Features Archive - Respond to this Article

July/August 1999 - Volume 31 Issue 7

Recently at one of those chin-stroking sessions about how the press can do a better job of covering government, I piped up and said, "Well, it might help a bit if the government did a better job of telling its story in the first place." In the days since, I have been thinking more seriously about this idea. In nearly four years as White House Press Secretary and in the half-year since I left the government, I've been asked to participate in many discussions about how the work of government gets reported to the American people. Not one invitation, though, has called for me to critique the way government makes its information available.

As Donald Kettl writes in this issue, press coverage of the executive branch has dropped significantly in recent years. When reporters do cover government, they're likely to view it through the distorting lens of "scandal," or for a local angle that might be of interest in a particular community. The bigger job of telling readers what the government does, and why, too often falls to the wayside.

How can it be that America gets less reporting about the day-to-day work of the government when, thanks to the revolutionary advance of communication technologies, we are living through an eye-popping explosion in the volume of information available? The answer is in line with a lesson taught by my former boss, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In a witty essay, "The Iron Law of Emulation," he postulates that organizations in conflict become similar to one another. Over time, navies, football teams, political parties, and yes, adversaries like the press and politicians begin to mimic the tactics of the other even as they continue their combat.

How true. As news organizations in the nation's capital assigned specialists to concentrate on investigative pieces on presidential scandals, we at the White House found lawyers in the Counsel's Office to do media relations. Lanny Davis' new book, Truth to Tell, describes the results of the curiously symbiotic relationship that developed between the two groups.

In vast areas where the press showed less interest, the White House proved to be much more ho-hum about putting forth public information. Mind you, we scoured the agencies and departments for interesting tidbits every morning. If you had to face a pride of lions licking their chops for Lewinsky at noon, wouldn't you want to open the daily press briefing with a detailed discussion of the latest wrinkle in federal pension policy? These sessions irritated reporters but often generated requests for more information from citizens who caught a glimpse of something that might actually matter. No systematic method developed for getting these important but less-sizzling tidbits to the public.

In the main, the job of assembling information about the government's work fell to the individual agencies and their public affairs staffs. Some were good at it, but most struggled. Without a captive press corps braying at the door, there was less pressure for them to tell their stories.

Then again, some preferred anonymity. When the Congress went Republican in 1995, many agencies were suddenly barraged with requests for data and information from the Hill that began to look suspect. You didn't have to look hard to see a pattern of harassment, and before long, memos from the GOP leadership staff leaked to the press confirming that "diligent oversight" could be a euphemism for clipping the wings of an activist Democratic president. Many administration public affairs officers (and their bosses) were content to avoid any notice, lest a "meanie" Republican congressional oversight committee take interest.

This is no way to run a government. "Democracy is not a matter of entertainment, it's a matter of engagement," write John Herbers and James McCartney in a recent American Journalism Review survey documenting the decreased press coverage of government. "The Constitution requires close citizen attention if the grand experiment is to continue to work." The brave media critic Tom Rosenstiel (full disclosure: my friend from high school) directs the Program for Excellence in Journalism and often says "journalism is a series of commitments, a series of responsibilities. It's about being accurate, being courageous, telling people things that are important as well as interesting, finding ways to make the important interesting." The Pew Charitable Trust's Rebecca Rimel, a Joan of Arc for better journalism who funds work like Rosenstiel's, writes that "Americans want statements that they can believe in. They want information that rings true Š But citizens do at times succumb to indifference and some fall into cynicism."

Exactly. But journalists fall into cynicism too, and the government often falls short in providing those facts that are necessary for educated debate in our democracy. I am confident that the press will worry about its own performance. (The poor editor of this magazine has even cooked up some prize money to reward reporters who dig into the workings of government.)

I would rather concentrate on why the government seems to be missing the ball. In basketball, coaches tell their players it's hard to miss a pass but easy to toss the ball in a misguided direction. Maybe the same is true here. Perhaps the government's effort to inform the public has been missing the mark.

But there is not much pressure from the press to improve the public information function of government because reporters are instinctively suspicious of government flacks. They don't believe folks from the government can be there to help, to provide useful information and tell interesting stories. But I know - having listened to many idealistic young press officers ask how they could increase interest in their agency's work - that there are plenty of people who want to get better information into the hands of the American people.

What stands in the way of better public information from our government? I count at least a dozen formidable barriers:

• Most organizations hate coping with bad news. If you believe in what you do, it's a natural instinct to disbelieve bad news. The first reaction of administration spokesmen, hearing the initial reports of something like the NATO bombing of Chinese diplomats in Belgrade, is stunned disbelief. Say it ain't so. I'll never forget stammering something almost like a denial when The New York Times told me that my first boss - a U.S. Senator back in the 1970s - was about to be named in the ABSCAM corruption probe. In trouble with the press or the public, most outfits start by shooting themselves in the foot and making matters worse. After all, it's a human reaction as natural as a child's denial when the hand first gets caught in the cookie jar.
  
• Government officials can get addicted to praise. Averse to criticism, officials and politicians can also be mesmerized by a compliment. There are so few stories in the press about government programs that work well (waste, fraud, and abuse being considered by many reporters the norm) that it truly is "news" when something goes right and gets reported. Rather than replicate that success, many cabinet officials and their subordinates try to take credit for the same story over and over. The president's economic advisor, Gene Sperling, became masterful at finding new ways to hail good employment reports every month, but only when we were lucky did news organizations carry the President's quote. One-trick dog shows don't get many repeat customers. It takes a pattern of success - like James Lee Witt's smooth handing of the Federal Emergency Management Administration disaster after disaster - to finally get sustained notice from the press.
  
• The White House will steal good news. At many early morning staff meetings at the White House, I remember various presidential aides complaining about some cabinet official who hogged a good piece of news. "Hey, that belongs to the big guy," they'd say. Decreasing coverage of government means that well-intentioned cabinet officials will fight harder to keep good news stories to themselves. As a result, some cabinet departments would work hard to discount whatever good stories they did have to tell, indicating to the White House that their press conference later in the day would not be a big deal and that the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. shouldn't be worried. We weren't. We just didn't pay attention and help build up interest in the story. Cabinet public affairs officers are always told to help "amplify" the president's message, but since his megaphone is bigger, the White House usually doesn't amplify stories that emanate from lower down in the bureaucratic food chain.
  
• There is no systematic, government-wide process for public information. While there are plenty of White House meetings on "message amplification" to get members of the administration on the same page when it comes to projecting the political argument on behalf of the president, there is no process for dealing with the routine, sometimes embarrassing information that ought to reach the public. Much of the recent contretemps over exchanging sensitive technologies with the Chinese sounds to me like an echo of turf fights between the State and Commerce Departments on who should control licensing. Someone should have been sitting in on this process and reminding policy-makers that the public needs to know the parameters for these exchanges and the reasons why we do or do not engage in trade with respect to certain technologies. More openness on these questions would have headed off a lot of the partisan huffing and puffing that we are hearing now. There are interagency working groups to make policy, but few interagency efforts to create interest in the news. Public affairs personnel are often invited to the decision-making table late.
  
• There are plenty of resources for communication, but they are not always used efficiently. For this article, I tried to get the Office of Management and Budget to give me an idea of how many people are involved in the government's public information arm, and at what cost. This information is hard if not impossible to get, because no one wants to put a big number out there that suggests the executive branch is spending bundles to toot its own horn. (There's no question that the figures are large; the four armed services alone employ roughly 4400 public affairs officers.) It may also be that the resources aren't accounted for separately because most agencies see the public affairs function as a regrettable expense, not as part of the agency's mission. Though public affairs officers tend to work in the immediate orbit of the cabinet or agency head, they're often treated like mere bureaucratic seat-warmers, and the relevance of their work to the department or agency gets lost. My anecdotal experience is that there is plenty of money and more than enough people - both career and political employees - to help get the public the information it needs. The way the bureaucracy organizes and treats its public information function stands in the way of using these resources wisely.
  
• Political appointees and career public information officers often mistrust one another. This problem is perennial in all parts of the federal government. Career civil servants devoted to principles like the public's right to know are often suspicious of political appointees who seem most interested in currying favor for the current occupant of the White House. Building bridges between the career workforce and the political temps who work as their superiors is the toughest part of managing the work of the federal government, and is an especially acute challenge for those who labor in the politically sensitive area of press coverage. Very little is done to help politically-appointed managers learn how to supervise, reward, and encourage career civil servants. Many career workers, as a result, sit around figuring out how to outlast the latest batch of political appointees. My own experience with this at the State Department gave me an opportunity to liberate a career worker who went on to help figure out how to get the diplomacy of the United States onto the Internet. I worry that many talented career civil servants never get that kind of chance.
  
• There are few career rewards for those good at informing the public. In fact, those pegged as good press officers often get stuck in the role. In the civil service, military, and foreign service, public affairs work is not highlighted enough in the job evaluation process. Promotion in rank to flag officer, Senior Executive Service, or career minister status ought to depend in some measure on how well an applicant can respond to questions from the public and the press. Gen. Colin Powell was awfully good with that wooden pointer at his press briefings on CNN during the Persian Gulf War, and it certainly helped his career. However, these skills have not proven to be valued highly enough to become a part of the evaluation process for career government workers.
  
• The greatest energy in government public affairs operations is reserved for moments of drama - crises, scandals, and elections. It's easy to get folks to give their best when backsides are against the wall. The creativity, determination, and hard work it takes to communicate well increases in election years, or when a big bad story creates howls from higher-ups to change the subject. I'll never forget being paged at a restaurant by Steve Akey, the chief of Department of Transportation communications, who called to report the downing of TWA Flight 800. He already had a talented staff, soon augmented by the National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI, on high alert to provide good, solid information to the public. This team worked hard for days, giving briefings to the attorney general, the transportation secretary, the president himself on what we knew and - as it turned out, more important - what we did not know.

  But during routine times, a desire not to rock the boat leaves many public information operations in the doldrums. The trick is to find ways to keep the pulse rate high when the only drama is the goverment doing its job well.
  

• The language of government communication is not very user-friendly. Like many professionals, government executives often speak in a blizzard of acronyms and code phrases that are indecipherable to the layperson. I had to study the foreign language of foreign policy for three months before I ventured out to brief the State Department press corps in my Foggy Bottom English. (Rule #1: Never say the word "Jerusalem" unless it is in direct reference to the phrase, "Our policy is so well-known that it does not need to be repeated.") Sometimes the language of government is necessarily complex because the subject matter is dense. Trade journals and specialty publications have sprung up to help targeted audiences learn more about these activities. But most of the time, the people who should be translating government-speak into plain English give up, or spend the balance of their day talking to specialists.
  
• Sometimes there are legal and institutional barriers to offering the public information. Governments have secrets to keep in order to protect our national security and for that reason some information has to be classified. But classification should not be an excuse to withhold information merely because it might be politically damaging or inconvenient. It is sometimes against the law for the government to provide information, as is the case of U.S. Information Agency officers working overseas who are prohibited from disseminating information to stateside audiences - a relic of the Cold War when we worried that our own overseas propaganda might not sound that sweet here at home. But it makes little sense in the global information age when everything you say is available instantaneously around the world.
  
• Some information is hard to verify because it is provided anonymously. Every government has "leakers." However, information provided by unnamed sources is unreliable because the leaker's motives are frequently unknown. Are we getting this little morsel because someone inside government lost a policy fight and is trying to even the odds? Or is someone just trying the prove that he is "in the know," even when he may know only a few pieces of a complicated puzzle? Leaks have become a time-tested means of getting news out. We did it at the White House all the time, usually to keep a given subject in the news more than one or two news cycles. But those who leak don't realize how much they impede the government's ability to inform the public. When you can't identify and measure the reliability of your sources, you tend to discount the information. My fondest dream is this: Everyone who speaks to the press for the government does so on on-the-record and without a penalty.
  
• Much of the government's most important information is uninteresting and is provided in uninteresting ways. Let's face it: Having one poor soul stand at a podium in the White House briefing room and answer questions on behalf of an entire government is an especially outdated format for communication when so many more effective techniques and technologies exist. The advantage should go to those that can make the work of government visual, engaging, and exciting. Most public information efforts at present don't meet that test.

These barriers are formidable. They stand in the way of a better-informed public. Often, the public and the press don't even know the right questions to ask.

Now the good news. At the cusp of the 21st century, we are experiencing the greatest transformation in information technology since ink was first pressed onto gilded paper. The press and government offices won't have to suck thumbs much longer at academic conferences about the quality of media coverage. The public is about to take matters into its own hands.

Within a few short years, our tools for unearthing information about the government will evolve dramatically. The Internet, personal computers, television, newspapers, magazines, telephones, radios - the essence of the public soapbox - are about to converge into a new set of home appliances that will redefine the entire concept of public information.

High-speed access to digital information anywhere, anytime will put a new premium on the ability to communicate. American citizens won't have to wait for a daily press briefing, a nightly news broadcast, or the thump of a folded paper landing on the front porch to get information. It will be available all the time on-line and citizens will custom-tailor the way they receive their news.

Reporters and government information officers will have to make their stories more compelling, immediate, and useful to a time-sensitive public. In the Internet age there are fewer rules that govern the adversarial relationship between the government and the press. This means the relationship must evolve into a more amicable and less acrimonious one.

Look at government web sites and you can already see the transformation taking place. When I arrived at the State Department in 1993, there was no inter-office computer network in the Office of Public Affairs, let alone any ability to communicate with the outside world.

Two years ago, the General Accounting Office examined forty-two government agencies that spent almost $500 million to create interactive agency websites. Now there are more than one thousand agencies listed in a directory of web sites maintained by government agencies. They may not be as "hot" or "cool" as some sites, but they get good reviews.

Online you can:

• Read a daily digest prepared by a new, customer-friendly IRS.
• Ride with the Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron on a virtual trip into the eye of a hurricane.
• Access your own Social Security earning account,
• Learn the environment hazards in your own neighborhood via the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Go to the Housing and Urban Development web page to find out how communities can work together.
• Adopt a wild horse or burro from the Department of the Interior.
• Go to the Central Intelligence Agency web page and get 10 straightforward answers to ten obvious questions about the CIA and, as a bonus, go to the CIA's interactive and entertaining site for kids.

Looking at these sites, I get giddy about the possibilities for improving the government's ability to address the people's right to know. Remember, though, that it is hard for government and the politicians who run it to tell the truth. That's why we need people who will push and prod from outside. There is, in fact, an Association of Public Data Users, including information specialists at federal depository libraries, who are cajoling federal web sites to be more effective and responsive.

My guess is that all levels of government will get better at informing the public over the next several years. Local governments are leading by making data available on things that matter most: job openings, building code requirements, how to get driver's licenses, how to dispose of waste, how to get birth and death certificates. These basic uses of public information will help drive a new, more interactive approach to communicating with the American public.

The changes are likely to be so profound that one day website managers who develop one-on-one solutions for citizens seeking public information about their government will be better known and more popular than White House press secretaries. That would make this former press secretary smile.