In the movie that gets made some day about Bloomberg's lawsuit against the Federal Reserve, Mark Pittman will be the rumply crusading reporter who slashes through the government bureaucracy to shine a disinfecting light on the sinister scheming of greedy bankers.

Once you get past the details about complex lending mechanisms and the scope of Freedom of Information Act exemptions, it isn't plain old good versus evil, actually, but a balancing of interests.

And it's about more than $2 trillion in taxpayer funds that Federal Reserve Banks lent to struggling private banks in spring of 2008 to help counteract the nation's financial crisis and calm a panicky stock market.

Who got it and why? And why shouldn't the public get to know?

Pittman, a Bloomberg News reporter, used FOIA to ask the Fed, the nation's central bank, for the names of banks that received loans through several emergency programs, the amounts they received and the collateral they provided to get the funds.

The Fed wouldn't provide the information.

Bloomberg sued the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors in 2008 and this month won another round. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a trial court judge correctly found against the Fed. (The appeals court also ruled for Fox News in a separate but similar case.)

FOIA requires federal agencies to give the public records about their operations, except in specific categories.

The Fed (joined by a consortium of the largest banks) wants the data Bloomberg seeks withheld as "commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential."

The argument is that telling taxpayers who got loans isn't in the public interest because it would undermine public confidence in the banks, destabilize financial markets and deter teetering banks from seeking federal help.

Bloomberg counters that the documents "are central to understanding the government's response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression" and that taxpayers need to know "how the Fed is safeguarding the public's money."

A coalition of media organizations added in a supporting brief that secrecy "conceals any collusion, corruption, fraud or abuse that might have occurred" and that ruling for the Fed would set a standard that allows other regulators to withhold important information.

The media have the stronger argument.

With the public skeptical about large financial operations failing because of their own greed and bailed-out institutions still paying fat salaries and bonuses to executives, openness is more cleansing than stigmatizing.

The appeals court said FOIA doesn't allow the Fed to withhold the records, even if there are plausible arguments about harm to the banking system.

"A test that permits an agency to deny disclosure because the agency thinks it best to do so . . . would undermine the basic policy that disclosure, not secrecy, is the dominant objective of FOIA," Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote for a three-judge panel.

"If the Board believes such an exemption would better serve the national interest, it should ask Congress to amend the statute."

Pittman died at 52 in November. The suit he set in motion could continue to the Supreme Court. The Fed should stop stalling and let the public know what's up with that $2 trillion.