Things to Know about Controls on Reporting by PIOs and Other Authorities

History

We don’t have a handle on when businesses or agencies began forcing reporters to go through public information officers or instituted various restrictions related to that mandate
.

Certainly, there were attempts to enforce this kind of restriction in parts of the federal government prior to the 1990s. White House reporter Helen Thomas noted the Kennedy White House was turned into an open beat with reporters able to interview staff without clearance from the press secretary—indicating it had not always been so.

However, for decades reporters did talk to agency staff and Congressional aides without any thought of an intermediary. Some reporters walked a beat in the agencies’ halls talking to various employees.

The Centers for Disease Control (as it was then called) in the 1980s had a 90-page handbook listing experts by subject matter, with their direct phone numbers, which it gave to reporters.

Growing Restrictions

Some reporters began to notice restrictions in the mid-1990s, some earlier, in federal agencies and Congressional offices. However, for a number subsequent of years some employees would still talk to a reporter without the controls and some offices didn’t have the rules. The restrictions gradually got much tighter over time and new obstructions are still popping up. At first there was a standard in agencies that reporters would not be outright denied access to the persons they wanted to talk to. That has long gone by the wayside.

These practices may have migrated from the business sector but we have not demonstrated that. The restraints seem to have grown in parallel or following the growth of the public relations profession.

Overall, the difference for journalism has been drastic for some time now.

Related Controls

Restrictions that were built on the mandate to contact the PIO or were otherwise related also became more common. These included delays that are too long for most news gathering purposes; demands for questions in writing; multiple layers of permission to speak; PIOs sitting in on interviews in person or on the phone; blockages from speaking to anyone at all; answers in writing from PIOs that do not address the question and/or ignore the request to speak to someone.

Reporters were also blocked from physical access to most agencies.

Is It Legal?

A number of journalists in no way concede it is legal. Other people say it is legal due in part to the 2006 Garcetti v. Ceballos Supreme Court Case. In a 5-4 decision the court said an assistant district attorney who wrote a memo taking a view in opposition to his boss could be disciplined because he was acting “pursuant to official duties.”

Obviously, however, the restrictions had grown up well before that decision.

The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida is working on legal arguments that these restrictions are not legal. Frank LoMonte, director of the center, says journalists tell him the restrictions through PIOs or other authorities are the worst ongoing pain point in newsgathering.

He says, “The U.S. Supreme Court has said over and over again that you do not forfeit all of your First Amendment rights just because you take a job working for the government.”

In the more recent 2014 Supreme Court case, Lane v. Franks, LoMonte says the court, in essence, indicates, “We did not mean that when you talk about your work you have no First Amendment protection. We mean when you are talking as work assignment.” Edward Lane was a community college employee who testified about state representative who was on the payroll but did no work. He was fired after the case was over.

The Brechner Center is trying to draw a map for media lawyers who want to take these cases on.

LoMonte also contends the gag orders may be illegal in the private sector due to protections under the National Labor Relations Act.

Early Obama Administration

Organized work by journalism groups and others fighting the censorship goes back at least to the early Obama administration. About 13 journalism groups wrote to the administration asking for an end to the constraints. They worked with the Office of Science and Technology Policy behind the scenes because OSTP said it would write a scientific integrity policy and it might address the issue.

When the 2010 policy came out, it stated, flabbergastingly, “Federal scientists may speak to the media and the public about scientific and technological matters based on their official work, with appropriate coordination with their immediate supervisor and their public affairs office.”

It may have been the highest official endorsement up to that time of the prohibitions against communication without notification of authorities.

Continuing Work in Opposing the Censorship

Journalists sponsored several public sessions about the restrictions, including a 2013 debate at the National Press Club. In three letters to the Obama and Trump administrations between 38 and 70 journalism and other groups called for their elimination. In 2015 representatives of those groups met with White House officials. The representatives at the meeting were from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Society of News Editors. Among other things Press Secretary Josh Earnest said it should be part of journalists’ skills that they can get people to say things with the third parties listening.

SPJ has made opposition to “Censorship by PIO” a priority. It led the effort on the letters to the White House. It has a website (www.spj.org/pios.asp) with links to case studies, the foundational surveys it sponsored and articles. A 2018 session on the controls had about 60 attendees. In its most recent resolution on the restrictions SPJ says these constraints threaten “the free flow of information essential to a democratic society” and they “pose a grave risk to public welfare.”

Seven Surveys Sponsored by SPJ

The seven surveys by Carolyn Carlson show the restrictions have become pervasive in various areas of life. Some of the findings are quite chilling.

Seven of 10 journalists at the federal level said they consider the government controls over who they interview a form of censorship.

Forty percent of PIOs on the federal level admit to blocking specific reporters because of past “problems” with their stories.

Seventy-eight percent of political and general assignment reporters at the state and local level say the public is not getting the information it needs because of barriers to reporting.

Almost a third of education reporters say they had been prohibited by PIOs from interviewing school, department or institution employees--this in an era of scandals over child abuse cover up.

Fifty-six percent of police reporters said rarely or never can they interview police officers without involving a PIO. Asked why they monitor interviews, some police PIOs said things like:

“To ensure the interviews stay within the parameters that we want.”

The 2015 survey of science writers found, for example, that almost half said they were blocked from interviewing agency employees in a timely manner at least some of the time.

https://www.spj.org/pdf/foi/science-writers-survey-report.pdf

Fifty-seven percent of science writers said the public is not getting all the information it needs because of barriers to reporting.

Taken together, the surveys illustrate that millions of people are silenced on an ongoing basis.  

Questions:

--How can it be ethical journalism to do newsgathering under censorship and not loudly oppose it or even tell the public about it?

--With upwards of thousands of people in agencies, etc., silenced even after an article is published, how is it possible we are not missing critical information?

--Is the fact that some news outlets have these restrictions on their own employees one reason they don’t talk about this censorship?

--Seriously, is our situation just not as bad as China or North Korea?

(Please see also www.spj.org/pios.asp)