SPJ Chapter to Academies' Presidents: Scientists, Others Should Be Allowed to Speak to Reporters

 The SPJ Washington, D.C., Chapter sent this letter today to the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine asking for scientists and others be allowed to speak to journalists without interference.

Dr. McNutt and Dr. Dzau,

Thank for your important statement yesterday against the distortion and miscommunication of scientific evidence and your call for transparency to ensure public trust.

The SPJ Washington, D.C., Chapter is part of the Society of Professional Journalists, the largest general organization of journalists in the nation.

SPJ-DC calls on the NAS leaders to go even further and to ask that government scientists and others be allowed to speak with the media to get the word out, rather than being silenced so that any administration can put out its own version of “science.”



As the Society said in a resolution passed by its delegates just this month, SPJ has for many years decried, “the controls on speech that pressure people not to speak to journalists without notifying the authorities, often through public information officers.”

The Society has called the restrictions censorship and authoritarian.

For some time prior to this administration any contact between a reporter and an employee of the federal public health agencies must be approved by authorities, often up through two to four levels.

These controls pull a veil over the communication process and are used to deliberately block or limit information according to the thoughts or inclinations of people in power.

Under any presidential administration, the distortion and miscommunication we don’t know about could be far more dangerous than those that become public.

Please note recent documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that show officials telling media relations staff that 1) a particular news outlet should not be allowed an interview because President Trump did not like them and 2) it was not necessary to allow any specific news outlets to speak to employees.

Also note the extensive legal analysis by Frank LoMonte, Director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, that finds such controls on speech are unconstitutional and many courts have said so.

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We would appreciate talking to you about this matter.

Kathryn Foxhall

Board Member, SPJ Washington, D.C., Chapter

CC: Matthew Hall

President, Society of Professional Journalists

 

SPJ: Agencies’ Control on Speech May Have Led to Higher COVID-19 Death Toll

The Society of Professional Journalists said in a resolution passed Saturday that it believes the controls on employee speech by government agencies has led to severe limitations on public scrutiny of those entities and to a higher COVID-19 death toll.

SPJ cited the blockage and delays of reporters by the Department of Health and Human Services as particularly tragic, noting also the censorship in its daughter agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

For many years a number of agencies have banned employees from ever speaking to reporters without notifying authorities, often through the agency public information offices.

The forced oversight leads to intimidation of source people within agencies. Beyond that, excessive delays and total blockages often prevent reporters from speaking to people at all.

In another session at the SPJ meeting, Donald G. McNeil, Jr., prominent New York Times health reporter, decried the current situation in CDC and HHS, saying, “It’s a horrible experience for a journalist trying to get life-saving information out of your own government.”

SPJ has led several coalition efforts opposing these controls over six years.

The Society’s 83 delegates passed the resolution Saturday night at its two-day virtual annual meeting. The statement passed in a bundle of 12 resolutions, all so noncontroversial among the delegates that separate consideration was not necessary. One other resolution accepted a new policy on the kind of entities to allow as sponsors for its meetings.

The full resolution on speech controls is below.

 

Resolution 10: A Resolution Opposing Restrictions on Speech that Could Worsen a Pandemic
Submitted by: Kathryn Foxhall, Member, Freedom of Information Committee
Cosponsors: SPJ Freedom of Information Committee; Randy Showstack, president, Washington, D.C., SPJ Pro Chapter

Resolutions Committee Recommendation: Positive

WHEREAS the Society of Professional Journalists has long spoken out against controls on speech that pressure people not to speak to journalists without notifying authorities, often through public information officers;

WHEREAS SPJ has called the restrictions censorship and authoritarian;

WHEREAS the COVID-19 pandemic has now killed nearly 200,000 people in the United States and no one knows when there be relief;

WHEREAS the Society believes the secrecy caused by these controls on speech has led to agencies severely limiting public scrutiny of themselves; to inevitable incidents of government disfunction; and therefore, to a significantly higher death toll from COVID-19 than would otherwise happened;

WHEREAS the Society decries in particular the tragedy that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has employed this oversight, delay and blockage of reporters for many years, including in its daughter agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health;

WHEREAS the Society further notes evidence that HHS and its agencies continue to entrench these controls, for example with:

---instructions from the current Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs that all press releases and press inquiries for the 80,000-person department go through the ASPA office;

--- a CDC memo telling staff who deal with reporters asking to talk to someone: “Just because there are outstanding requests or folks keep getting asked to do a particular interview does not mean it has to be fulfilled.”

WHEREAS these controls in effect silence or inhibit the great majority of people in HHS who have something important to say about the pandemic;

WHEREAS there have been many other incidents of blockage and controls on journalism before and during the pandemic in many agencies and parts of the nation;

WHEREAS the continuation of this censorship will also exacerbate future crises; and

WHEREAS the Society has congratulated Brechner Center for Freedom of Information Director Frank LoMonte on his extensive legal analysis that finds such controls on speech are unconstitutional and many courts have said so;

THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED that the Society of Professional Journalists, meeting in convention virtually on September 12¸2020, calls on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to explain why controls on the speech of its employees are safer for the public than is free speech and why that department has the right to decide this under the U.S Constitution.

 

 

Not Safe, Not Ethical, Not Protective of Human Rights: The Censorship and Vaccine Distribution

Who will get the vaccine first for Covid-19? It is a thorny ethical question that the National Academy of Medicine, among others, is trying to provide priorities for. A committee published a discussion draft of a preliminary framework last week.

I supplied testimony saying that under the current censorship of newsgathering in federal agencies and elsewhere, an equitable framework for distribution cannot be ensured.

Below is a slightly changed version of the testimony. (The uploading process ate the one going to the committee.)



Censorship on newsgathering in federal agencies and elsewhere has grown up over more than 25 years.

The restrictions are such that the information atmosphere is not safe, not ethical and not protective of the human rights of the people we serve.

I ask the committee to call for an end to this censorship, because it’s not possible to build a system for equitable vaccine distribution in the face of these restrictions that routinely withhold information and perspective from the committee, policymakers, health care professionals and the public.

Agencies and offices have banned staff on all levels from ever speaking to reporters without being overseen by the authorities, usually public information officers. On top of this chokepoint are built further obstructions, with reporters often completely blocked from speaking to the people they request. Please read the outtakes from FOIA-obtained HHS and CDC policies indicating among other things that it is not necessary to respond to reporters’ requests.

In many agencies there is no arrangement for routine access to the buildings either.

The Society of Professional Journalists surveys found similar restrictions have been instituted in various agencies and other entities around the nation. Those blockages will also put equitable distribution of the vaccine at risk. For example, we hear of hospitals attempting to put these bans on staff speaking to the press even in the absence of any privacy issue.

Over 60 groups have opposed the restrictions in letters to the Obama and Trump administrations and Congress. SPJ has called the rules censorship and authoritarian.

The Legal Perspective

Very importantly, First Amendment Attorney Frank LoMonte, head of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, published an extensive legal analysis finding that these controls are unconstitutional and many courts have said so.

After examining many Supreme Court and other cases, LoMonte said, “In short, there is no indication that federal courts widely understand Garcetti [the 2006 Supreme Court case that has been used to justify some of these policies] to have legitimized broadly worded prohibitions against discussing workplace matters,” calling such polices “constitutionally infirm and vulnerable to factual challenge.”

Extreme Danger of Controlled Information

I was reporting for The Nation’s Health during the frightening first years of the HIV epidemic. That was before censors were put on all conversations with reporters. As a matter of course the official story was so little of the real story it was manipulative. People on the inside gave reporters hard facts under the condition their names not be mentioned. One such conversation with a highly placed CDC scientist saved me from doing a truthful, well-sourced story that was so sanitized it could have helped kill people.

For many years before this pandemic these permission-to-speak rules, mandated oversight and blockages have kept reporters from understanding much about the federal health agencies. Many news stories are based on things the agencies push out through announcements, briefings, planned meetings, etc.

Now the narrative is that there are weaknesses, political interference and other issues discrediting FDA and CDC, for instance. One question is whether we should not have expected problems with agencies that strictly control public scrutiny of themselves.

There are real disadvantages to free speech. People will say wrong or unwise things. Our current information environment is often very bad.

There are also aspects about administering an organization that many journalists understand. Many entities have information that is legitimately confidential. Reporters have an obligation to understand the official story and not rely solely on people who talk outside the official channels. Agencies or offices frequently need a designated avenue for the official story and that might be a public information office.

However, information control by people in power has always been one of the most abusive and deadly things in human history. This process of attempting to distribute vaccine equitably, like other things impacting people’s health, should not be forced to go forward under those circumstances.