The First Amendment and public employees' right to speak to the media
Know your rights
Reporters and editors,
You may be having trouble talking with sources. They may be afraid to talk with you, or there may be a policy put in place for you to go to a university spokesperson before talking with an administrator. Or, you might be fine, in which case this doesn’t have much value for you.
But if you are experiencing that, this is a guide I found last year written by Frank LoMonte, a national fighter for college papers who championed legal advocacy through the Student Press Law Center.
The crux of it is that policies to go through spokespeople in order to gain interviews at state colleges are largely unconstitutional, although widespread.
Some snippets:
“Gag rules restraining public employees from speaking to the news media are everywhere….nevertheless, a review of state and federal case law dating back to the 1940s finds nearly two dozen instances in which a court has struck down a blanket policy requiring public employees to get approval before speaking about their work.”
“Research by journalism professor Carolyn S. Carlson for the Society of Professional Journalists shows that aggressive gatekeeping by public-information officers (“PIOs”) is pervasive in public schools. In Carlson’s 2014 survey of 190 journalists assigned to the education beat, 89 percent said that the institutions they cover require journalists to get interviews pre-approved by a public information officer some or all of the time. More than 71 percent said that a public relations officer or administrative supervisor sits in on their interviews with school employees at least some of the time. One journalist told Carlson’s team:
“Going through public information officers, ironically, is not a good way to get an interview. All they do is delay things and make your job harder. I only use them when it is required and then I try to figure out how to circumvent them. They are typically a disruption rather than an aid.”
Public universities, including the University of California system, where the president’s office tells staff members: “If a reporter contacts you or someone in your department for an interview or information, please refer the reporter to Media Relations so we can coordinate a response.”
Government public relations offices have legitimate and legally permissible roles. They can offer coaching to employees uncomfortable with giving interviews, they can provide journalists with assistance in locating the right expert, and they can issue statements offering the agency’s official perspective. What they cannot do is compel either employees or journalists to clear every conversation in advance.
Whether or not you do deal with a gag law or pressure against reaching out directly to sources at your university, it is good to know both your rights and your sources’ rights. I recommend reviewing the whole brief—it’s only 22 pages long, and it provides solid information on your legal grounds.
If you’re up to it, you can also see the editorial I wrote at Cal Poly about our administration’s increasing push to route us through media relations on every story we cover:
A constant re-routing in interview requests, despite established freedom of speech granted to state workers, has slowed down stories and built a barrier between reporters and campus employees.
—Aidan