Wednesday, September 26, 2012

EPA air chief defends effort to control message

Environmental Protection Agency air chief Gina McCarthy on Tuesday defended her agency’s efforts to control its message — including controlling journalists’ ability to speak to EPA scientists.
“There is no question that EPA carefully manages EPA’s business, which means that not everybody has the credibility within the agency to speak to everything going on within the agency,” McCarthy said during a panel on citizen access to scientific information that was hosted by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Human beings are human beings,” McCarthy said, adding that EPA has to make sure “personalities don’t get in the way of really discussing science in a way that maintains agency credibility.” In contrast, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Assistant Administrator Robert Detrick said that at his agency, “we don’t have to be tracked by anybody. If I get called by a reporter, I can respond to a reporter.” Still, he said, NOAA scientists must be clear to differentiate between the agency’s opinions and their own.
Reporters have long complained that some federal agencies don’t live up to President Barack Obama’s pledges of open government even though most agencies have become more adept at putting information online for the public.
Online information is a “one-way street,” said Curtis Brainard, a staff writer for the Columbia Journalism Review who said the Obama administration has taken on a “mantle of openness and transparency — and I think unfairly so.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81666.html#ixzz27aorJi69

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