Policy

Chief Tidwell Directs Forest Service: No Permits, Fees for Journos

"News coverage on [National Forest System] lands is protected by the Constitution," wrote U.S. Forest Service Chief Thomas L. Tidwell in a November 4, 2014, memo to agency leaders, "and it is our responsibility to safeguard this right on the lands we manage for all Americans. Journalists provide a critical public service, and this agency will ensure their access in the pursuit of that public service."

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October 24, 2014

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy To Speak at Georgetown University

The McCourt School of Public Policy invites you to attend the 2014 LEAD Conference, The Power of Opinion: How Americans' Preferences on Energy Point a Way Forward on Climate Change on October, 24, 2014. The Honorable Gina McCarthy, current Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will keynote the event.

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Congress Doesn't Want You To Read These Reports

More evidence of Congress' ineffectiveness comes in its ongoing failure to keep its secrets actually secret. Its official policy is to keep the Congressional Research Service from publicly releasing the handy explainers it produces at taxpayer expense. Thanks again to the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project for unauthorized publication of these reports.

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Report Lists State Open Data Policies and Portals

The federal government offers a launch pad for a range of journalistic projects, giving you one-click shopping for online state data portals where they exist. These portals bring together links to data from multiple agencies in a single state. Now, the nonprofit Center for Data Innovation has catalogued and rated state open-data policies.

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EPA Promises to Look into Muzzling of Advisory Panel Scientists

In an August 15 email, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Chief of Staff Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming said EPA Science Advisor Bob Kavlock would review complaints from journalism (including SEJ) and open-government groups that scientists on EPA advisory panels were being told not to answer news-media or congressional inquiries without permission.

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EPA Muzzles Advisory Board Scientists

Journalism and science groups, including SEJ, protested an August 12, 2014, "don't talk" memo from EPA's chief of staff. The memo makes it clear: members of the agency's many science advisory panels are not to talk to the news media or Congress without permission. Attached to the memo was an "EPA Policy" restricting communications between Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) committee members and parties outside EPA.

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Fresh Secret Reports from the Congressional Research Service

Here are some recent explainers of interest to environmental journalists from the CRS, which Congress does not allow to be released to the taxpaying public who paid for them. The WatchDog thanks those who leaked them and the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy for publishing them.

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October 5, 2014 to October 11, 2014

International Union of Forest Research Organizations - 2014 World Congress

The International Union of Forest Research Organizations is holding its every-5th-year World Congress in Salt Lake City, UT this year. Media professionals are encouraged to attend. All attendees with a media/press pass will have access to the conference plenary, sub-plenary and technical sessions, the media room and press events, and entry to the expo floor.

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When Is a Policy Not a Policy? When Reporters Want To Talk to EPA Staff

For some years now, under multiple administrations, journalists who have called EPA scientists and other experts asking to talk to them about matters large and small have almost universally been told something like, "I'm not allowed to talk to news media without Press Office permission." Yet EPA officials maintain they do not have a press policy. SEJ's WatchDog filed June 10, 2014 the first of what will be an ongoing series of FOIA requests to get to the bottom of this ironic situation.

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