Tomorrow we will be talking about the restraints on reporters at the Whistleblowers' Summit: Summit
Panels (whistleblowersummit.com)
Frank LoMonte, counsel for CNN, will discuss why it's illegal to ban employees in public agencies from speaking to reporters without oversight.
Haisten Willis, Chair of the Freedom of Information Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, will talk about the constraints and SPJ's actions to oppose them.
I'll be talking about the statement from Glen Nowak, former head of media relations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who says controls over reporters’ contacts appeared during the Reagan administration and because there was no pushback, each presidential administration further tightened them.
A list of resources is here.
Registration for the summit itself is free:
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Below are resources on the constraints on reporting, gag rules, censorship by PIO, etc.
-- Last year 25 journalism and other groups wrote to the Biden Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy asking for elimination of such restrictions in the federal government and for restoring journalists' access to agencies.
--The extensive legal analysis from The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information finds that these constraints, although very common, are unconstitutional and that many courts have agreed with that. The longer version is a legal brief.
--As the Covid death toll mounted in 2020, for instance, CDC told their media relations staff to remember that just because reporters persist in asking to talk to someone in the agency that doesn’t mean they have to be allowed to.
--The Society of Professional Journalists has said the controls are censorship and authoritarian.
--“Editor and Publisher” featured the issue in October, 2021.
-- The Yale Law School Access and Accountability Conference last October had a “Fighting Censorship by PIO” session. (The agenda is here and the PIO papers [Foxhall and LoMonte] are here. The video is here, session number 5.)
--In 2019 there was legislation in Congress with a provision to allow federal scientists to talk to reporters without prior approval. The provision was killed in committee.
--A recent webinar, “The Gagging of America,” from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, has a discussion with First Amendment Attorney Frank LoMonte on blockages in both the public and private sector.
--Last year the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency affirmed that it would continue these controls.
--Kathryn Foxhall’s blog as other information.
Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple writes today on the lack of access for some reporters in some areas of the White House.
He quotes one reporter as saying, “It should be a big thing for us in this country: How to hold officeholders accountable if we’re not able to question them?”
As with previous controversies about White House credentials and access, I am flabbergasted at our determination not to talk about the massive other controls on press access, for physical entry and for contacts with people, in Washington and across the country.
Below is part of my letter to Wemple and about 280 White House correspondents.
"Regarding the article, 'Some White House Reporters Object to Exclusion from Biden Events:'
"A number of agencies including HHS have no credentialling system for reporters’ access and they ban all staff from talking to the press without oversight by authorities/PIOs. The system on its face prohibits confidential communications and it means many reporters’ supplications for contact are blocked, deliberately or otherwise.
"Should we not talk about this? Is it just too big a part of our culture now, after 30-40 years of this tightening? Should journalists just assume whatever sources we get are enough?
"As just one example, over two years into the pandemic with catastrophic missteps and at least six million dead, nearly all the 11,000 or so employees at CDC are essentially silenced…..
"We told the New York Times recently, “The press should not be taking the risk of assuming that what we get is all there is when so many people are silenced. We should be openly fighting these controls.”
"The next catastrophe is coming. We need for journalists to stand up on this.
"I’d be happy to talk to anyone."
