Surveys Show The Blockages
Surveys
by Carolyn Carlson, assistant professor at Kennesaw State University, show that
40
percent of PIOs admit to blocking reporter when the PIOS have had “problems”
with their stories. The surveys also show that most reporters dealing with
federal issues believe
the restraints are censorship.
Her
2014 surveys found that
across the country political and general assignment reporters see the
restraints on reporting as increasing in recent years and say the current level
of media control is an impediment to getting information to the public.
Her
report on political and general reporters includes 26 pages of anecdotes of
control, such as:
“A
few years ago, top officials for a city government I covered told staff members
they were not to talk with me. Myself and another reporter had exposed a
corrupt nonprofit housing agency and mismanagement of millions of dollars in
federal housing funds the city had received. Our editors and I complained about
the situation, we filed numerous public records requests for the information we
were
seeking,
and eventually the city relaxed the restrictions. The department manager over
the city’s housing programs never agreed to interviews with me again.”
Similar
anecdotes are in Carlson’s report on education reporters.
Native American
Journalists and Department of Interior
As journalists who cover Indian Country, we know very well the
hurdles journalists can face in seeking public information when there are
policies such as the ones described in [the letter the President Obama] in
place. The Bureau of Indian Affairs under the Department of Interior has
conducted business this way for years, and I personally believe it has hurt our
tribal communities and our community members’ access to information.
--Mary Hudetz,
President, Native American Journalists Association, July 2014
EPA Working to
Promote the President’s Agenda
SEJ
leaders held a conference call with EPA’s public affairs chief Tom Reynolds
June 25, hoping to advance the case for more open EPA media policies and
procedures. While Reynolds said he would try to improve EPA’s performance, he
did not commit to specifics and defended a practice that SEJ members have
complained about.
While espousing better public information for the US public via the press, Reynolds also acknowledged that “we are working to promote and advance the agenda of the president and the administrator.”
SEJ leaders asked Reynolds why the agency needed to do a background briefing where briefers could not be identified during the recent rollout of EPA’s carbon rule, and Reynolds said one main reason was to keep focus on the agency's administrator, Gina McCarthy.
…..
“SEJ leaders were not satisfied with Reynolds’ answers, and they asked what harm would come from opening briefings up…..
While espousing better public information for the US public via the press, Reynolds also acknowledged that “we are working to promote and advance the agenda of the president and the administrator.”
SEJ leaders asked Reynolds why the agency needed to do a background briefing where briefers could not be identified during the recent rollout of EPA’s carbon rule, and Reynolds said one main reason was to keep focus on the agency's administrator, Gina McCarthy.
…..
“SEJ leaders were not satisfied with Reynolds’ answers, and they asked what harm would come from opening briefings up…..
[Reporter] Don Hopey pointed to the practical problems the background briefing had caused in producing his own story. His editors would not accept unattributed information, and he spent considerable time overcoming their objections. He said the small amount of information he used from the briefing barely justified the extra time it cost him.
Reynolds defended background briefings by saying they were “standard practice across this administration and in others” and that “they are done regularly and routinely by the White House and other agencies.” He said “top tier media -- AP, Reuters, New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal -- all use background sourcing in their reporting.”
SEJ had complained about EPA’s refusal to identify sources in a June 2 briefing, which supplemented on-record speeches and interviews about the carbon rule. Links to the exchange of letters between SEJ and EPA are on the SEJ website.
…..
“We are trying to do better,” Reynolds told SEJ leaders. “I will work -- we will work -- to do more to ensure there are on the record opportunities for outlets.” Reynolds did not go farther than that or make specific commitments on press office openness, however, noting that the agency made those decisions on, “a case by case basis.”
--Joe Davis, Society of
Environmental Journalists, June 2014
ICD-10 Experts Can’t
Talk
In December a New York
Times reporter emailed CMS asking to talk to someone about the coming implementation
of ICD-10.
He was never allowed to
speak to anyone.
I asked CMS why, related
to an article I was doing. Over about eight contacts over a month, the public
affairs officer did not answer me. Sometimes there was no answer at all.
Sometimes she said the NYT reporter had been given a written statement. Written
statements in no way substitute for talking to an expert.
I referred the matter to
the main HHS public affairs office and that did not help.
ICD-10 will have impact
on the whole public and HHS agencies have staff members who have long worked on
it and are at the center of information about it.
--Kathryn Foxhall, July 2014
Staff Silenced at EPA
For years EPA has not allowed reporters to speak to staff
without the public information offices overseeing the contact. Last fall it was
revealed that a top EPA official had fooled the agency into thinking he was off
doing work for the CIA when he was doing whatever he wished, for 13 years. An
executive assistant had suspected, but reporters no longer have access to the
facilities that might allow them to get to know staff. And all staff are
specifically prohibited from communicating with journalists without oversight
on behalf of the bosses.
Lack of Response at
the Veterans Administration
In 2012, prior to the current revelations about the Veterans
Administration, the House Committee on Veterans Affairs began a compilation of news
reports that stated the VA did not respond to reporters. The list is now up to
dozens of instances.
PIO of the Homeland
Security
At a debate the National Press Club in August 2014, a public
information officer for the Department of Homeland Security argued for the agencies’
policies of forcing reporters to go through press officers. He said that he worked
to get the news out to reporters and when there was bad news the agency got it out
quickly, rather than keeping it hidden.
A few weeks later the federal Office of Special Counsel said
that there had been profound and entrenched abuse of overtime at the agency,
based on the testimony of seven whistleblowers.
--Kathryn Foxhall,
July 2014
Major Scientist Can’t
Talk
The New York Times did a profile of John Holdren, the White
House Science Advisor, July 4, 2014. The article stated the White House
declined to make Holdren available to be interviewed. One of the most prominent
scientists in the country is prohibited to speak without political control.
One Conversation Is
Enough
A PIO at FDA told me I did not need to talk to an expert at the
agency on pediatric drug research because I had already talked to one other
expert at another agency.
--Kathryn Foxhall,
July 2014
Limit Speech to
Whistleblowers
A reporter filed a petition challenging the rule forcing
reporters to go through the press office at FDA. The denial of the petition,
which came after four years, says, among other things, that if FDA employees
have anything to say they can become public whistleblowers.
--Kathryn Foxhall,
July 2014
EPA:
Only Senior Management Can Talk
I spoke with EPA's media relations
director, George Hull, on Thursday and Friday (June 26-27, 2014) after several
days of trying to get clarification about a few technical details regarding
state CO2 emissions cuts goals in the Clean Power Plan. First, I sent emails
and made calls to Julia Valentine and Hull at the EPA on Wednesday. Though
Valentine more than a week earlier promised me answers regarding the
unrelated Indian Country Minor New Source Review Program by last
week, when I followed up with her Wednesday about that and to ask
additional questions about the Clean Power Plan, her email said she was out on
extended leave. Hull did not respond on Wednesday, and as of Friday, after
about two weeks of trying, I still have no response on my Indian Country
questions.
Hull responded on Thursday, and I
was promised answers that day, but by 6 p.m., Hull said he had nothing, but I
could talk to an expert on the phone early Friday morning. I called him at 9
a.m. Friday, and he said he’d have several officials willing to answer specific
questions shortly. Then he said, “this is gonna be on background.” I said,
nope. I'm not speaking to anybody on background. Hull uttered a surprised “Oh!”
then hung up and called me back a few minutes later and to tell me that only
senior management at the EPA can go on the record with a reporter, and senior
management isn’t available today. Maybe next week, he said.
I told him speaking on background
for a story he knows has to run today is wasting my time and it contributes
nothing to my story, and I won’t to do it. I said I’m going to note in my story
that the EPA refused to provide answers on the record and that the EPA won't
comment.
“I'll have to see what I can do and
get back to you,” he said. A short while later, he called back and said he’ll
send me a canned statement from PA acting assistant administrator Janet
McCabe and can’t do much else for me right now.
---Bobby Magill, senior science writer
covering energy and climate change for Climate Central
Hidden
Newborn Circumcision Experts
I asked the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention to allow me to speak to its experts on newborn
circumcision 20 times over five weeks. I had identified three experts who had
been key to the agency’s work on the issue. CDC wanted me to speak only to a
public relations person and never allowed me to speak to anyone else. I
declined to speak to the PR person. I put out a press release on the issue.
--Kathryn
Foxhall
HHS
Not Talking about Not Talking
Neiman
Reports recently did an article
on blockages that public health reporters are finding at public agencies.
Health and Human Services would not do an interview with the reporter. A public
affairs person wrote a statement instead.
Sent
Back to The Stonewall at CDC
As
chronicled in the Neiman Reports article,
in the midst of the January 2014 chemical spill in West Virginia reporters repeatedly
asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention how it calculated
acceptable toxicity levels. After nearly a week one reporter called the CDC
director at home. “The CDC chief
told him to contact the press office and hung up,” according to the article.
Fear of
Speaking
Floridaenvironments.com editor Bruce Ritchie says that a
wetlands expert at the Florida Department of Environment Protection left a
social gathering to avoid speaking to him. The department has a “protocol” in
which employees contacted by reporters are to refer them to press officers.
A number of similar stories on being blocked
are at:
HHS Ethics Office Won’t Talk
The Office of Human Research Protections is working on one of the most important medical research ethics questions in years, having to do with what parents are told about research on their newborns. Last fall I called to speak to someone to get an update and was not allowed to talk to anyone at all.
The PIO said, “OHRP has not been giving interviews on the topic, other than to say it is working on the draft guidance. It has not set a deadline for issuing the guidance.”
So
we don’t know who OHRP is talking to, if anyone.
Forty-two
years ago the nation discovered the US Public Health Service had experimented
on 399 African American men by not treating them for syphilis and not telling
them what was happening. Government officials continued the Tuskegee experiment
until the Associated Press, tipped off by a former employee, covered the story.
The incident became the basis of many of the medical research ethics standards,
continuing until today.
Ironically,
now government ethics officials are specifically blocking the press from
speaking people who might tell them what is happening.
---Kathryn Foxhall, 2014
Opacity on Clinical Trials
Transparency
Five
years after Congress had called for new rules on ClinicalTrials.gov, the
registry for medical studies, had not come out.
