Ed O’Keefe’s Washington Post column, Agencies poorly track FOIA requests, report says, points out that agencies, such as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) suffer from “shoddy records management” with regard to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests:

The Board of Broadcasting Governors listed 182 total FOIA requests, but couldn’t say whether records were ever produced for 135 of the requests.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors public relations office has sent out this defense:

Nonetheless, the BBG received an above-average grade of B and an agency spokeswoman told National Journal the “unknown” data is from requests older than two years, which it is not legally required to retain.
Also cited in: The Washington Post. The Washington Post did not contact the BBG for comment before publication. We have subsequently provided comment to the Post.

What the BBG spokesperson failed to point out is that in the U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report out of 87 non cabinet agencies 56 received a A grade for their handling of FOIA requests. With the vast majority of agencies receiving As, many of them even A+, the Broadcasting Board of Governors spokesperson was clearly deceiving the media and the public by claiming that the BBG’s B grade was “above-average.”
This defense comes from an agency which tolerates racist and sexist comments by top executives, gives them outstanding performance bonuses despite being rated as the worst leaders and managers in the entire federal government, plans to fire hundreds of broadcasters while beefing up its bureaucratic staff, and wants to end Voice of America radio broadcasting to Tibet and VOA radio and TV in Cantonese to China. BBG executives also want to decimate VOA English and Spanish news and programs and to end or reduce programs to a number of other countries without free media.