Officials are not instituting major changes to their “lockup” process for releasing new jobless and unemployment data to selected media outlets because of two apparent violations by participating journalists in recent years, according to a knowledgable Labor Department official.
The changes include forcing participating journalists to use government-provided computers, software and hardware instead of their own during the 30 minutes prior to general release of the data when they get the new numbers and write their initial news stories and analyses about them.
Interested media organizations are also being required to re-apply for credentials, with the understanding that there are a limited number of seats available in the secured “lockdown” room, and that no one will be guaranteed access without clearing the new credentially process.
During a conference call Monday with interested journalists, Labor spokesman Carl Fillichio refused to say specifically what prompted the lockup revisions, but he noted that on two occasions in the past two years violations had been committed by lockup participants. He declined Monday to say which news organizations or journalists were involved in those violations.
But today a department official speaking on background said “there is no connection between the two infractions and the changes being made. There are solid reasons for why we need to make these changes. The alternative is to not have the lockups.”
The lockup computer and credentialling changes were announced last week and immediately sparked concerns among media organizations.
Those concerns ranged from worries about having to use government equipment and fears that political appointees would somehow be enabled to spin the new data, to questions about potential conflicts between the commercial and journalistics interests of participants and the fact that mere milliseconds of advance notice can result in sizable profits for stock traders.
Yesterday’s conference call did not abate such concerns, at least in some quarters. Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler, for example, said “there are few government reports that have the wide- ranging impact on the market as the Department of Labor statistics, and we are troubled by the degree of government restrictions on how the press can fully and accurately report this data to the public.”
Winkler’s comment was included in a story posted on the BloombergBusinessweek web site after the conference call.
It should also be noted that earlier this year, CNBC reported that the Labor Department approached the government’s Sandia National Laboratories in 2011 about IT security and sought recommendations on how to protect against digital and other threats to the integrity of data.
Eamon Javers of CNBC’s Washington bureau said in a March 7 story that “government officials are increasingly worried that their market-moving information could be leaking to traders too early, giving a select, aggressive few unfair access to information that is supposed to be available to everyone at the same time.”
The Labor official speaking on background earlier today also dismissed reports that the lockup changes were in any way linked with efforts to transfer control of the lockups from the DOL public affairs office to career employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
“No political appointees are ever in the lockups now, it’s all run by career employees,” the official said.
