June 22 – Before Michael Coleman went to the “dark side” – a term reporters use when other journalists take government communications roles – he had his fair share of frustrations with public information officers.
Coleman, who worked for more than two decades as a journalist, including 18 years as a correspondent for the Albuquerque Journal in Washington, D.C., said he respected most of the government spokespeople he worked with, “but there were certainly times when things got tense.” ”.
“At times, PIOs seemed to be there more to hinder than to help,” added Coleman, who went on to become governor. Michelle Lujan Grishamcommunications director in February. “…I certainly don’t want that to be the perception of this government.”
After four months on the job, he understands the demands placed on PIOs, he said. “There are a lot of moving parts and many days it feels like you are drinking from a fire hose.”
Journalists rely on communications staff from local governments and state and federal agencies to help dissect complicated issues, provide data, answer questions, and arrange interviews with public officials. But just as reporters and members of the public have increasingly faced obstacles to public records, they have also encountered government information gatekeepers aiming to restrict access.
Current and former reporters complain about public information officers who do not respond to calls on time – if they return calls at all – and purposefully block access to information and interviews.
Longtime reporters remember the days when they could pick up the phone and speak directly to a cabinet secretary at a state agency, a senior city official or a school board member. Now, many communications workers, more dependent on their bosses than the public, are tasked with filtering and channeling information and preventing candid conversations.
Questions are often answered through email exchanges rather than phone calls or in-person conversations, resulting in carefully crafted statements known as “prepared” responses.
Colleen Heild, an investigative reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, and Trip Jennings, a longtime journalist who serves as executive director of the nonprofit news organization New Mexico In Depth, noted that PIOs are often exempt public employees.
“What we have here is a tension between the public who pays for their positions, but their job security, so to speak, is basically controlled by an elected political official,” Jennings said. “Their livelihoods are controlled by the people who hire them and can fire them.”
The job can come with high pressure and stress.
Gwyneth Doland Parker, a professor in the Department of Communications and Journalism at the University of New Mexico, said many PIOs end up doing crisis communications when the news is bad.
“This is really stressful because they are trying to convey the complexity of the situation” and empathy for people who work in government — jobs that can be difficult, she said.
“These PIOs are the people they push to take all the bullets, so I think it’s helpful for us to remember that even though in many cases they are better looking than us and make more money than we do, their jobs are sometimes harder” , she said, creating a contrast between communications professionals and journalists.
Some relationships between reporters and PIOs can even become contentious.
Before Coleman joined Lujan Grisham’s administration, for example, the governor’s communications office for a time blacklisted New Mexico reporters from receiving emails about important announcements and ignored repeated requests for explanations.
‘Can you do this via email?’
“This does not apply to all PIOs, but my experience has been that there has been a decrease in access to public servants,” Jennings said.
“In the past, it was more common for me to request an interview and have someone set it up,” he said. “My experience now is more, ‘Can you do this over email?’ “
Heild echoed the sentiment.
“I think there is a place for public information officers if you need basic facts, but it often feels like the price you pay is not being able to talk to the person who really knows the subject,” she said.
Steve Terrell, a retired journalist and longtime state reporter for The New Mexican, recalled the lack of response from former Republican Gov. Susana Martinez’s communications team during her second term.
“They would always respond to an email with something that sounded like it was written by a campaign official,” he said. “It sounded like campaign rhetoric rather than an answer to your question or a comment on what you wanted.”
Melanie Majors, executive director of the New Mexico Open Government Foundation, offered a defense of PIOs who serve as go-betweens for high-level public officials: Not everyone is prepared to talk to the media.
“I know you’re thinking, ‘How can they not know how to talk to the public?’ But sometimes they don’t. They say things they shouldn’t or go into areas where they go off topic,” she said.
She knows the subject firsthand, having worked for many years in public relations and public affairs.
“As a public relations officer, you have to have two things,” she said. “One is to protect the reputation of the organization that you work with, and the other is just to respond to the public, and I’ve never found that to be a conflict. I think sometimes people do that, and I think it’s because they don’t sometimes I don’t understand their role.”
Majors said he viewed his role as an “extension of the agency” and a “source of assistance to the public.”
‘There is a balance that must be achieved’
Doland Parker said the relationship between journalists and those responsible for public information is complicated.
“Members of the media have their primary loyalty to the public, so our job is to give people the information they need to be free and self-govern, and a public information officer’s loyalty is not to same,” she said. .
“Yes, of course they serve the public, but the nature of that job is that their primary loyalty is to their department, their agency, their governor and whether they are operating ethically – which I believe most of them are the most of the time – so it’s not really a problem,” she said.
“But there’s a tension there because we want the truth and we don’t care how ugly it is,” she added, “and PIOs care how ugly it is.”
She said, “God knows I don’t envy any PIO at CYFD.”
Doland Parker was referring to the New Mexico Department of Children, Youth and Families, which is arguably the most problematic agency in state government. The agency, of course, has one of the most difficult jobs in the state, which includes investigating cases of child abuse and neglect that occasionally make tragic headlines or TV news.
The agency has had a tense relationship with the press.
KOB-TV recently reported that the agency hired the governor’s former press secretary, Caroline Sweeney, at a salary of nearly $167,000 a year, the fourth-highest-paying position at CYFD. Sweeney, who worked for the governor for less than a year, remained at CYFD for a short time and now works for U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury.
At one point in recent months, media questions to CYFD had to be sent via email, and the agency did not attribute its responses to anyone in particular.
The agency has had a new communications director, Andrew Skobinsky, for about a month.
“I have always been a communicator at heart, having studied and practiced cross-cultural communications in the business world,” he wrote in an email. “…Providing clear communications that inform, engage, engage, and motivate readers around a given topic is what gets me up in the morning.”
Only last week did CYFD publish the name and phone number of its media contacts online, which Skobinsky said illustrates its commitment to accessibility.
“There is a balance that must be struck, on a case-by-case basis, between providing the transparency the public desires and deserves, maintaining the confidentiality of those who cannot speak for themselves, and the integrity of ongoing investigations,” he wrote.
Doland Parker said a good PIO has “friendly, helpful and trusting relationships” with members of the media.
“A lot of times, they establish those relationships and that trust because they were journalists, and that’s really helpful, honestly,” she said. “In my 25 years in journalism, many friends have gone from working for newspapers and television stations to working for the government or in the private sector in communications, and we joke that they are going to the dark side.
“But, you know, in most cases, it’s the same people — they’re just paid better.”
Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.
