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.