Commentary: The decades-long regression in government openness

Not so long ago, in the days before metal detectors were at every door, reporters could freely wander the halls of many federal agencies with little more than a generic pass identifying them as press. They could pop into document rooms at will to check out the latest public filings or stake out the offices of assistant secretaries in hopes of ambushing them for an impromptu interview. I once showed up unannounced at the secretary of labor’s office and sat in an anteroom, waiting patiently for him to emerge; an assistant eventually informed me that the secretary had snuck out a back door.

In a similar vein, during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, reporters could call bureaucrats directly with questions for stories they were preparing. Nine times out of 10, the official would call back or, at a minimum, would refer them to someone who was better placed to respond. It was considered a part of their job.

Of course, the higher up you went in the organizational ladder, the more likely it was that you’d get a response from a lower-ranking bureaucrat, and there was plenty of evasiveness. But when officials spoke, it would be with an understanding that they would be quoted. When I covered international trade at a time when the American steel industry was beseeching the White House for import restrictions, US Trade Representative staffers would use my reporting as an unofficial channel to disseminate their positions or to float trial balloons to their counterparts in Europe and Japan, and vice versa. Everyone, including me, got what they needed from the arrangement.

Physical access was necessarily tightened in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 attacks, and the anthrax letters. Portal monitors, Jersey barriers, bollards, guard shacks, and pop-up vehicle barriers sprouted like weeds. Reporters could no longer roam halls; like other visitors, they had to be accompanied throughout their visits. No one would argue against the need for security measures, although one might debate whether they are excessive.

Restrictions on the gathering of information have been more insidious. No security considerations can justify the centralization of information access that has built up through each successive administration. Nowadays it’s certain that highly choreographed releases of information will exclude all the background, deliberations, and disagreements that preceded the final product. That’s exactly what an administration wants; it’s not what the American public should have.

Today, calls or emails to individuals who have the information a journalist wants, no matter how innocuous and open it should be, invariably are returned by public affairs staff. Adding a single person to the loop—let alone others up the chain of command who must sign off—inevitably slows response time. If an interview is required, the flack will cite difficulty with locating the appropriate person and scheduling time. Sometimes that individual is “traveling.” The process typically takes days or longer. Requests for follow-up questions are ignored or require yet more days to process.

National labs were once a font of leads about Washington goings-on: It was a lab staffer who in 1993 tipped me that unabashed climate denier William Happer had been fired from his post as director of energy research after quarreling with an aide to Vice President Al Gore about the ozone layer. (Happer now works for President Trump’s National Security Council.) Today the labs often seek Department of Energy headquarters approval for media inquiries. In some cases, someone at headquarters, not a lab expert, will be offered for a filtered response. That gives reporters less opportunity to work their lab contacts to see what else could be happening of interest. I suspect that headquarters sometimes pulls rank on the labs simply to show who’s boss.

Yet more annoying is the increased use of background briefings. Once I was invited along with a number of other science reporters to a lunch hosted by Bill Richardson, then secretary of energy under President Bill Clinton. Without warning he declared his comments were to be on background. I would have walked out of the meeting, but dessert hadn’t yet been served. As I recall, Richardson said nothing controversial or even newsy.

Though it isn’t new, the use of background briefings seems to have gained further momentum in the Trump administration. The once-unwritten rule that Senate-confirmed presidential appointees, including assistant secretaries, would speak to reporters on the record is long gone. Today those appointees will more often speak only as “senior government officials” or some such alias. The practice has become so entrenched that a briefing on the details of Trump’s latest budget request was undertaken by “senior DOE officials.” I can confirm they weren’t revealing details of nuclear weapons designs.

To be fair, reporters, myself included, have helped proliferate anonymity in order to coax reluctant sources to talk. But using such cover to disseminate official administration policy has no reasonable justification. Consumers of news are left having to take the reporter’s word as to the authoritativeness of the information. And officials don’t have to take responsibility for what they say.

The on-background tag has in recent years become enshrined in conferences that operate under the “Chatham House Rule"—reporters and other attendees can use the information from the discussions but can’t identify who said what. The restriction is intended to allow for more frank discussion of controversial issues. But it can be invoked for talk about the weather too. Last month the rule was applied to government speakers at the American Meteorological Society’s Washington Forum, where recently installed presidential science adviser Kelvin Droegemeier gave a presentation. Droegemeier aide Ross Gillfillan says Droegemeier did not request the rule. But, he adds, it’s not Droegemeier’s inclination to circumvent policies established by the host.

David Kramer is an editor at Physics Today and a longtime policy reporter.