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Report: Media FOIA requests to EPA hundreds — or in some cases, thousands — of percent higher under President Trump than Obama
Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

Report: Media FOIA requests to EPA hundreds — or in some cases, thousands — of percent higher under President Trump than Obama

The media apparently ramped up its research after the last presidential election.

A new report shows media outlets made a strikingly higher number of Freedom of Information Act requests to the Environmental Protection Agency after President Donald Trump took office, compared to when former President Barack Obama was at the country's helm.

What are the details?

Brent Scher of The Washington Free Beacon used the government's data to analyze media FOIA requests from 2013 to the present. He found the figures "reveal a clear increase in requests for information from the [EPA] once Trump was elected president."

According to the Beacon, The New York Times made only 13 FOIA request during Obama's entire second term, but has made 100 requests since President Trump took office two years ago — an increase of 669 percent.

But Times reporters haven't been the only ones working overtime. The Washington Post went from just one FOIA request for Obama's EPA to 43 under the current administration. Scher cited and graphed similar spikes in activity by ABC News (4 requests under Obama, 32 since President Trump took office), CNN (from 25 to 47), Politico (from 15 to 198), and The Hill (from 20 to 67).

Scher also analyzed The Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, MSNBC, Reuters, Daily Beast, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.

"Among them," he wrote, "only Bloomberg sent a consistent amount of FOIA requests in the final years of the Obama administration, when the EPA released major proposals such as the Clean Power Plan and its new Waters of the United States rule."

Anything else?

President Trump has repeatedly criticized the mainstream media, claiming they given him unfair coverage compared to previous commanders in chief. A number of studies conducted during the Trump administration and even before show overwhelmingly negative coverage of the president.

Veteran journalists Ted Koppel and Lara Logan have both recently validated President Trump's long-maintained stance that mainstream outlets carry a clear left-leaning bias.

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