Yale Law School Conference Hears: No Documented Case Has Upheld "No Interviews Policy"

At the Yale Law School Access and Accountability Conference last month, Frank LoMonte, director of the Brechner Center on Freedom of Information, said that, “There is no documented case in which a government agency has successfully defended a ‘no interviews’ policy,” controlling employees speaking to the press.

And yet, he said, the policies persist and are pervasive.

I said the current cultural trend supporting these policies is catastrophic. The videos of the conference, including the “Fighting Censorship by PIO” session (number 5) are here. The agenda is here and the background papers are here.

“Censorship by PIO” to Be a Focus of Major Meeting On Free Speech from Yale Law School

The issue of fighting “Censorship by PIO” will be one of the main topics at Yale Law School’s upcoming “Access & Accountability 2021: Seize the Day”  conference, October 1-2, by Zoom.

The Washington, D.C. Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is highlighting that session particularly due to the group’s extensive work opposing the practice of offices and agencies banning employees from speaking to the press or prohibiting such contacts without notifying authorities, often through public information offices.

 Speakers will include Kathryn Foxhall, a board member of the SPJ chapter; Gregg Leslie, longtime free speech attorney from the Arizona State University; Michael Linhorst of Yale’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic; and Frank LoMonte, director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information.

 Foxhall said at a recent SPJ session that the prohibition against speaking with oversight, “is just deep corruption for people in power who institute these rules and corruption for journalists acquiesce to them. It’s the kind of corruption that gets us a public health structure that shows major problems when the crisis of many decades hits and leads to exacerbated problems.”

The opening speaker for the Yale conference will be Floyd Abrams, the well-known First Amendment attorney who won the landmark Supreme Court case on the Pentagon Papers.

The eight other sessions at the conference will be on:

---Thinking Big about Fixing FOIA.

---Rights of the Press Clause.

---Law Enforcement Accountability.

---National Security Accountability.

---Defamation as an Accountability Tool.

---Collaboration Colloquies—projects worthy of cross clinic collaboration, including: Supporting Local Journalism.

---Director’s Dialogue: First Amendment, Friend or Foe.

---Success Stories.

The conference is free, open to the public and on Zoom.

However, registration is required:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/access-and-accountability-2021-tickets-166964773131

 

 

 

 

 

SPJ Gives Honor for Work Opposing Restrictions on Reporters Through PIOs, etc.

Readers: Apologies for tooting my own horn here, but I did want to reflect how seriously SPJ takes the issue.

Press release, Sept. 4, from Society of Professional Journalists: 

Foxhall named Wells Key winner for work against controls on reporters through public information offices

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Society of Professional Journalists honors Kathryn Foxhall with the Wells Memorial Key. This award is the highest honor for an SPJ member and was officially presented tonight at the President’s Awards Ceremony during the SPJ21 conference. Foxhall was previously informed of her honor over Zoom by friends and colleagues.

“Thank you,” said Foxhall, a member of the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee.

“We now have over four million pandemic dead. For over two decades public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, have controlled public scrutiny of themselves. Reporters are kept out of buildings, not allowed to speak to anyone without the bosses’ censors, and often not allowed to speak to anyone at all,” Foxhall said.

“Psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks about the human bias of, ‘What you see is all there is.’ The press gets what it can and mostly does not tell the public about the controls, preferring to believe whatever we get is all there is,” Foxhall continued. “Now the nation finds our structures were not prepared for a vast crisis. The U.S. has lost life expectancy at a rate 8.5 times higher than the average of 16 other high-income nations.

“Similar controls have surged in state and local governments, police departments, schools, businesses and other entities, public and private. The restraints have become part of the culture,” she said. “This is deep corruption for both the people in power and the press. Freedom of expression is not just an ideal or a liberty. It’s how we cooperate, shield people from abuse and survive.”

Foxhall has been an active member of SPJ for nearly 12 years. Within that time, she has given many years of dedicated service to the Washington D.C., Pro Chapter and is one of its most active and participatory members.

Around 2009, she began communicating with SPJ about excessive controls over public information officers, an issue that received very little attention previously. Almost singlehandedly, she gradually convinced others of the great harm caused by employee gag policies and the fear-based censorship they create.

The PIO issue was on the FOI Committee’s meeting agenda at an SPJ conference the following year because of her as efforts. Other journalism organizations also took notice and began pushing back against the controls. She presented the issue and insisted the biggest need was for some research to document the extent of the problem.

From this, two surveys were conducted: one with Washington, D.C.-area reporters and another with members of the National Association of Government Communicators. This prompted a series of annual surveys – which were timed to be released during Sunshine Week – documenting the relationship between reporters and PIOs, showing how the situation has continually worsened.

Foxhall inspired initiatives during Sunshine Week, including a letter issued to the Obama administration, which resulted in an in-person meeting between SPJ and White House staff, a new webpage with resources, events at the National Press Club and more.

She has written extensively about the PIO problem and has been quoted in Quill, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review and dozens of regional outlets. Foxhall has even created a committee dedicated solely to the issue through the D.C. chapter. Owing to her efforts, the Knight Columbia Institute made removing government-imposed gag orders its first “to-do” priority for the incoming Biden administration.

Foxhall is now working with SPJ Foundation Board member Frank LoMonte on identifying potential avenues for legal challenge to bring “test cases” that would clarify the First Amendment rights of employees to speak to journalists, and journalists’ rights to receive that information. She has been tireless in finding pro-bono legal representation for those brave enough to initiate legal challenges.

Friends and colleagues shared some of the many reasons for her nomination:

“Sometimes it takes just one person to lead the charge, to take the hits and confront doubt and apathy head on,” Former SPJ President David Cuillier said. “She did this well, and for that she deserves the Society’s highest honor.”

“And I cannot think of anyone else in SPJ who has devoted so much of their time and so much energy to an issue so important and so relevant to SPJ’s core principles,” Former SPJ President Carolyn S. Carlson said.

“The Wells Key can honor service to the SPJ over the preceding year or over a lifetime,” LoMonte said. “By either measure, Kathryn Foxhall is a worthy and deserving recipient. She is one of the die-hard true-believers keeping the mission of the SPJ alive in challenging times.”

SPJ promotes the free flow of information vital to informing citizens; works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists; and fights to protect First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press. Support excellent journalism and fight for your right to know. Become a member, give to the Legal Defense Fund or give to the SPJ Foundation.

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Asking Biden’s Science Work Group: Who Is Watching Agencies for Us?

Mean, Ugly Censorship:

Since reporters' contact with agencies is choked down, choked off and prohibited without oversight, who is watching these entities with so much power over our well-being? 

On July 28, I testified before the listening session of the Office of Science and Technology Policy on the restraints on reporters in federal agencies. The written version is below.

This came after 25 journalism and other groups wrote to OSTP calling for elimination of the bans on federal employees speaking to reporters without notifying authorities, including public information officers.

Written testimony: Over the last two to three decades agencies in the federal government, like entities elsewhere, have implemented rules that ban employees from speaking to journalists without notifying authorities, often by going through public information officers.

This means in essence that no word can pass without people in power controlling it.

President Biden has been in Washington long enough to have known the days before this was the case and to have seen the transition in the agencies and Congress.

It is mean, ugly censorship. It is pervasive, it is human rights abuse and it is successful. Control of information by people in power has been one of the most debilitating, deadly things in all human history.

You should have the letter that 25 journalism and other groups have signed opposing these restrictions.

I have worked with the Society of Professional Journalists on this, but this statement is mine alone.

Please understand in many agencies reporters can’t go into the building. They cannot get credentials to do so even though thousands of employees do. Everyone in the agency is forbidden to speak to them without going to the public information officers, who have been made into our censors. When the reporter goes through the permission-to-speak process, from everything we hear, most of the time they are not allowed to speak to the person requested. In HHS the request has to go up three levels in the hierarchy. People in agencies have hidden discussions on whether to allow the contact and on what can be discussed. People in high positions block any contact they don’t want to happen.

As a 40-year reporter, if there is one thing I can get you to focus on it is that after journalists get the story through official avenues, there is always, routinely, more to the story. And we, the entire public, are walking in mine fields with all the hazards people are silenced about.

I was editor of the American Public Health Association’s newspaper during the very dark early days of AIDS. That was years before the agencies began the censorship. No one necessarily knew which reporter talked to which employee. In just one example, a fairly-highly placed official at CDC educated me about some basics, on the condition that his name not be used. That could have been worth a million lives eventually, given that we were still early in the infection spread and I was writing for public health professionals.

In contrast, the official story I would otherwise have written was interesting, accurate and insidiously curated, devoid of even basic facts that tended not to support the administration’s policies.

Thankfully, sometimes staff members today defy the rules and speak to reporters outside official avenues. However, it happens much less often because most contacts are banned and there are the censors on conversations.

Officials say they need to coordinate the information and that it is dangerous to let people just talk: they might say the wrong thing.

Coordinating the official story may be a legitimate function for agencies and offices.

However, despite all our divisions in this country, nobody wants to be allowed to hear only the story officials coordinate for them.

Free speech can be problematic, sloppy and dangerous. It has never been as dangerous as mechanisms people in power can use to control information according to their own inclinations.

Questions for the workgroup and OSTP:

---Why is it necessary to have such controls on staff members when it was not in the past?

---Why should people in official positions be allowed to implement such blockages on contacts?

---How do you know enough about the workings and character of agencies like CDC, NIH, FDA or EPA? How does anyone have a sufficient overview when the agencies control public scrutiny of themselves? Are there any independent persons watching for any of us, since the press is not there?

---Why would an agency with so little oversight not develop serious corrosion? What do we know about that? Why are we taking the risk?

---Since we know about these restrictions what responsibility do we have to the human lives that depend on these agencies?

25 Groups Ask for End to Restrictions on Reporters in Federal Agencies

RELEASE FROM SPJ:

The Society of Professional Journalists and 24 other journalism groups sent a letter Monday to the White House to request a discussion about protecting against interference in journalists’ work.

The organizations that signed the letter represent thousands of journalists across the country. They request a meeting with the White House Scientific Integrity Task Force to discuss crucial ways to protect against federal interference in journalists’ important work.

“Journalists everywhere seek timely and honest answers from government agencies on behalf of the public,” said SPJ National President Matthew T. Hall. “But all too often, journalists’ jobs are intentionally hindered by government officials in a variety of ways, but most commonly by barring government experts from speaking with reporters or blatantly refusing interviews. The federal government is for the people, and the people deserve to have their questions answered.”

"It is imperative that federal agencies be responsive and open to reporters who are seeking the truth in the public's best interest," said SEJ President Sadie Babits. "This is fundamental to our democracy. That's why we, along with dozens of other journalism organizations, ask that federal employees, scientists in many cases, be allowed to speak openly and freely to members of the press."

The barriers to obtaining accurate and authoritative information are now widespread, the letter states, prompting dozens of groups to call for change in letters to Congress and past presidential administrations.

A comprehensive analysis by First Amendment attorney Frank LoMonte found that existing controls are unconstitutional. Seven surveys from 2012 to 2016 have shown controls have become common at federal, state and local levels, in health, education, environment and science, and — perhaps most chillingly — in police departments where information has become increasingly important to ensure all members of the public are treated equitably.

The groups say in the letter that they would like to see the task force recommend agencies
—eliminate restrictions on employees speaking to reporters without notification of authorities, especially before but also after the contact;
—credential journalists to enter, without escort, any area of federal facilities where most employees are allowed to enter;
—and make it standard policy that when reporters voluntarily contact public information offices, they are allowed to speak to the people they request.

“These changes would eliminate restrictions and policies that have become pervasive in federal agencies but that are relatively new,” the letter states. “For much of President Joe Biden’s Washington career they were either nonexistent or not nearly as stringent. Sadly, they have now become the norm.”

“Government transparency is so important, and while the average citizen doesn’t have time to keep tabs on every decision agencies make that impacts people’s lives, journalists do,” Hall said. “It’s time we accept that journalists are the watchdogs of government and are asking questions and reporting information on behalf of the American people – as the First Amendment intended.”

Virus Origins: So Many U.S. Scientists Can't Speak to Reporters

To the Washington Post

RE: “Scientists battle over the ultimate origin story: Where did the coronavirus come from:” The world is seriously hampered in its effort to understand the origins of SARS-CoV-2 by the censorship of scientists and others in the United States. It is apocalyptically immoral.

Over the last two to three decades there has been a surge in restrictions by employers banning employees from ever speaking to journalists without notifying the authorities, often through public information officers.

This minder/censor system has an overwhelming tendency to silence people about anything that doesn’t fit the official story. Beyond that so many burdens and delays are placed on contacts using that chokepoint that often employees and reporters are never able to speak.

Surveys have found the restrictions are pervasive many types of workplaces. In the federal government, including science agencies, the constraints are ferocious. These include the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration. This is in face of the fact that journalists routinely prove that many times the only way facts and perspectives emerge is through conversations with reporters. Sometimes those critical contacts must be confidential, without the knowledge of the bosses or their minions.

Unfortunately, there are stories we don’t get for years, if ever.

In 2019 negotiations in the House Science, Space and Technology Committee killed a proposal that would have allowed scientists, only, a little freedom to speak without censors. In 2020, as Covid deaths began to mount, CDC officials stressed to its media staff that it was not necessary to let any particular reporter speak to the person requested, no matter how persistent the request.

Thousands of scientists are effectively silenced as we round four million deaths worldwide: How can we go on with this?

SPJ surveys, etc. Public information officers - Society of Professional Journalists (spj.org)

CDC head answers journalism group. SPJ chapter calls for dialogue with agency about restraints on reporting

The following went out today, following an email reply from the CDC director to the SPJ DC chapter. 

Washington, D.C. – The Society of Professional Journalists has long worked to improve the access of reporters to officials within government agencies, in particular the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Washington, D.C. Professional Chapter of SPJ recently reached out to new CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, urging her agency to grant greater access within the agency to reporters. The SPJ chapter is encouraged by Walensky’s initial response and believes this topic requires further dialogue.

SPJ-DC wrote to Walensky in February, stating that “restrictions on staff speaking to reporters without notifying authorities amount to a human rights abuse, withholding critical perspective from the public and from health professionals. In the case of the national emergency created by the COVID-19 pandemic, restricting journalists’ access to vital information collected for the public has cost lives unnecessarily and has created untold health consequences for many of those who have managed to survive.”

Walensky has responded to SPJ-DC in an encouraging manner, indicating that CDC shares SPJ’s desire for openness.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to a culture of openness that values the free exchange of ideas, data, and information as part of scientific and technical inquiry,” Walensky wrote. “I am committed to these values. We strive to provide science-based, transparent, accurate, and timely information to the media, as well as through our website, social media channels, and other communication mechanisms.”

“CDC scientists and researchers communicate with members of the press about their work. However, CDC experts are working scientists and are not always available for interviews. Our press officers serve as points of contacts for news media to provide relevant background information and to ensure questions are answered in a timely manner,” Walensky said. “CDC will continue to deliver to the public the best, most accurate, and trusted public health information.”

Although SPJ-DC is concerned that Walensky reiterated her desire for public information officers within CDC to continue to control access to scientists and officials within the agency, the journalism organization welcomes this response from Walensky.

SPJ-DC looks forward to having an on-going dialogue with Walensky and other officials at CDC about the important issues of reporters’ access and the public’s right to know.