Speaker 1: I'm Hannah Rapley, investigative reporter for NBC News. Today at NBCU Academy, I'm going to talk about when and why you'd file a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request in your work as a journalist. What's the best use of a FOIA? You might have already seen our video with NBC General Counsel Gail Gove on the procedural aspects of filing a FOIA. I'm here to help you understand the best use of them. When I'm working on a story and deciding whether to file a FOIA or a public records request, I keep a few key things in mind. The process of getting those records, depending on the state or the agency you're filing the request to, can be easy or frustrating, cheap or expensive, and quick or time consuming. So you really want to ask yourself whether a FOIA request is absolutely the only way to get at this information. Are there parallel avenues you can pursue? Does your story deadline give you enough time to wait for the results? I use public records requests all the time in my work as a journalist at NBC. My reporting is published both on the NBC News website and in our daily news programs, like in this story about the abuse and neglect of at-risk children in for-profit treatment

Speaker 2: Tristan Broderick and his wife Lori are expecting their first child. When they were children, they both spent time in facilities run by Sequel Youth and Family Services, meant to provide therapy and schooling. But they say there was also abuse.

Speaker 1: I knew that the company took in millions of taxpayer dollars from federal and state programs like Medicaid. And when we learned about disturbing allegations of abuse and poor conditions in the company's Alabama-based programs, I wanted to know how much the company received from Medicaid in that one state over a certain period of time. That's because I felt like it would give viewers and readers important context into how public dollars funded such programs and raise questions about whether those children were getting the treatment they were supposed to. Knowing all that, I also knew what specific records we wanted to ask for in our records request. So I filed a records request to the Alabama state Medicaid agency to find out. I learned that it took in more than $20 million in Medicaid funds to treat Alabama children

Speaker 2: in just a few years. Contracts obtained by NBC News show states pay between $275 and $800 a day per child.

Speaker 1: We also filed other records requests to other state agencies to get email communications, reports of suspected child abuse, and more. What types of reporters use FOIAs most often? You might think because these records requests can take some time that the information would be used more in long-term, deeper-dive investigative reporting, but that's not true. Records requests are used in all types of journalism, including breaking news. Let's say there's a fire or a damaging leak from a chemical plant that makes national headlines. You can file a records request to state regulatory agencies to see if there were issues leading up to the event that were warning signs to state regulators. What can you get from these requests that you wouldn't get from other sources? Records and data gleaned from a records request can turn a surface-level story into an investigative story. Records that would have remained hidden when brought to the surface can be revelatory. They can raise serious questions about government activities, offer contradictory information to what officials are saying, and shed light on patterns and statistics that are important to the public. All of this provides important context and facts, and adds depth and nuance to your story. How do you know what to ask for in your request? Under the law, so much of what our government, including law enforcement, does and produces is considered a matter of public record. And when it comes to the government and activities paid for by taxpayers, you have to remember that most everything is written down or otherwise recorded somewhere. That could mean a public official's calendar, or text messages from their government-issued phone, police use of force data, checks written by a school district, autopsy reports, and more. Sometimes your other sources will point you toward where to look and what to request. They might have copies of documents that they don't feel comfortable sharing with you, but they know you'll be able to get it through a public records request. Or they'll know where key contextual information, data, or other records might live, and how exactly to craft a request to ask for them. I always ask sources, what do you think I should ask for? At what stage in the reporting process do you file a request? I sometimes start out by filing several requests because I know right away I'll have to request the information I want, or because I have a well-educated hunch about something. Other times, I'll learn that interesting or relevant information lives somewhere, and then I'll file a request in order to get it. Other times, my colleagues and I become interested in a certain topic or a project idea, and we'll file a records request to collect data and analyze it. That data helps direct us to where stories live, stories that we probably wouldn't have heard otherwise. That was the case with this investigation we did about the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention centers.

Speaker 3: Egyptian-born Amgad Khalafallah studied in South Carolina on a State Department scholarship and worked as a hospital technician there. In 2017, he was accused of visa violations and arrested by ICE. In jail, he got in trouble for disobeying an order to return to his bed. His punishment? Seven days in solitary.

Speaker 1: For this story, our partners received data from the federal government about how many immigrant detainees were put into solitary confinement. And for what reasons? Once we analyzed the data, we saw that we had an important, never-before-told story.

Speaker 3: An NBC News review of ICE data found more than 8,000 cases of immigrants held in solitary confinement in local, private, and federal facilities under both the Obama and Trump administrations. A third of them involved the mentally ill, including one put in isolation for nearly two years.

Speaker 1: The data was revelatory, and it served as important context for the individual stories we told, including one of a transgender immigrant from Honduras who was held in solitary confinement for weeks, and the story of a government whistleblower who had tried to raise the alarm within her own agency. How long does the process usually take? Dealing with how long public records requests take and how expensive they can be is often the most frustrating part of the process. It can vary so much. Sometimes it takes a week to get a request back, or it can take years. Sometimes they cost nothing, other times you can get charged thousands of dollars. Ultimately, if you don't get the records you want, you have the right to appeal that determination. But let's say your appeal is still denied, or the agency has thrown up other roadblocks such as exorbitant fees. You might then have to weigh whether or not it's worth suing the agency to get those records. The records might be of great public importance, which make the cost and the effort of filing suit worth it. Thanks for joining me. I'm Hannah Rapley for NBCU Academy.