Requests received from named Scottish journalists or news organisations: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/01984
Date received: 21 July 2018 
Date responded: 20 August 2018
 
Information requested

Under Freedom of Information legislation I wish to request information regarding how many FoI requests your departments have received from the following Scottish journalists or news organisations; the bracketed sections on email endings is simply for guidance and this request also covers requests from the same from other email addresses):

BBC Scotland (Emails usually ending in @bbc.co.uk) 

Scottish Television (Emails usually ending in @stv.tv) 

ITV Borders (Emails usually ending in @itv.com) 

Sky News Scotland (Emails usually ending in @sky.uk and/or @bskyb.com)

Press Association Scotland (Emails usually ending in @scottishpressassociation.co.uk and/or @pressassociation.com) 

Press & Journal (Emails usually ending in @ajl.co.uk) 

Dundee Courier (Emails usually ending in @thecourier.co.uk and/or @dcthomson.co.uk) 

Scottish Daily Mail (Emails usually ending in @dailymail.co.uk) 

Mail on Sunday Scotland (Emails usually ending in @mailonsunday.co.uk) 

Daily Record (Emails usually ending in @trinitymirror.com and/or @dailyrecord.co.uk) 

Sunday Mail (Emails usually ending in @trinitymirror.com and/or @sundaymail.co.uk)

Scottish Daily Express or Scottish Sunday Express (Emails usually ending in @express.co.uk)

Herald (Emails usually ending in @heraldandtimes.co.uk and/or @theherald.co.uk) 

Sunday Herald (Emails usually ending in @heraldandtimes.co.uk and/or @sundayherald.com) 

Scotsman (Emails usually ending in @scotsman.com) 

Scotland on Sunday (Emails usually ending in @scotlandonsunday.com) 

Sunday Post (Emails usually ending in @sundaypost.com and/or @dcthomson.co.uk) 

The Guardian in Scotland (Emails usually ending in @theguardian.com) 

The Telegraph in Scotland (Emails usually ending in @telegraph.co.uk) 

Scottish Sun (Emails usually ending in @the-sun.co.uk) 

Times Scotland (Emails usually ending in @thetimes.co.uk) 

Sunday Times Scotland (Emails usually ending in @sunday-times.co.uk) 

James McEnaney, freelance journalist for the Herald, Guardian, CommonSpace 

Mark McLaughlin of Agence France-Presse and freelancer 

Alan Smith of Bauer Radio.

Response

 In response to your request, a table is provided at Annex A showing the number of FOI requests the Scottish Government has recorded for each of the organisations you have named. As we do not have any requests recorded as received for some of the Scottish organisations you have named, I have provided the number of requests recorded against each organisation’s general counterparts (highlighted in grey). It should be noted that where any of the specifically named individuals has been recorded under one of the listed organisations, the volume of their requests is also included within that organisation’s figures. The Scottish Government does not hold detailed data on the source of FOI requests received prior to 2008, therefore the figures provided are for between 1 January 2008 and 21 July 2018 (the date of your request).

You will wish to note that the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act does not require individuals requesting information to identify whether they represent a particular organisation. Accordingly, the Scottish Government does not require this information to be recorded. This means we cannot confirm that the information we hold in relation to your request is both accurate and complete.
Under FOISA, the Scottish Government can consult a third party where the requested information is relating to them. We have taken the opportunity to do this and James McEnaney has given his consent for information relating to him to be released, which is provided within the table at Annex A.

Reasons for not providing information

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide the information you have requested in respect of Mark McLaughlin of Agence France-Presse and freelancer, because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. This exemption applies because it is personal data of a third party, and we have not received consent from Mark McLaughlin to release information relating to him, so disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exemption is not subject to the public interest test, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

The Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have asked for because our searches have not returned any FOI requests identifiable as being received from an Alan Smith of Bauer Radio.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have this information you requested.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses

FOI-18-01984 - information released (tabulated)

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