How the FDA - and Other Agencies - Shape What You Hear about Them

From FEE.org (Sept. 28, 2016):

An important investigation by Charles Seife in Scientific American looks at how scientific newsmakers – in this case the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – use “close-hold embargoes” to manipulate news coverage on breaking stories. Embargoes in themselves are a common enough practice in journalism; the special feature of a “close-hold” embargo is that it conditions a reporter’s access to a forthcoming story on not seeking comment from outside, that is to say independent or adversary, sources.

The result of this kind of embargo, critics say, is to turn reporters into stenographers by ensuring that no expert, outside perspective contrary to the newsmaker’s makes it into the crucial first round of coverage. And the FDA uses the technique to go further, according to Seife: it “cultivates a coterie of journalists whom it keeps in line with threats.” In fact, it even “deceives” disfavored major news organizations like Fox News “with half-truths to handicap them in their pursuit of a story.”  [read more]

This is what happens when gov’t agencies are basically unaccountable. Hopefully, the picks President Trump puts in will reform the agencies.