Six Million Pandemic Dead; HHS Staff Still Banned from Speaking to Reporters without Minders

The following letter went to Xavier Becerra, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, March 18.

Secretary Becerra:

This is a question for the news conference planned for tomorrow. It’s being copied to 1000 plus health reporters.

Over several presidential administrations bans on HHS employees speaking to reporters without notification of the authorities have been implemented and have grown progressively tighter.

Among other things, in the years prior to the pandemic CDC blocked and limited reporters, with decisions made behind closed doors about who could talk to which reporter and what could be said.

Now we have six million dead globally and the blockages on reporters continue.

---Why is it ethical for HHS to prohibit all contacts between reporters and staff unless they are overseen by PIOs or others?
---Why is it ethical for HHS to block the information that reporters would get from those staff members who the agency successfully intimidates from telling reporters things because of the oversight or the total blockages?

---Why is it safe for the public for reporting to be under such controls? Even in light of all the problems with free speech, why is it safer for information flow to be under the control of a few people in power with their own conflicts of interest?

I’m respectfully requesting an honest discussion and not general answers like “HHS is very open” or “We put out a lot of information.”

Below is a letter opposing the controls sent by journalism groups to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, as well as other resources.

Please note, also below, that an extensive analysis by the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information says these requirements for reporters to always go through PIOs is illegal.

Thanks for your attention.

I’d be happy to talk to anyone at most anytime.

Kathryn Foxhall

000

Resources


---A letter from freedom of information officers of the Society of Professional Journalists and Society of Environmental Journalists went to the Office of Science and Technology Policy decrying the recent scientific integrity report that endorsed these restrictions. We said the policy, “not only violates the scientists’ First Amendment rights, it tramples on the public’s right to know, and it contributes to the spread of misinformation and distrust in government.”

---Last July, 25 journalism and other groups wrote to OSTP asking that the blockages be ended and that reporters be given credentials to enter facilities.
---Please note in particular that The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information has an extensive legal analysis that finds these rules, although very common, are unconstitutional and many courts have agreed with that. It also says that journalism organizations, themselves, could sue to stop the blockages.
--Yale Law School’s recent conference on access included “Censorship by PIO.”
--The Society of Professional Journalists has said the controls are censorship and authoritarian.
--SPJ has sponsored surveys showing the restraints in federal, state, and local government, education, government science agencies and police departments.
--A recent webinar, “The Gagging of America,” from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, has a discussion of blockages in both the public and private sector.

For Sunshine Week: Controls that Have Become the Norm; No Answer from Biden Science Office

INDIANAPOLIS – Editor’s Note: The following column was written by Kathryn Foxhall, Society of Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee vice chair, for Sunshine Week.

Last year, 25 groups wrote to President Joe Biden’s administration saying journalists’ jobs are intentionally hindered by the government in many ways. These include, as we wrote, “barring government scientists, issue specialists and other government employees from communicating directly with reporters and even refusing to allow interviews of such scientists or specialists, even with oversight by a public information officer.”

Addressed to the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, the letter was signed on by groups including the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Newspaper Association, the Society for Environmental Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists.

The issue is far from new, of course. Over the past three decades the forced monitoring and blocking of journalists has become tighter and tighter. Some journalists say one presidential administration learns from the last and then builds the controls stronger.

Foundational to the restrictions is the message that agencies or offices give to the employees — written or otherwise — that they may never speak to a journalist without monitoring from the bosses, often through public information offices.

This means that when a reporter contacts a staff member at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration, that person will usually tell the reporter they have to go through the PIOs. From there, officials decide behind closed doors whether there will be an answer at all, who can speak and what can be said.

A comprehensive analysis from the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information found that existing controls are unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment.

Last spring the Washington, D.C., chapter of SPJ wrote to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, saying the “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.”

Walensky responded, “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 contact for news media to provide relevant background information and to ensure questions are answered in a timely manner.”

With reporters’ access pretty well controlled through that choke point, leaders can also make briefings few and far between, without fear reporters will get around them.

Journalists get stories, of course. Sometimes we take what officials hand to us or interviews they allow under monitors. Sometimes we fill an article out with comments from outside sources. Sometimes insiders defy the rules and talk to us without reporting to the authorities.

However, with up to several thousand people in an institution prohibited to speak, or prohibited to speak without minders, it’s impossible that we know enough about issues critical to the public.

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, The New York Times reported that CDC was not releasing all the data it has on COVID. Perhaps reporters should have been in the buildings getting to know staff people, chatting with them normally.

Meanwhile, the controls have become somewhat of a societal norm. Many government entities on the federal, state and local level, businesses and nonprofit organizations put the no-talking-to-the-press rules on employees.

There are many reasons these controls have happened, including reporters rushing to get a story; journalists believing what they get is the story, rather than a limited piece of the overall context; and officials legitimately fearing something will blow up on them, sometimes before they know about it themselves.

However, there is also a great deal of manipulation of information to serve political or other purposes.
As Russia is so profusely illustrating for us, information control by people in power is not just wrong, it’s one of the most corrosive and deadly forces in human existence.

In January, the Office of Science and Technology Policy published the scientific integrity report for the Biden administration, which basically endorsed press control policies as they have existed for years.

Freedom of information officers from SPJ and SEJ wrote to the OSTP, saying the gatekeeping process “has slowed and effectively constricted the flow of information to journalists. The public is instead often fed a steady diet of curated information and official ‘talking points’ designed to support the agency’s position.”

Seven months after the original letter, and with the exception of acknowledgement emails, OSTP has not answered any of the groups’ correspondence.