PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KS — To hear Phill Brooks tell it, statehouse reporters in Missouri used to have serious access.
Brooks, a correspondent for KMOX radio in St. Louis and a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, has covered politics in the state for four decades. At the beginning of his career, he says, he would go see Jerry Bryan, the press secretary to Gov. Warren Hearnes, when he had a policy question.
“He’d say, ‘Phill, why are you asking me what the governor thinks?’ And he’d usher me into the governor’s office,” Brooks says.
Sometimes it got less formal than that. Once, Brooks recalls, he phoned Hearnes at home with a question; the first lady answered and told him, “Warren’s on the head.” Then she passed the receiver to her husband, and the interview commenced, apparently from within the gubernatorial bathroom.
When it comes to journalistic access, that was maybe a little too much of a good thing. But Brooks tells the story to underscore how much things have changed: Under the current governor, Jay Nixon, the state keeps a tight leash on information, funneling media inquiries for all agencies through a centralized public information office and regularly blocking department heads and agency experts from talking to reporters, Brooks and other journalists say.
The trend is part of a larger pattern that reporters and scholars have observed in other states and the federal government, of course. “Just like journalists learn from each other at conferences… the same things happen with government PIOs,” says David Cuillier, who is a journalism professor at the University of Arizona and the former president of the Society of Professional Journalists. “They’re teaching each other how to be more effective at stonewalling.”
But, in the view of some observers, the shifts in Missouri have been especially extreme–in addition to the routine restrictions, Nixon is one of only two governors to “win” a Golden Padlock award from the nonprofit group Investigative Reporters and Editors, for the secrecy surrounding the state’s death-penalty protocols. And there is a lot more at stake than one journalist’s ability to reach the governor on the can.
Brooks and Bob Priddy, two of the deans of the state press corps, are probably the two most vocal critics of the state of affairs in the Show-Me State. Priddy told me in an interview last month, on the occasion of his retirement after 40 years with the Missourinet radio news service, that “the only problem [with Nixon’s press shop] is that it’s not a communications office at all, it’s a stonewall office. And this is the worst it’s been, ever.” Brooks agrees: “This is completely the opposite of access to the heart of government that I have had from 1970 to the beginning of the Nixon administration six years ago.”
But they are not the only ones with complaints. Other journalists share similar stories about limited or nonexistent access to department heads and technical experts. At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, veteran reporter Virginia Young and editorial page editor Tony Messenger have put their concerns in print. A former public employee with the state’s Department of Natural Resources recently wrote about the arrival of “information control” in state government. Meanwhile, St. Louis Public Radio and the state’s three largest papers have brought lawsuits to challenge death-penalty secrecy.
The closest thing to a defense of the administration from a journalist that I found comes from Jo Mannies, a longtime reporter for the Post-Dispatch now with St. Louis Public Radio. “Nixon has been a pill when it comes to allowing access to department heads,” Mannies told me in an email. “But frankly, that’s been true of most Missouri governors that I’ve dealt with over the decades.”
‘Correct, comprehensive, and reflects the official position’
Nixon’s press secretary, Scott Holste, sees things differently. In an email to CJR, he cited several media stories from this year and late 2014 in which state officials spoke to reporters.
“Our policy is to ensure that accurate information is provided in a timely manner,” Holste wrote. “When appropriate, subject matter experts are made available.” And, he added, “please keep in mind that we often have sources within the agencies who provide information on background to help the understanding of the reporter and the public, and those sources are not quoted by name. We have officials who speak to the press and the public at public meetings, public hearings, press conferences and via e-mail response as well.”
But there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that decisions about which state employees can talk to the press, and when, are made by a centralized communications staff. In November, the governor himself seemed to acknowledge the policy. At a press conference, Priddy asked Nixon if the state’s new revenue director would be able to take calls from reporters and speak to them. Nixon’s rather tortured response, transcribed by Priddy, prompted the reporter to say, “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”
When Brooks, who was also present, and another reporter posed follow-ups about media access to the state epidemiologist, Nixon pointed to the recent mini-panic over the nation’s Ebola response as evidence of the need for a consistent, top-down government response to public health issues. Holste, the press secretary, likewise told me last week that, “given the broad subject areas that are often discussed, a single point of contact within each department is provided to the media to ensure that the information is correct, comprehensive, and reflects the official position of the agency.”
At the presser, Nixon also offered another, more blunt rejoinder to Priddy and company: “Maybe the state epidemiologist is working, not sitting there and waiting for somebody to call.”
‘The same effect as censorship’
It’s a point worth addressing: Why should technical experts and decision-makers in state agencies take the time to–or even be allowed to–talk to journalists?
Because–as Cuillier and former National Press Club President Angela Greiling Keane wrote last year–“muzzling government employees has the same effect as censorship. It hides problems that need to be exposed.”
Cuillier and Keane cited an instance in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blocked a reporter from speaking to one of its investigators about a severe tuberculosis outbreak, and another in which the Department of Health and Human Services prohibited a federally-employed psychologist from talking to The New York Times about allegations of child abuse on an Indian reservation.
Similarly, Brooks says that during a food-poisoning outbreak in the St. Louis area a few years ago, he and his colleagues had difficulty obtaining accurate information from the state health department and had to speak with county officials before they were put in touch with a well-informed health professional.
Dan Norris, the ex-Department of Natural Resources employee who wrote the open letter criticizing the agency, told Jacob Barker of the Post-Dispatch that he would have liked to share more information about environmental risks from a fire at a St. Louis-area landfill, but that state government protocol prevented it.
“I feel like you have a responsibility to the citizens, first and foremost,” Norris told the P-D. “Nowadays, it seems like there’s hardly anything that goes out the door information-wise.”
Even in the absence of crises or scandals, the public benefits from a free flow of communication between government experts and journalists—who, as Brooks points out, in many cases are not technical experts, even on their own beats. “I would like to have the kind of conversation I used to have with health officials just to teach myself about these issues,” he says.
But, he adds, in the current climate, “I can’t even talk to the state epidemiologist about the measles in Missouri.”
Unfortunately, there’s little sign of change on the horizon–either in Missouri or elsewhere. Last summer, SPJ sent a letter to President Obama objecting to the constraints on access to federal government staff, and urging reform measures. The White House response touted a series of unrelated transparency measures and skirted the core complaints. “They blew it off,” Cuillier says.
In Missouri, there has been much discussion in this legislative session about ethics reform and transparency. But, Brooks says, “For all the Freedom of Information laws that can be passed, you ultimately can’t pass a law that will force an official to talk to us.”
Deron Lee is CJR’s correspondent for Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. A writer and copy editor who has spent nine years with the National Journal Group, he has also contributed to The Hotline and the Lawrence Journal-World. He lives in the Kansas City area. Follow him on Twitter at @deron_lee.