Teachers’ Union President: Barriers to Talking Are Maybe Not Putin, But They are Very Dangerous

FYI to readers:

This is a story picked up from last month, but the points are still good.

You would not compare the bans on employees speaking to the press to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, because Putin is a murderer, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, of the largest teachers’ unions.

“But the roots of it are very dangerous. The roots are basically saying, ‘We’re going to stop people from giving real, accurate, truthful information about conditions about public good….’”

Weingarten, who spoke at a Sunshine Week online session sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Press Club, was pointing specifically to the order the Philadelphia School Board has considered that would prohibit employees from speaking to the press without express permission from the district.

She said, “Public education is a public good. The public is entitled to know what’s going on. Teachers should be able to say what’s going on. There should not be this censorship about this.”

Weingarten also told the audience that if a school or district refuses to allow a reporter to speak to an employee, it’s indeed possible that the union can help getting the two together.

On the legal side of that question, First Amendment Attorney Frank LoMonte said, journalists should know from the start that a public school or university is a government agency and, “The Supreme Court has said over and over again public employees do not check their First Amendment rights at the door when they sign on to a government job and that applies to teachers or principals or coaches or anybody in public school.”

“And so, these pervasive policies, which we see at all levels of government, including education, that restrict employees from being able to talk without permission, they’re all against the law,” LoMonte said. He is former director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Expression and has recently become counsel for CNN.

Delece Smith-Barrow, education reporter at Politico, said, “One thing that journalists face so often is not being able to get the information that they want, or get access to someone who has the information that they need, and it’s not that we need it personally, it’s that news consumers need it.”

Some of the blockage, she said, “Can look like slow or no response to a FOIA request….Maybe they’re a principal, an administrator that is central to your story who you need to reach and you’re being told by the school district that person can’t speak with you.”

Eva-Marie Ayala, the Education Lab editor for The Dallas Morning News, described reaching out to an employee in a local agency and having a public relations person get back, really upset, and saying the reporter was being nefarious to go around the PR office.

“And you know, that is our job,” Ayala said. If a reporter is going to name someone in the paper, perhaps when there is an allegation against them, the journalist has a duty to go above and beyond to reach out to the person and get their side of the story, she stated.

Ayala also said some school boards have policies that only one person on the board, typically the school board president, should speak to the press. She said, “These school board members are elected by the public. They don’t elect one person or the whole board. They individually elect the school board trustees to speak. We reach out to them as needed. If they decline to comment, we put that in there. Again, it is all about transparency.”

Ayala said one of her pet peeves, which she gets all the time, is the request to send her questions in advance when she asks for an interview. She says she replies that she usually doesn’t share questions in advance, but she might outline some of the topics she is interested in. That’s because, the interviewee typically will say something that causes the reporter to ask a different question, and that will trigger another response from the source person.

“And, so it’s a conversation. It’s not just a one-way street.”

Further reporting on the panel is on the NPC website.