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Highway Safety Agency Silences Engineers
nbauman writes "Nichole R. Nason, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, put a new rule into effect that NHTSA officials, including scientists and engineers, are no longer allowed to be quoted by reporters, according to the New York Times. If the officials want to say anything it has to be off the record. The only one they can quote is Nason herself. However, she refused to be interviewed about the no-attribution policy."
Any government or office within the government (intelligence and other appropriately sensitive agencies aside) who are proud of their work should be encouraged and willing to discuss openly with the people who give them the authority and resources to do their jobs.
This whole issue of lack of transparency is becoming a larger and larger problem with the government and again.... if we are not careful will result into a slide into fascism. Transparency of government is one of the bedrocks of a democracy, hell, even a republic. The current Whitehouse administration has dramatically accelerated this move towards fascism and again, I have to quote Milton Mayer's book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1939-1945 where an anonymous professor said "What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. "
This sort of thing is a classic fascist move where *free* representatives from government are not allowed to speak to a *free* press. Granted, if you are in the uniformed services or currently employed by a federal office engaged in sensitive work (one of the dozen or so intelligence agencies), then this sort of censorship is acceptable. However, this administration has censored publicly funded scientists engaged in research that potentially impacts upon political policy of the current administration and now National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration officials from talking? One has to wonder just what it is that Bush and Co. want to keep from the American people. What is NHTSA hiding from us?
What moves like this do is open the possibility of lack of oversight when it comes to issues of bribes, coercion and worse. Imagine if a powerful automotive manufacturer were to have a fundamental safety problem with one of their automobiles. Without access by the public and the free press whose job it is to ask the hard questions, we open ourselves up to abuse, manipulation and more unpleasantness than you may imagine.
People need to become more involved in politics, get rid of your disillusionment of representative government and make a difference. Don't be sheep and become satisfied with the current state if you are not happy with it and help, but don't be stupid about it. Work within the system because with the current administration, they will view any extreme political moves as a justification for expanding their controls even further over the populace. Demand more of our politicians. Expect transparency, honesty and be more willing to support impeachment of those officials who do not represent the will of those who elected them. Look beyond single issues in those candidates whom you vote for. Don't be seduced by claims of piety or religious devotion as one mans beliefs are another's anathema. I am not saying that religion is bad as I possess strong spiritual beliefs, but be wary of those who wear religion on their sleeves. And do not accept as this NHTSA official maintains that the only way to say anything is if it is off the record. Ms. Nason, you are a government employee working for an office whose role is to protect the American citizen, save lives and prevent injury. You are not entitled to any special protection under the Constitution than the rest of us and you ultimately answer to the American people, not a transient senior government official intent on building a political legacy. Shame on you for gagging the scientists under your watch whose duty it is to serve the American people and report to them on issues related to safety and well being on the roads and highways.
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This is to save taxpayer money. After all, if engineers were to let slip how bad our crumbling infrastructure has gotten, we might actually have to fix it, and that's very expensive. And you don't want your taxes raised, do you?
Of course not.
</sarcasm>
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Many portions of the U.S. infrastructure are crumbling away in front of our eyes. To silence those who could help the less technically inclined understand some of the details of what is going on reflects the worst kind of censorship. The public deserves to know why we our lives are being placed at risk in spite of being one of the world's "superpowers."
Full and open disclosure, along with rational discussion about the best way to put our country back on track, is what we need. Unless they are trying to protect some awful secret...
It is if they ever want to use you as a source again.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
We all know how the press can get stories wrong, especially technical ones. I am not 100% sure that this isn't a good idea. The press can misquote or take out of context just about anything, so when an engineer says something techincal but is misquoted about how bad things really are it just causes an uproar. No, I haven't RTFA yet, about to, but wanted to get my knee jerk reaction before I do...will post later if my thoughts change after RTFA.
A reasonable compromise should be that personal opinions should be required to be prefaced with, "The following is my personal opinion only and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer". That is quite fair and simple. Maybe require the reporter to sign off on it.
Table-ized A.I.
Having attribution for quotes makes them able to be verified. Disclosing journalistic sources doesn't quite enable the same degree of many-eyeballs as disclosing software source does, since every reader can't just call George Bush up and personally ask him if he said such-and-such, but it does at least assure that if a quote becomes a point of contention and controversy, someone will check it out. Also, if a quote is attributed to a specific individual, there's a reasonable chance of determining whether they said that. If it is just attributed to "sources close to so-and-so" there's really no way to know if someone among this unspecified group of individuals may or may not have said it. In all, "sources speaking on the condition of anonymity say..." is just journalist talk for "rumor has it that..."
The day our government might start becoming transparent again. Cross your fingers...
Have you read my blog lately?
FTA:
---
Ms. Nason felt it was necessary for N.H.T.S.A. to have a "central spokesperson" and "we were finding a lot of stuff did not need to be on the record," David Kelly, her chief of staff, told me.
---
This seems to me that this would make it so that the following would be easily plausible:
1. Reporter gets bad news about something which effects the public from one of their engineers, staff members, or experts but cannot attribute their source.
2. Reporter has to leave it as a "trusted source" causing many to doubt the validity of the claims. (Or, alternately it is never released simply because the news outlet can not attribute the source).
3. Since Ms. Nason did not explicitly allow that exchange to take place (or for it to be attributed to the source) the facts can be denied (or at least remain unverifiable) on the grounds that the NHTSA has never "officially" released such information. Or, the Public has never even heard of it depending on how the media outlet handles the previous decision (#2).
This only seems to me to be a method of covering up something. Is there any legitimate purpose for an organization such as this to withhold information from the public? Especially that which would come (potentially) from Engineers or other "experts" on the matters with which they are being questioned.
- Toast
It's the same reason companies have their marketing department tell customers about the product rather than engineers. Marketing will tell you why it's great, engineers will tell you how it could be better.
You think _either_ Presidential candidate (whoever viably ends up on the ballot) will have _any_ interest in making government more transparent?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
This is going to be the case more and more with government ... and anybody else with any sense.
"Reporters" (and I use the term loosely) are trained by large newspapers, journalism programs and the like to qualify sources and to confirm things.
Now we have a bunch of "journalists" that publish whatever comes into their heads, don't bother to confirm anything and will print nonsense. This isn't just bloggers, this is major publications.
Can you believe that organizations would like to limit the damage that can be caused by some stray remark that is published?
Should government run differently than business? That is a fundamental question. The current trend is to hire CEOs into government (current pres and VP as examples) and they expect to run the government like they run businesses -- direction and commands from the top, no two other branches to get in the way and a marketing department to present and manage the information that goes in and out.
This restriction is just what a department head would do in a business.
The general discourse should be on how we want our government to be different than just a business. There are different goals, interests and reasons for existence. Structurally and procedurally they should be very different.
This may seem on the surface like a coverup, but truth be told, most large organizations have rules that state that the average employee should not comment to reporters in any official capacity. I happen to work at such a company, and have no problem not talking to reporters.
My comments here are my own; I do not speak for my employer.
That's all pretty much irrelevant since we aren't talking about random computer programmers who might have to talk to someone and get their picture taken.
We're talking about reporters wanting to speak with the experts in the field to go over the details of something. Would you rather talk to an economist or the PR officer for a fund management company about what the Fed might be about to do with interest rates and what the effects might be? Would you rather speak to a NASA scientist or to a PR officer about the findings from the deep impact mission?
Remember this isn't an orgnisation who just happens to have some engineers, it's an orgnisation that defines the reason for its existance as "Save lives, prevent injuries and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards and enforcement activity." Lot of good the education and research will do when the engineers aren't allowed to discuss their findings "on the record".
I do think you are missing a point, and an important one.
There are many shades of "being allowed to speak to the public" when it comes to organisations.
If the only thing Miss. Nason was interested in was ensuring, in good faith, that individuals don't hijack the authority of the organisation, then it would have been sufficient, even appropriate, to insist that only the PR office could speak "for the organisation", and that everyone one else could only speak "on a personal title".
Instead she went a step further. She not just centralised the authority to speak for the organisation, but also forbade individuals to speak out on a personal title. They have to be anonymous. The point is that the expertise in the NHTSA about technical matters is with the engineers, not with management. And unless you wanted to know about NHTSA policies, why would you want to speak to anyone but an engineer?
In fact, the article quotes the former head of the NHTSA:
"My God," said Joan Claybrook, who was N.H.T.S.A. administrator from 1977 to 1981 and is now president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. Given that N.H.T.S.A. is the leading source of automotive safety information in the United States, its researchers are public officials and people are entitled to "know what information they have, whether it is on paper or in their heads," Ms. Claybrook said.
This seems a much more reasonable stance: we, the public, pay for the NHTSA, and so we should have some way of knowing what their findings are. And it should be up to *us* to decide if we want to hear the opinion of NHTSA management or its engineers.
Unfortunately it seems typical of a certain philosophy on government to restrict access to potentially unfavourable news as in:
"Ms. Nason felt it was necessary for N.H.T.S.A. to have a "central spokesperson" and "we were finding a lot of stuff did not need to be on the record," David Kelly, her chief of staff, told me.".
*coughs* "We" were finding a lot of stuff "did not have to be on record". Sorry, but who are you to decide that? It just sounds like a flimsy pretext for spin-doctoring to me, coupled to a corporate philosophy of information-control.
There are many thing that a corporate mindset is more efficient at than a civil-servant mentality, but honesty and transparency aren't among them.
It's not as I put it, it's as the agency in question put it.
But I disagree, when part of you aims is to educate then the experts need to do some communicating with the public. If the agency in question isn't there to educate the public then sure the technical people can hide away in their labs. If a particular engineer doesn't like talking to the press they don't need to, but allowing people to ask technical questions and get answers directly from the technical folk it very useful.
It'll be great fun when the presenting of "A new approach to the geometric control of ultra-long span cable stay bridges" at http://www.bridgemanagement2007.com/ is done by the PR department and not engineers.
This is bull shit and should be spread on a cornfield someplace. As this is something that the public DOES have a right to know, I smell a lawsuit, maybe even class action, but certainly for damages large enough to send a message to worthless demi-gods such as this if it results in even a single PI accident.
Maybe its time for another Richard Davis bill? That would send the loudest message I believe. In case there are younger readers here, the Richard Davis bill (it had a number but after 30 some years you expect me to remember that? Dontbesilly dear children) was the congressional response, passed both houses by 98%+ yea vote, removing the 4.7 Million dollars the project was estimated to cost from the BATF budget, enjoining them from moving any other monies they may have laying about into the project, and removing the salary (with similar enjoinders about finding other funds to pay him with) of the little demi-god (Richard Davis) who came up with the project in the first place. Nothing gets you fired quite as positively and finally as an act of Congress.
His offense? He was gonna register all our guns... He went public with the plan while congress was on the campaign trail, BIG mistake, and when they reassembled, the country was literally on fire over it politically, hell I had two personal meetings with my Senator at the time, Pete Dominici, over it myself. First order of business, took about 10 days to get all the i's dotted & t's crossed.
Yeah, we need another Richard Davis bill.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
When in doubt, do it. It's much easier to apologize than to get permission.
-- Grace Murray Hopper
P.R. === Public Relations == Propaganda
The term was coined by a propagandist because "Propaganda" sounds bad, especially after a world war. Naturally, one would expect a propagandist to leverage their expertise on their own profession and they have.
Controlling the message from public experts so it can be "fixed" by propagandists may not in and of itself be fascist but its certainly a characteristic of commonly known fascist governments. It is actually an essential part of authoritarian government and not of fascism.
American media already acts in similar ways to authoritarian systems and no killings or torcher are required. Its not as easy as knowing most official 'news' is lies like Iranian radio, its more a advanced next generation. Social Engineering.
politicalcompass.org is required reading for anybody who wants to refer fascism
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
When Ron Paul becomes elected as President of the US, he will abolish the NHTSA because the organization is unconstitutional. The federal government is no authorized anywhere in the Constitution to deal with roads or traffic.
Libertas in infinitum