“A battered FOIA collides with the $2 trillion bailout.”

Roy Gutterman, the Director of Tully Center for Free Speech and an Associate Professor of Newspaper and Online Journalism in the S.I. Newhouse School for Public Communications, was quoted by the Columbia Journalism Review in the article, “A battered FOIA collides with the $2 trillion bailout.” In 2019, Sherwin-Williams, a Fortune 500 comapny, threatened to leave Cleveland unless it received millions of dollars to stay, putting “thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenues” on the line. Ultimately a Cleveland suburb offered the company massive tax breaks and freed up millions of dollars in public funds to give to the company, all the while allowing Sherwin-Williams to make all documents related to the agreement closed to the public. Many media outlets have attempted to expose the story but have been denied access to the records. according to Roy Gutterman, an expert on free speech, says “how will we know if a town or village is jerking around a reporter and legitimately withholding stuff?”

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