Personally, nothing would make me happier than for the Environmental Protection Agency to be ground into dust, and the earth salted where its offices once stood.
But that’s not going to happen (not in this lifetime, at least). As things stand, this Nixon-era monster is here to stay, and we have to live with it.
But if we have to coexist with this bureaucratic nightmare, the least we can ask is that it be totally transparent. On even that count, the federal agency is coming up short.
Members of the press were barred twice this week from covering a national summit on contaminated drinking water, suggesting once again that the department’s commitment to transparency ends where its political interests begin.
Reporters from the Associated Press, CNN, and E&E News were turned away Tuesday from covering the summit’s opening, which included a speech by embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
There’s more. The AP reported that when their “reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.”
Good Lord.
The thing that’s most confounding about this story is that the EPA permitted some reporters to cover Pruitt’s speech while blocking others. Reporters for the Wall Street Journal, Politico, the Hill, the Washington Post, CBS News, Bloomberg BNA, and the Daily Caller were allowed in, though they were all escorted out shortly after Pruitt’s opening remarks.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox explained later in a statement to Mother Jones that, “This was simply an issue of the room reaching capacity, which reporters were aware of prior to the event. We were able to accommodate 10 reporters, provided a livestream for those we could not accommodate and were unaware of the individual situation that has been reported.”
Following questions about the selective summit admission, the EPA promised it would it open “the second portion” of the gathering to all press. They even invited Mother Jones.
A nice gesture, but the EPA still has some explaining to do..
First, some of the reporters who were admitted Tuesday into the conference dispute the claim that there wasn’t enough room to accommodate the AP and others.
Second, there’s the manhandling allegation, which is pretty serious. They should certainly investigate that claim.
Third, there’s the problem that what happened Tuesday, which the White House itself said it would “look into,” is part of a larger trend of the EPA’s crummy treatment of the press.
Lastly, the agency’s explanation would be more believable were it not for the fact they blocked members of the press again Wednesday from attending the national summit.
Employees from Politico, E&E News, and CNN were all denied entry Wednesday. An EPA spokeswoman defended this decision later by explaining that the event did not “fall under a federal law requiring that certain meetings be open to the public.”
I’m trying to think of a good reason to bar reporters from covering a national summit on contaminated drinking water, but I keep coming up blank. The EPA can (and must) do better.
