The response arrives after 47 days. Inside: 23 pages, 18 of them heavily redacted. Somewhere in this stack of paper lies an answer. Finding it will take months — and several appeals.
The archaeology of bureaucracy
Healthcare journalism often imagines dramatic confrontations, hidden cameras, sources meeting in underground car parks. The reality is more often this: a desk, a highlighter, and an endless stream of documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
Each page is a potential fragment. A signature here, a date there, a CC list that reveals an unexpected connection. The work is archaeological — sifting through layers of NHS administrative sediment to find the bones of a story.
The most damning evidence is rarely marked “confidential.” It hides in the mundane: travel expenses, calendar entries, the casual emails that were never meant to be read.
Reading between the redactions
Redactions tell their own story. A page with a single line visible and the rest blacked out suggests something worth hiding. Patterns emerge: certain names consistently removed, certain time periods particularly sensitive.
The skilled analyst learns to read the shape of absences. A heavily redacted document followed by an unredacted one from the same date and department suggests comparison. What appears in one and not the other? What was worth protecting?
The patience of accountability
This work does not happen quickly. A single FOI request can take months to process. Internal reviews add more months. ICO complaints add more still. And when the documents finally arrive, the analysis begins — often revealing the need for more requests, more waiting, more patience.
It is unglamorous work. But it is how we know what we know about hospital failures, about regulatory capture, about the gap between what health officials say and what they do.
The paper trail is long. But it leads somewhere.