When Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
issued a memo
that requires all contacts with news reporters to be coordinated through the Pentagon's public affairs office, he highlighted
a widespread practice
that journalism advocates say restricts information, creates political “spin” and gags policy experts.
Those types of directives precede the Trump administration, but they have greater urgency during a health crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic when access to expert data is crucial to inform the public.
“It's become pretty painfully obvious that elected officials have a vested interest in selectively ‘spinning’ data to convey the impression that they have COVID-19 under control,” said
Frank D. LoMonte
, a journalism professor at the University of Florida and director of The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information.
“If journalists can't talk to the actual subject-matter experts, then we're all going to be left with unverified and selectively cherry-picked claims that might cause people to make uneducated decisions about their safety.”
LoMonte has
written extensively
about efforts to silence or control the ability of public employees to speak freely. We reached out to him to learn more about the history and the implications of these forms of information control.
What do these restrictions mean at a time of dwindling journalists resources, particularly at the local level?
LoMonte
: It's less and less possible for news organizations to cultivate the source relationships within government agencies that might get them around restrictive PIO gatekeeping policies. News organizations have been buying out their most senior reporters to save money, and those are the reporters with the deepest network of contacts.
Reporters who used to cover one or two agencies are now covering a dozen, and they just can't spend the time pounding the pavement to meet the rank-and-file employees at all of those agencies while still meeting deadlines and cranking out work. And then you overlay COVID-19 on top of it all, and it's even more challenging to develop a rapport with anyone at an agency other than an official P.R. spokesperson.
It's really much more important than ever to challenge these agency gag policies and get them off the books, because we can't assume that agencies are all being aggressively covered by experienced, well-sourced reporters anymore.
It is a maxim of Washington journalism that good reporters avoid press secretaries and public information officers and develop their own reporter-source relationships with government officials in the know. Why is that not adequate?
LoMonte
: When people are placed in fear for their jobs, they'll either shut down from speaking entirely or speak only anonymously. It's well-documented that stories full of anonymous sources are regarded as less trustworthy, and the use of anonymous sources has been weaponized by media critics to suggest that stories are fabricated. If the agency's stated policy is that it's a punishable disciplinary offense to get caught speaking to the media without authorization, then journalists will be left with only officially hand-picked sources or anonymous ones.
Many institutions and organizations in the private and non-profit sector require employees to seek approval before speaking to reporters. Are those efforts at centralizing communications different than when the government does it?
LoMonte
: The National Labor Relations Board has been telling employers for decades that they can't enforce categorical gag policies, because that will inhibit people from speaking out about working conditions and safety hazards. The problem is that almost nobody knows this line of NLRB precedent exists, and the penalty for being a violator is generally not much more than being ordered to rewrite the company's policies, which is not exactly a powerful deterrent.
The National Labor Relations Act doesn't cover every workplace — it doesn't cover mom-and-pop local retailers or overtly religious organizations — but where it applies, it outlaws gagging employees from discussing their work with the press and public. So while I think people in government service probably are taking their cues from the private sector, the answer is that the private sector is also breaking the law, and just because the guy in the lane next to you is driving 90 mph doesn't mean it's legal for you to do it, too.