Dr. Mandy Cohen
Director,
United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Cohen:
I was for 14 years (1978-1992) editor of The Nation’s Health at the American Public Health Association. I was honored to know some of the public health greats of the 20th century. I count myself second to no one in admiration of public health: the triumphs, the science, the effectiveness of population-based care, and especially the professionals, many of whom are devoted, indeed personally captured, by public health’s criticality.
In recent years I have served as a point person for the Society of Professional Journalists and others in opposing the gag rules culture that has grown up in the U.S., as people in power silence employees and others.
I have harsh but necessary questions, including why the restrictions on journalists’ newsgathering, now at CDC and many other entities, are not human rights abuse and inevitably a mass degradation of public welfare.
Some decades ago, agencies began to ban employees from speaking to reporters or ban them from doing so without the authorities’ involvement, often through a public information office. Other controls were built using the gag rules as foundation, including limiting official briefings and having PIOs sit in and guide contacts.
Glen Nowak, a former CDC communications director with many years at the agency, had laid out the issue for journalists: presidential administrations hand down instructions on who reporters may talk and what may be said; the controls have been tightened with every president since Reagan; and they are explicitly political.
Nowak said, “Administrations, typically, their priority is trying to remain elected. And they’re often looking at policies through: ‘How will this help or not help when it comes to running for election? How will this help maintain or grow support?’”
“Government and elected officials have seen that controls make it harder to do [stories those official don’t favor] and diminish the visibility and prevalence of those stories. So, from their perspective, it works,” he said.
Over more than 30 years the controls expanded with little public discussion of their legitimacy or impact. Many journalists saw this transition take place.
CDC routinely fended off public scrutiny according to the thoughts or inclinations of a few people. Then we discovered the agency was not ready for an infectious disease crisis, a key reason for its existence.
These restrictions block information gathering by prohibiting staff from talking confidentially to journalists; by making any contact with staff so cumbersome it is often infeasible; by deliberately blocking contacts altogether; and by using this power over contacts for political purposes.
Some journalists and others have been fighting these restraints for years.
Among many communications over the years, 25 journalism and other groups wrote to the Biden Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy asking for the restrictions’ elimination in the federal government.
Journalism groups’ freedom of information officers told the New York Times, “The press should not be taking the risk of assuming that what we get is all there is when so many people are silenced. We should be openly fighting these controls.” The longer version of the letter is here.
Prominent First Amendment attorney Frank LoMonte, who has done extensive research on these controls, says they are unconstitutional, many courts have said so, and journalists can bring their own legal actions.
This year reporter Brittany Hailer won what is apparently the first legal settlement for a journalist against these prohibitions in a public agency.
Information control is one of the deadliest things in all human history given suppression of information for personal gain and accountability avoidance, propaganda to support many things including military conflict, discrimination, genocide, etc.
It is the antithesis of public health.
Questions to CDC for The Record:
In full recognition of the fact that free speech in agencies and elsewhere can be seriously problematic, is there any evidence in history that such controls on newsgathering are better for human welfare than unfettered speech and newsgathering?
Would you confirm that during the entire official period of the Covid public health emergency, and many years prior, journalists were not allowed in CDC facilities with possible exceptions for meetings or when they were escorted?
Would you confirm that also during that period contact was banned between journalists and employees without authorities’ involvement, often through the public information office?
Would you confirm these constraints are in great part mandated by the political administrations?
Would you confirm that such issues as whether a contact with a journalist will take place and what may be discussed are controlled by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, people in the White House or other political officials? Consistently or often?
Is there any type of independent observer who is within the agency or who has free access to contact agency employees? For instance, do we have many inspectors-general or other such personnel focused on the agency? Are there any such persons who can closely observe the agency for accountability purposes?
Why wouldn’t the restrictions on the press be one key cause of the missteps that exacerbated the pandemic? Weren’t staff members who were expert in this field, including the lack of readiness, blocked for years from speaking to journalists or blocked from doing so without the involvement of the authorities?
What are the bioethical implications of withholding information from the public and don’t these restrictions on speech inevitably withhold information? Are these restrictions, covering so many issues, so many potential speakers over decades not the equivalent of myriad Tuskegee experiments?
What right does any group of people have to control the speech of others outside of defined, narrow circumstances such as privacy protection or national security?
CDC has spoken repeatedly about rebuilding trust with the public. I deeply regret to ask: Is it not a citizen’s critical responsibility to avoid trusting powerful entities that control information about themselves, or have such curbs imposed on them? Is such skepticism not especially essential when any entity is responsible for human welfare?
Will CDC call for an independent examination of how the controls on the press affect public health, including how the current norm of prohibiting speech by people across the federal government and in all kinds of entities, state and local, public and private?
I’m asking for answers on the record for commentary, for professionals young and veteran, for historians and other researchers.
I’m attaching a background paper.
I’d be happy to talk with you or any of your staff.
Thanks for your attention.
Kathryn Foxhall
SPJ 2021 Wells Key Awardee
For work against gag rules
CC:
CDC Communications and Other Staff
The CDC Director's Advisory Committee
Caroline Hendrie
Executive Director
Society of Professional Journalists
Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins
President
Society of Professional Journalists
