To NYT: Former Media Official Says CDC's Control On Reporters Got Tighter with Each Administration

This went to Joseph Kahn, Executive Editor of the New York Times, this evening.

Mr. Kahn:

A former CDC media relations head has laid out in explicit terms how each Presidential administration since Reagan has further tightened controls on reporting on that agency without pushback from the press.

Glen Nowak, who held CDC communications positions over decades, says restrictions on communications and on staff people speaking to the press started in the Reagan administration and have built up until all contacts are forbidden unless the reporter goes through the public information office. After that, each request for permission to speak is taken up through the HHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, who is a political appointee. That person can, from behind closed doors, block the contact or control what may be said. He or she may also elevate the request up to the White House.

This is part of pervasive trends in the federal government and elsewhere: my recent article in Columbia Journalism Review.

Probably most press contacts with the agency are deliberately blocked, made infeasible by the lengthy delays, or never attempted by the reporters because they are unlikely to get through, according to discussions with journalists.

Reporters often assert they do have staff contacts who speak to them directly without notifying agency authorities. Nowak says that happens sometimes, but most people at CDC are unlikely to defy the rules, because they have been “trained” over years.

I have no doubt the agency’s pandemic failures result, in great part, from years of a severe lack of independent reporting. Reporters can’t go into the facilities; there is no credentialling for entrance; contacting staff without the censorship is banned; and the censorship is guided by political people often for political reasons.

With over six million pandemic dead, all roughly 80,000 staff in the whole Department of Health and Human Services are banned from speaking to reporters without the oversight. Mostly that means they can’t speak at all.

It’s true that much impressive reporting is being published. In one critical sense, that’s unfortunate. It camouflages the fact that so many people can’t speak or can’t speak without censors, even when they are close observers of things that impact the public.

Given the pervasiveness of this information control across our institutions; the existential crises we live with; and the other signs of democracy decline which surely interlace with these speech restrictions, the potential harm seems limitless.

As a matter of journalism ethics, news professionals should be explaining the speech restrictions to the public and openly, vigorously opposing them.

Will the New York Times tell the public about the restrictions?

I’d be happy to speak to anyone about this. There are resources below.

Thank you.
Kathryn Foxhall

Resources

SPJ has said the controls are censorship and authoritarian. The extensive legal analysis from The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information finds these constraints, although common, are unconstitutional and many courts have agreed with that. (The longer version is a legal brief.) Among many other communications over years, 25 journalism and other groups wrote to the Biden Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy last year asking for elimination of such restrictions in the federal government. Journalism groups officers 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.”

CC:
Bruce D. Brown
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Reporters without Borders

Michael Abramowitz,
Freedom House

Jody Ginsberg
Committee to Protect Journalists

Andrew Rosenberg,
Union of Concerned Scientists

James Geary
Neiman Reports

Ian Bassin
Protect Democracy

David Schulz
Yale Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic

Rep. Steve Cohen
U.S. House of Representatives

News Media for Open Government

New York Times editorial staff

Journalists across the nation