To Editors: Isn't This Corruption of the Press Itself?

 The following are excerpts from a letter I sent repeatedly to editors at the Washington Post, The New York Times, Science and Scientific American. I have received only inconsequential replies.

The discussion is about the restraints on reporting, which often start with banning an organization’s staff from speaking to journalists without going through PIOs.

After years of work on this issue, I contend these systems, grown up over decades, are abusive, lethal corruption of the institutions of power, but also of the press. They are one of the prime causes of the pandemic failures and they are readying us for failures elsewhere. Some history is in my Columbia Journalism Review article.

I’d like to make this an open letter and I’m requesting your answers on my questions below.

Very importantly, a former CDC media relations head, probably as close a witness to this development as anyone, says that the controls tightened over decades because there was no push back; that they are very political; and that they have been successful in suppressing information.

CDC is only one salient example. These controls now exist from Congressional offices and most the federal establishment down to local police departments.

The opposition work against this has gone on for some time. The Society of Professional Journalists has said the controls are censorship and authoritarian. The extensive legal analysis from The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information found that these constraints, though very common, are unconstitutional and many courts have agreed with that. (The longer version is a legal article.)  Among many other communications over years, 25 journalism and other groups wrote to the Biden Administration calling for elimination of such restrictions in the federal government. Journalism groups FOI officers told the New York Times the press should be openly fighting these controls.

Many journalists’ answers to this situation are along the lines that reporters work hard, are highly skilled and have some contacts who will talk to them. However, that does not tell us what proportion of critical issues we understand. It does add perspective to notice how many serious problems come to light only after they have existed for a long time.

Despite some very impressive journalism in your publications, all journalists are missing stories and parts of the stories because most people around the situations are successfully blocked from talking, even after the stories are published.

 

My questions include:

---Why isn’t this historically hazardous? Why wouldn’t human institutions, including government agencies, develop corrosion after years of controlling public scrutiny of themselves? Given that we are still struggling to understand what happened in the pandemic, is the fact that all HHS staff are constrained in their speech a crime against humanity?

---Is there any reason to think journalists are getting the majority of what is most critical given that so many people close to the situations are silenced?

---What are the ethics of journalists working under these controls without openly opposing them or explaining them to the public? Is the press empowering lethal censorship?

---Control of information is at least one of the deadliest things in human history. Now we are in an era of existentialist threats to humanity. Why are we taking the risk of allowing any new constraints on reporting?

 

Also, would you confirm that:

---For many years reporters have not had routine physical access to HHS facilities, including FDA or CDC?

---There is no credentialling system to allow reporters access to those facilities?

---Usually, reporters must go through the public information officers to speak to anyone at HHS agencies, because employees are instructed not to talk to them otherwise? (This is with the understanding that sometimes staffers do defy the rules and talk to reporters without going through channels.)

---Frequently reporters are blocked from speaking to people they request at HHS agencies, either because the request is denied outright or because the permission process takes so long the reporter can’t wait?

---Reporters were under these controls the entire time, as well as years before, while we had a mass death event?

 

The Basics from Former CDC Media Relations Head:

About Administrations’ Controls and Remaining Elected

In an interview with me Glen Nowak, former head of CDC media relations said that:

---Scientists and others are unlikely to talk to reporters without oversight by the public information office because they have been “trained.”

---Since the 1980s, each political administration saw that the prior administration had experienced no ill effects from tightening the controls and proceeded to tighten them further.

---Every contact between a reporter and employee must be authorized up through the HHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, who is often a communications person from the presidential campaign. That person, “can say yes or no, or they can add their recommendations and thoughts to the key messages, and they can decide whether if this is something that should be elevated to either the awareness level at the White House….”  

---“So, administrations, typically, their priority is trying to remain elected. And they’re often looking at policies through, you know: how will this help or not help when it comes to running for election? How will this help maintain or grow support? And so, yeah, that’s basically the bottom line,” Nowak said.