property records, education history, criminal record and social media analysis.
The range of reporting assistance includes:
- Consultations with the center’s investigative team
- Access to monthly workshops
- Monthly sharing of investigative resources
- A dedicated channel for real-time expert support
- Public records assistance
Access the full transcript here.
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