The following release went out from the Washington, D.C. Chapter from the Society of Professional Journalists this afternoon:
The SPJ DC Pro Chapter wrote Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying 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.
The practice of prohibiting employees from speaking to reporters, or prohibiting such contact without oversight by authorities, has become widespread in public and private entities. Coalitions of over 60 groups have opposed the restrictions in letters to the Obama and Trump administrations and to Congress. An analysis by First Amendment attorney Frank LoMonte says that the controls are unconstitutional and that many courts have said that.
Randy Showstack, president of the SPJ DC Pro Chapter, said, “The practice of agencies closing doors and gagging people from speaking to the press has become an unfortunate cultural norm. The controls are just as dangerous as censorship is in the rest of the world.”
At least four major organizations have asked President Joe Biden to end the restrictions in federal agencies. The Society of Professional Journalists, parent to the SPJ DC Pro Chapter, has told President Biden that it is negligence to expect that agencies that control public scrutiny of themselves will not develop critical weaknesses.
The full letter to Dr. Walensky, along with resources, is below.
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Dr. Rochelle Walensky
Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Walensky:
Congratulations on your appointment as director of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We appreciate the great challenges
you face.
We are local leaders in an organization of
journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists, dedicated to seeking
truth and reporting it in an ethical manner. We are writing you today to ask
that you end the CDC’s practice of censoring journalists trying to speak with
agency staff about vital information they have collected, paid for by
taxpayers. It is a violation of human rights and medical ethics and a constant
threat to public health.
Over the last 25-30 years a cultural norm of heavy
censorship has surged in this country with public and private entities banning
employees and others from communicating with reporters without permission or
oversight by authorities, often by using public information officers as
gatekeepers.
The mandate to never have contact without going through the
permission process creates a
chokepoint for controlling information flow. Then additional barriers are piled
on including massive delays, hidden limits on what staff people may say and,
often, no permission to speak at all. The applications to speak often must go
through multiple layers of clearance.
This has been an appallingly serious problem at CDC
for many years, with numerous reporters complaining of serious difficulties in
speaking to anyone or not being allowed to speak to anyone at all.
An illustration of how dangerously repressive
attitudes inside agencies can become happened last year when CDC officials
told media staff, “Just because there are outstanding [press] requests or
folks keep getting asked to do a particular interview does not mean it has to
be fulfilled.”
The SPJ, the largest broad-based organization of
journalists in the United States has written to President Biden
saying, “It is deep
negligence to expect that agencies that control the public scrutiny of
themselves will not develop critical weaknesses or that they will not be
subjected to political interference.”
SPJ also says it believes the nation is suffering the
consequences of these controls during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are writing for the Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter
of SPJ, a group with many years of experience reporting on the federal
establishment.
Journalists are the eyes and ears of the public. It is
not possible for the agency to have such restrictions on journalists without
withholding a great deal of information that belongs to the public and is about
things that impact people’s health.
Much of what we know about CDC in this pandemic has
been obtained by good reporting with agency employees serving as confidential sources.
The SPJ DC Pro Chapter takes
pride in this work by the Fourth Estate. We also are forever grateful to agency
employees who risk so much to give the public vital information.
And yet, those contacts were forbidden. And with
10,000-plus CDC employees working under harsh prohibitions to never speak to a
reporter without notifying the authorities, we know there is a great deal not
being said. That is a grave risk to everyone on earth.
Please note that an extensive analysis by First Amendment attorney Frank
LoMonte, Director of the Brechner Center, says that the controls are
unconstitutional. It also says many courts have said that they are.
He says, “Decades’ worth of First Amendment caselaw establishes that public
employees have a constitutionally protected right to speak about work-related
matters without needing their employer’s permission. Policies and regulations
that require pre-approval before government employees can discuss their work
with the news media are invariably struck down as unconstitutional when
challenged. Still, agencies persist in enforcing rules curtailing public
employees’ ability to share information with journalists.”
Resources and background information are
below.
We hope to be able talk to you or your
staff soon.
Sincerely
Randy Showstack
President,
SPJ DC Pro Chapter
Kathryn Foxhall
Recording Secretary,
SPJ DC Pro Chapter
kfoxhall@verizon.net
(202) 417 4572
Background
The “Censorship by PIO” restrictions on reporters on the federal
level began to be noticeable, as far as some journalists can tell, in the early
to mid-1990s. Agencies and other offices banned federal staff from ever
speaking to reporters without being overseen by the authorities, usually PIOs.
SPJ did seven surveys (2012–2016) that show the controls had become
common and often intense on federal, state and local levels, in education and
science, and--perhaps most chillingly--in police departments. (A summary is
below.) Coalitions of journalism and open government groups wrote to the Obama
and Trump administrations calling for an end to the constraints.
Representatives from a coalition of over 50 groups met with Obama
White House officials in 2015. We told press officer Josh Earnest that often when
the press does not know something about agencies, the administration leaders
don’t either. We were promised an answer and it never came.
For many years before the pandemic, reporters have not usually
been able speak to anyone in CDC and FDA without involving the PIO/censors.
Often reporters are completely blocked from speaking to the people they request
or to anyone at all.
Resources on “Censorship by PIO”
• SPJ’s website on
the issue gives
background. It includes the seven surveys SPJ
sponsored from 2012-2016.
• PROfficeCensorship: Kathryn
Foxhall’s blog has
stories and links on the issue.
• In the Washington Post Margaret
Sullivan’s column looked at the issue.
• A Columbia Journalism Review article connects the long
history of these controls with current circumstances, such as the CDC being
terrifyingly absent.
• Editorial in MedPage Today: “You Think China
Has A COVID-19 Censorship Problem? We Aren’t Much Better.”
• Radio interview on “Clearing the Fog,” April 6. “Another
Method of Censorship: Media Minders.”
Media Minders portion of the show begins at about minute 32.54. The site
includes a transcript.
• The Knight Institute at Columbia
University released documents
on CDC’s policies on employee speech.
• On Oct. 17, 2019, the House Science
Space and Technology Committee voted to kill proposed provisions that would
have given federal scientists the right to speak to reporters without prior
permission from the authorities in their agencies. Science Magazine reported on
the mark-up. The vote shows how deep the cultural norm is.
• In its 2019 resolution on the
issue, SPJ said the constraints are authoritarian and the public has a right to
be dubious of statements from organizations in which employees can’t speak
without guards.
• On Nov. 6, 2019, SPJ and 28 other journalism and open government groups sent a letter to every
member of Congress calling for support of unimpeded communication with
journalists for all federal employees.
• Katherine Eban’s 2019 book “Bottle
of Lies,” a jaw-dropping look at FDA failure, is on several “best books”
lists. When the MedPage editorial (above) came out, Eban said this
muzzling of government scientists was the reason it took 10 years to write the
book.
• The book “Censored 2020,” published in
2019 has an article noting, “Everyone in those agencies is thus silenced
today. So, if there are areas the FDA still didn’t clean up or if CDC staff are
still playing games with anthrax, we likely won’t find out.” (attached)
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CDC Tells Media: We Tell You Who to Talk To
Notice on the CDC Website: From FAQ for Reporters
“Why
is it necessary to go through a press officer when I want to talk with a CDC expert?
“Press officers are here to make sure your
questions get answered by the best spokesperson for your story, within your
deadline. CDC experts are working scientists and may not be available for
interviews at all times. A press officer can help you find the best expert or
spokesperson to answer your questions.”
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Media Relations Handbook for Government, Associations, Nonprofits
and Elected Officials
The last edition listed is 2012.
From the blub on Amazon:
By Bradford Fitch, Editor: Jack Holt. The Media
Relations Handbook is called "the big blue book" on Capitol Hill.
From chapter nine:
About President George W. Bush’s team: “The key to the success was
instilling a mentality (and fear) in the administration that information would
flow only through approved channels. From the campaign and into their
installation in power, the Bush White House established a regimented
communication policy—they built a wall that no leak could seep through.
Reporters decry these closed-mouth operations, as they often
result in only the sanitized, organizationally endorsed message being released
to the public. And sometimes this penchant for secrecy can lead to dangerous
misjudgments and abuses of power. But public policy groups and public figures
have a right to determine their own fate and to articulate their own messages
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Summaries of SPJ Surveys and History
SPJ sponsored seven surveys (2012 to 2016) that
showed the censorship is pervasive. Seven of 10 federal-level journalists said
they consider the government controls over who they interview a form of
censorship. Forty percent of federal PIOs admit to blocking specific reporters
because of past “problems” with their stories. Seventy-eight percent of
political and general assignment reporters at the state and local level say the
public is not getting the information it needs because of barriers to
reporting.
Fifty-six percent of police reporters said rarely
or never can they interview police officers without involving a PIO. Asked why
they monitor interviews, some police PIOs said things like: “To ensure the
interviews stay within the parameters that we want.”
Almost half of science writers said they were
blocked from interviewing agency employees in a timely manner at least
sometimes. Fifty-seven percent said the public is not getting all the
information it needs because of barriers to reporting.
