SIU refused to comply with a mid-August Freedom of Information Act request from a media organization, Metric Media, for a complete list of classes, professors and syllabi from the spring 2025 term. The request, which professors say is a scare tactic, was sent to SIU among other schools around the country. 

On Aug. 17, SIU FOIA officer Holly Rick sent a signed letter in response to the request stating that the Illinois Freedom of Information Act exempts “course and research materials used by (university) faculty.” Other universities in the state have responded similarly to these FOIA requests, including SIU Edwardsville and the University of Illinois system. Western Illinois University’s FOIA office was contacted via email, but did not respond to requests for comment.

This clause, 5 ICLS 140/7 (1)(j)(iv), does not explicitly cover syllabi, and Illinois FOIA law follows a policy of presumption of disclosure where, under section 1.2, any records in the hands of a public body are assumed to be open to the public unless proved otherwise. It states, “Any public body that asserts that a record is exempt from disclosure has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that it is exempt.” Because of this, the refusal of these requests by Illinois universities could be subject to appeal.

Metric Media is an online media company registered in Missouri but based out of Delaware. Their content has been described by the Columbia Journalism Review and Deseret News as “pink slime journalism,” a term coined in 2012 by journalist Ryan Smith to draw comparisons between processed, low quality meat and low quality, templated or stolen content.

Articles appeared on Aug. 6 on approximately 145 of Metric Media’s “pink slime”  news sites across the country each detailing a FOIA request calling for the syllabi of each course offered last spring at nearby publicly-funded colleges.

According to their own website, Metric Media owns over 1,300 websites across the country and in all 50 states, each one bearing the name of a local county, city or town, but has no apparent offices besides an address in Dover, Delaware buried at the bottom of their terms of service. 

They primarily report on the cheapest places to get gas or diesel in the area and state quarterly tax reports, and occasionally report on FOIA requests. Many of these articles go without follow-up after being published, including the report on Carbondale Reporter’s request to SIU, which has received no follow-up article at this time. 

Metric Media was renamed to Community News Foundation on Nov. 7, 2022, but its online presence and publications have not been adjusted to reflect that.

SIU political science professor Brittany Leach says demands like these broad FOIA requests can be employed to discourage professors from teaching topics that may be considered controversial in their courses.

“I think these kinds of requests in other states are often used as a way to attack academic freedom by making people afraid that what they teach is going to be subject to continual public scrutiny and therefore scaring people off of talking about controversial issues,” Leach said. “For me personally, I feel very comfortable defending my pedagogical choices in all of the courses that I teach.”

The Carbondale Reporter, among other media sites about Illinois owned by the company, were originally incorporated under the Local Government Information Services Network (LGIS), a news network founded by Dan Proft that was dissolved on Jan. 10 amid a lawsuit from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul for publicizing the dates of birth and addresses of “hundreds of thousands of voters,” according to St. Louis Public Radio. 

Metric Media was also associated with the now-defunct Chicago company Newsinator, also known as Franklin Archer. The connection between the corporations has historically been unclear, with the Columbia Journalism Review noting that many of their associated news sites appear to be run by both companies in 2020. 

According to another article published by the Columbia Journalism Review, Newsinator accepted $300,000 in 2016 from super PAC Liberty Principles, a political PAC active up until 2020 with Proft as its treasurer for “advertising.” Newsinator has also been accused of plagiarism in an article from CatholicPhilly, a Catholic newspaper based out of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, which claimed that network-affiliated news sites posted copyrighted content from other diocesan publications in 2020. The Illinois State Department lists Newsinator as having its business license revoked.

Following the dissolution of Newsinator and LGIS, their respective subsidiary publications were incorporated into Metric Media according to their site’s terms of service.

Metric Media files its FOIA requests in partnership with the Coalition Opposing Government Secrecy, a Missouri-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to “encourage citizen participation in government and the political process, and to empower the public by helping them access publicly available information via Freedom of Information, Sunshine and similar requests for government records.” 

The nonprofit has been involved in several other FOIA projects recently alongside Metric Media. Most notably, they were named in a request to the state of Illinois for details on “illegal alien criminals” in state custody. Several universities, such as University of Connecticut, the SUNY Polytechnic Institute of New York and Western Illinois University, were sent FOIA requests for the names and areas of study for Chinese national students in May. A number of Illinois cities, including Carbondale, were requested to provide a list of city employees. Sheriffs’ departments in several states were asked for their applicant records by Metric Media-affiliated sites in August.

Staff reporter Morrigan Carey can be reached at [email protected]. To stay up to date with all your southern Illinois news, follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.

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