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How the FDA Manipulates the Media

221 points by runesoerensen 10y ago

known 10y ago
"Media does not spread free opinion; it generates opinion." --Oswald Spengler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West
- losteverything 10y ago
  OK I looked at the link and now want more Spangler. What made you recall that quote?
niels_olson 10y ago
Are media embargos a new thing, or is just this reporter's first time around this block, and they're shocked to see the sausage get made. Quite frankly, the science press has failed to earn the trust of scientists day in and day out for as long as science press have taken that title.
- moefogs 10y ago
  Media embargos are bog standard, and have been for ages.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  The point I took is that conditional embargoes are much worse than simple ones. This is a long-discussed issue with video games. If you say "no reviews for our video game until release", that's just controlling timing. If you say "no negative reviews for our video game until release", you're manipulating the narrative. You don't ask anyone to lie (good reviews can still be totally sincere), but the gestalt is no longer natural. > "Embargoes that attempt to control sourcing are dangerous" It appears that the FDA is using conditional embargoes, and their specific conditions are what shocked reporters.
  - stordoff 10y ago
    > You don't ask anyone to lie (good reviews can still be totally sincere), but the gestalt is no longer natural. What I'm seeing fairly often is "Review embargo: nth Month; Streaming embargo: n-7th Month". While there's an argument for it (reviewing a game takes time, but a stream can be done cold), I suspect it (in some cases at least) is a way to make sure good coverage comes out first - a streamer probably isn't going to be digging completely into the flaws of a game, and they are actively playing to an audience/trying to be entertaining, potentially making a mediocre game look better. It's not quite the same as controlling review content, but it definitely feels manipulative.
- notfromhere 10y ago
  Embargoes happen on the time; but usually controlling the narrative is super subtle rather than explicit. Most journalists aren't too critical of a source because they know next time they won't be given a release at all.
maxerickson 10y ago
Alternate title: How the media betray their readers.
brilee 10y ago
The last two paragraphs of the article says it all - the FDA has embargo power over the media, because the media can't cooperate to set their own embargo: Even a close-hold embargo wouldn't constrain a reporter without the reporter's consent; the reporter can simply wait until the embargo expires and speak to outside sources, albeit at the cost of filing the story a little bit later. Alas, Kiernan says, there isn't any movement within the journalism community to change things.
- jnordwick 10y ago
  That's funny because the article mentions plenty of journalistic oppositions of the the close-hold embargo from FOX News to Association of Health Care Journalists.
finid 10y ago
FDA manipulates the media. That's one part. The other part: FDA is controlled by the companies that come under its umbrella. Think of the fox guarding the hen house. So in the final analysis, those companies control the media. But it gets better; sometimes, the parent company of a media company is in some sort of partnership with the companies that control the FDA.
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  Did you even read the article? The main example that broke the news about this was when the FDA announced regulations about e-cigarettes. The tobacco interests were staunchly opposed to the regulations, and the FDA wanted to prevent NPR + other journalists from getting comment from them. Try to actually read before injecting your politics.
  - spdustin 10y ago
    Yes, and that proves the GP's point. The tobacco industry are the ones who'll remain largely unaffected by that ruling because they are grandfathered in from certification requirements. Oh, and also, they own a considerable size of the disposal e-cig market, so the relevant ruling effectively extinguishes the smaller players who sell re-usable kit. So the interested media (who cover tobacco legislation) were kept out. So... The companies pulling the strings of the FDA were able to control the messaging of the ruling to make it about "we're in support of this" rather than "we're removing all our competition by employing the FDA as our market enforcer"
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
    But finid still isn't wrong and you aren't either. The FDA definitely seems to be controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. I guess sometimes these industries step on each others toes getting things done, and in the e-cig case pharma won over tobacco. P.s. friendly note that your first sentence is against HN rules.
  - finid 10y ago
    Sorry, I don't depend on breaking news before I become familiar with something that affects me. How the FDA operates, or how it is operated, is no news for those who have been following the FDA. So the e-cig regulation was no news. I wish how food companies where allowed to market a particular type of cereal as good for you made the breaking news reel. And before you say there's solid science behind it, wasn't there an article the other day about how food companies control(led) food and nutritional scientists? I always try to look at the big picture, not just a breaking news item.
pnathan 10y ago
A few points. This is the aim, in part, of PR firms/departments: to shape and control the narrative, the public relationship. That a behind-the-scenes method is used to control the relationship should not be a surprise. That it is being embraced by the scientific authorities is surprising, frankly, and disappointing to me. That said, it would be absolutely stunning to peek under the covers of major journalism outfits and understand exactly how the sausage gets made and how the flows of power route. Why does X get covered, Y doesn't? How much do journalists take direction, in practice, from outside sources, and how much investigative journalism do they really do? I don't know.
jnordwick 10y ago
This is really disturbing: From the article: "Documents obtained by Scientific American through Freedom of Information Act requests now paint a disturbing picture of the tactics that are used to control the science press. For example, the FDA assures the public that it is committed to transparency, but the documents show that, privately, the agency denies many reporters access—including ones from major outlets such as Fox News—and even deceives them with half-truths to handicap them in their pursuit of a story. At the same time, the FDA cultivates a coterie of journalists whom it keeps in line with threats. And the agency has made it a practice to demand total control over whom reporters can and can't talk to until after the news has broken, deaf to protests by journalistic associations and media ethicists and in violation of its own written policies." So let see if I understand this... 1- They tell their friendly reporters who they can and can't talk to with conditional embargos. 2- They don't let reports they view as hostile into the press releases. 3- They actively thwart these reporters viewed as hostiles by intentionally telling them lies and half-truths. This is completely absurd, A federal agency is manipulating the story it wants and the side it wants to tell it. It is picking the winners and losers, and the winners keep quiet about the scam because it they start to be seen as trouble makers, soon they will start getting the Fox News treatment too.
- Fordrus 10y ago
  See, I do feel for the FDA. Trying to message things properly is like trying to send a smoke signal in a hurricane. When, for any given thing you want to regulate, there are 4 incredibly wealthy special interest groups trying to warp your message to protect the profit margins of the companies they represent, rather than keep safety or anything else in mind there, making sure that you don't take "Totally reasonable measure A" and get the people you're protecting messaged, "HOW DARE YOU, MY FREEEEDOM!" - that's quite difficult. But despite my understanding of that, the HUGE problem there is that "Totally reasonable measure A" and "Draconian Evil Measure X" look almost exactly the same to us onlookers, and when the FDA, or anyone, uses "Morally Ambiguous Embargo Y" to protect their actions, why, the rational response from us as onlookers is the ASSUME that they're performing "Draconian Evil Measure X." So what, exactly, is the answer? I don't think there IS one presently out there that isn't incredibly messy, but I hope we can still discover it - that is, figure out how to protect the almost certainly true and reasonable actions from the 'bad guys,' while not falling afoul of the rational reaction of the 'good guys' (us, in this case, the people being protected) and coming under attack from THEM.
rtkwe 10y ago
One point I think in support of these types of embargoes is that news about an FDA announcement can have huge financial and business impacts and seeking responses would very likely leak that information to the businesses that will be impacted by announcement X.
- curious_fella1 10y ago
  Couldn't they just add a condition that anyone who is reached out to for comment can't act on that information until the embargo has passed?
  - rtkwe 10y ago
    That'd be neigh impossible to enforce and a lot of people wouldn't agree to those terms.
    - rdiddly 10y ago
      Is it not insider trading at that point, enforceable by the (admittedly pathetic) SEC?
  - mcguire 10y ago
    That would be the traditional embargo. This article concerns conditional embargoes.
DubiousPusher 10y ago
This makes a pretty good argument for selecting news sources that aren't "first to print". If a news source is willing to be behind the curve, it indicates they're willing to report the news second hand and at least have the possibility of pursuing some due diligence.
- rdiddly 10y ago
  The truth is worth waiting for? I like it.
- jerf 10y ago
  I agree. It's tempting to jump to the natural conclusions about how bad all the people involved are, but this would lose a lot of its force if media gave up its game of shaving minutes or seconds off first publication and developed an ability to stick with a topic beyond one "news cycle", the very term of which implies the existence of the problem. It could be easier to fix the structural issues than the people issues. Given how short a news cycle is becoming, perhaps this is not such a great thing to ask for anymore. I like watching "Angry Joe's" reviews for video games, which I note can come out up to a month after the official release date. You may find his review style offputting and I don't always agree with his conclusions, but it's obvious that he actually puts the time in, whereas other journalists are, at times, clearly reviewing games on the basis of playing through the first couple of levels yesterday. I'd like to see this in more media.
ISL 10y ago
Are there good references for journalistic standards for embargos? From a science (and future funding) perspective, large collaborations with important results are interested in making a splash (which, referenced in the article, backfired for BICEP). They're interested in quality reporting, but they want to have the opportunity to bring the discovery (think Higgs, gravitational waves, etc.) to the world. Science stories are hard to report, as the journalist, even one with a science background, needs to come quickly up to speed with a nuanced field. What's the best way to ensure that a science story can be reported well, as argued for in this article, without the embargo getting jumped? "Hello, Dr. Not-in-ATLAS/CMS physicist, we've never met before, but I work for the NYT and I'm working on a story appearing Thursday, around the same time as the CERN press conference. If both experiments had observed a single Higgs at 125 GeV mass, what would it mean? Interesting. Also, please don't tell anyone." Such an embargo would last only tens of seconds after the physicist hung up the phone (and for good reason, as free exchange of information is paramount in academia). How would you like to see scientists report results? Would you prefer that researchers present results to an unprepared press at the same time as the journal article appears, with improved reporting a week later, or get informed but embargoed reporting at the same time as the announcement?
- striking 10y ago
  The SPJ code of ethics[1] states that journalists should (because the "highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public"): – Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility. – Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage. – Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content. – Expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations. . TechCrunch said in 2008 that they will break every embargo they agree to.[2] Edit: they later (2011, 2012) backed down from that pledge. See CobrastanJorji's comment below (thank you!) . The Society of American Business Editors and Writers argue that they are useful to keep the standard of journalism high, but that "journalists are ultimately responsible to the public."[3] . And just for fun, and to make matters more concrete, here's a Slate article in which an example (an article published by the WaPo) is raised that calls the embargo system into question.[4] . [1]: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/ [3]: https://sabew.org/2012/05/the-embargo-and-business-journalists/ https://sabew.org/2012/05/the-embargo-and-business-journalis... [4]: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/11/breaking_news_not_transcribing_it.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20... I hope this can help answer your question.
c3534l 10y ago
Why on earth would NPR accept that deal? I thought the whole point of public radio was that it was that by relying on donations it could maintain its independence and objectivity. There is no longer any reason for them to exist.
- tarequeh 10y ago
  It's hard for me to understand that why NPR would give up their journalistic freedom to receive the briefing one day early. Is it that kind of a deal-breaker to report an FDA announcement a day later than some others?
  - godshatter 10y ago
    In a perfect world, NPR would have done their article a day late, with the proper quotes from those affected, and would have explained in a footnote that this information would have been out a day earlier except that NPR could not ethically agree with the FDAs terms which were blah, blah, blah.
    - aetherson 10y ago
      Then, for the next story, the FDA wouldn't even tell NPR about the possibility of the briefing, so NPR would start researching their story when other news organizations published their stories. The NPR would be release its story several days after the people who had the scoop, and fairly likely, its article would sink and vanish.
noobermin 10y ago
One great idea is to just not give embargoes, just give everyone the same information at the same time. It seems like an embargo is a favor to the media companies, feeding this frenzy of "get out first" journalism. Instead, they should be all be "left in the cold" to quote the article.
arca_vorago 10y ago
While thinking about the FDa, please keep in mind how pervasivly Monsanto has inserted former employees into its ranks for their putposes (especially now in light of the Bayer buyout move). Sure big pharma et al have as well, but it's monsanto that pops up on my "6 degrees of kevin bacon" social graphs of them.
heisenbit 10y ago
Embargoes are an effective tool to ensure an certain minimum depth of reporting, control timing and prevent misunderstanding causing negative publications. They can be used to implement some limited idea of fairness and they can be used to exercise control. Embargoes are a communications and marketing tool. Whether public institutions should value story telling over letting the facts stand for themselves is really the question. The culture today puts a lot value on stories...
tn13 10y ago
Is there any studies to indicate FDA is useful to Americans in any way? Despite the absolutely mindblowing sh*t-pile of regulations that this agency creates every year there does not seem to be any major difference between lifespans of Americans and neighboring Canada. Not to mention the EpiPen like fiascos are a direct result of FDA's collusion from very people it swears to protect us. FDA's existence seem to put a significant cost on doctors, pharma companies, patients and everyone related with no apparent benefit. Surely we can point one or two occasions where FDA might have saved American health but have we measured the times it actually harmed Americans by peddling falsehoods, increasing cost of drugs and delaying innovation ? Plenty of research seem to exist to point out that FDA might be doing more harm to us than good. http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php
- vkou 10y ago
  Canada has an FDA equivalent, called Health Canada (The HPFB, to be precise.) It has a very similar process for drug approval, including a mindblowing shit-pile of regulations for what constitutes approval, what can and cannot be sold, and what the government will pay for. On, and the best part? It piggybacks off FDA approval, via mutual exchange of information between the parties. If you got FDA approval for your drug, you will have a much easier time selling it in Canada. Don't tear down a fence, unless you understand why it was built. Medicine is a shit-pile of complicated, and there's no shortage of people willing to peddle snake oil - or, starting from the best intentions, grossly misunderstand the efficacy of a treatment. There are always compromises that have to be made, between ensuring timely, affordable access to drugs, and being sure that those drugs actually behave as advertised. Some of the tradeoffs currently made may not be optimal - however, to dismiss them out of hand, without thoroughly understanding them is hubris.
neil_s 10y ago
Is it just me that sees a legitimate need for close-hold embargoes in specific cases? In this case, the FDA was releasing new rules that would affect medical device manufacturers and hence their stock prices. If reporters went around asking industry people for comment about this, then they would have been spreading material non-public information that would very likely affect stock prices in those manufacturers. The embargo doesn't ban reporters from interviewing outside sources altogether. It only bans them from doing so until a certain time. If the journalist wants to be responsible, they can start interviewing after that time, and then publish a well-researched paper. Lots of assumptions are being made about intentions, but perhaps this article makes the issue seem more evil/conspiracy-like than it is.
- briandear 10y ago
  So what if it affects stock prices? I am not sure why that concerns the FDA.
massysett 10y ago
It's fair to blame the FDA, but this article absolves journalists of any responsibility. No one is making them show up for these dog and pony shows. Reminds me of when I read stories saying that a government official briefed reporters in the condition that the official not be named. The press in that situation willingly let itself become the government's propaganda arm. Journalists need to look in the mirror here too.
tomohawk 10y ago
The 1st amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Here, the US Government is clearly abridging the freedom of the press. It doesn't matter if it is 'consensual'. It is prohibited. This is yet more evidence that this administration is one of the worst ever in terms undermining the ability of the press to provide accountability and transparency.
aetherson 10y ago
Someone -- I think here on HN -- described the catch 22 for journalists: They need access in order to do their jobs. But they will get denied access as soon as they use that access to tell a story that substantially upsets the people they cover. You basically get one chance in your career as a journalist to really do the right thing, and then after that you can't do your day-to-day job.
Kinnard 10y ago
This is especially troubling given the ruinous dietary advice they were bribed into trumpeting, essentially poisoning a generation of Americans: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-ind... They cannot be trusted.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  It's a mess out there. Everyone's bribing. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/13/some-context-for-that-nyt-sugar-article/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/13/some-context-for-that-n...
- kvb 10y ago
  What's the link to the FDA?
- pekk 10y ago
  Which company should we have listened to instead of the FDA? Or should we just give up and decide for ourselves, for example, that vaccines cause autism, or that the government shouldn't even try to prevent poisonous foods from being sold?
Kinnard 10y ago
This is especially troubling given the ruinous dietary advice they were bribed into trumpeting, essentially poisoning a generation of Americans: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-ind... They cannot be trusted.
suprgeek 10y ago
"Manipulating the media" - what about the much more serious concern of the revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA? This door spins almost as fast as the one between the Big Banks and the SEC. The current commissioner of the FDA used to be a paid consultant for the the Pharma industry and that was the reason they backdoored him into the spot [1] (after getting him in as some other position) [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/health/fda-nominee-califfs-ties-to-drug-industry-raise-questions.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/health/fda-nominee-califfs...
mcguire 10y ago
"Also in 2014 the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) used a close-hold embargo when it announced to a dozen reporters that researchers had discovered subtle signals of gravitational waves from the early universe. “You could only talk to other scientists who had seen the papers already; we didn't want them shared unduly,” says Christine Pulliam, the media relations manager for CfA. Unfortunately, the list of approved scientists provided by CfA listed only theoreticians, not experimentalists—and only an experimentalist was likely to see the flaw that doomed the study. (The team was seeing the signature of cosmic dust, not gravitational waves.) “I felt like a fool, in retrospect,” says Lemonick, who, as one of a dozen or so chosen journalists, covered the story for Time (at the time, he was not on the staff of Scientific American)." This is a major problem with science coverage. Media is forced to run what is effectively a press release. Stories that are then retracted (the story of easily-generating pluripotent stem cells a few years ago didn't pass my limited smell test and were then revealed to be faked) cause the public to be rightfully distrustful of science coverage and science. Not to mention the handling of regulatory bodies; has anyone seen any coverage of e-cigarettes after the FDA's regulations change that didn't have sentences to the effect of, "E-cigarettes are promoted as safer than cigarettes. But this shows the aren't completely safe."?
a3n 10y ago
> The deal was this: NPR, along with a select group of media outlets, would get a briefing about an upcoming announcement by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a day before anyone else. But in exchange for the scoop, NPR would have to abandon its reportorial independence. The FDA would dictate whom NPR's reporter could and couldn't interview. If I was an editor, that deal would have been a much more interesting story than whatever they were explicitly trying to report.
djcjr 10y ago
--TL;DR-- Another government agency is more controlling with (mis)information, and the integrity and usefulness of news media declines further.
known 10y ago
If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed.

221 points by runesoerensen 10y ago

known 10y ago

"Media does not spread free opinion; it generates opinion." --Oswald Spengler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West

losteverything 10y ago
OK I looked at the link and now want more Spangler. What made you recall that quote?

niels_olson 10y ago

Are media embargos a new thing, or is just this reporter's first time around this block, and they're shocked to see the sausage get made. Quite frankly, the science press has failed to earn the trust of scientists day in and day out for as long as science press have taken that title.

moefogs 10y ago
Media embargos are bog standard, and have been for ages.
Bartweiss 10y ago
The point I took is that conditional embargoes are much worse than simple ones. This is a long-discussed issue with video games. If you say "no reviews for our video game until release", that's just controlling timing. If you say "no negative reviews for our video game until release", you're manipulating the narrative. You don't ask anyone to lie (good reviews can still be totally sincere), but the gestalt is no longer natural. > "Embargoes that attempt to control sourcing are dangerous" It appears that the FDA is using conditional embargoes, and their specific conditions are what shocked reporters.
- stordoff 10y ago
  > You don't ask anyone to lie (good reviews can still be totally sincere), but the gestalt is no longer natural. What I'm seeing fairly often is "Review embargo: nth Month; Streaming embargo: n-7th Month". While there's an argument for it (reviewing a game takes time, but a stream can be done cold), I suspect it (in some cases at least) is a way to make sure good coverage comes out first - a streamer probably isn't going to be digging completely into the flaws of a game, and they are actively playing to an audience/trying to be entertaining, potentially making a mediocre game look better. It's not quite the same as controlling review content, but it definitely feels manipulative.
notfromhere 10y ago
Embargoes happen on the time; but usually controlling the narrative is super subtle rather than explicit. Most journalists aren't too critical of a source because they know next time they won't be given a release at all.

maxerickson 10y ago

Alternate title: How the media betray their readers.

brilee 10y ago

The last two paragraphs of the article says it all - the FDA has embargo power over the media, because the media can't cooperate to set their own embargo: Even a close-hold embargo wouldn't constrain a reporter without the reporter's consent; the reporter can simply wait until the embargo expires and speak to outside sources, albeit at the cost of filing the story a little bit later. Alas, Kiernan says, there isn't any movement within the journalism community to change things.

jnordwick 10y ago
That's funny because the article mentions plenty of journalistic oppositions of the the close-hold embargo from FOX News to Association of Health Care Journalists.

finid 10y ago

FDA manipulates the media. That's one part. The other part: FDA is controlled by the companies that come under its umbrella. Think of the fox guarding the hen house. So in the final analysis, those companies control the media. But it gets better; sometimes, the parent company of a media company is in some sort of partnership with the companies that control the FDA.

bpodgursky 10y ago
Did you even read the article? The main example that broke the news about this was when the FDA announced regulations about e-cigarettes. The tobacco interests were staunchly opposed to the regulations, and the FDA wanted to prevent NPR + other journalists from getting comment from them. Try to actually read before injecting your politics.
- spdustin 10y ago
  Yes, and that proves the GP's point. The tobacco industry are the ones who'll remain largely unaffected by that ruling because they are grandfathered in from certification requirements. Oh, and also, they own a considerable size of the disposal e-cig market, so the relevant ruling effectively extinguishes the smaller players who sell re-usable kit. So the interested media (who cover tobacco legislation) were kept out. So... The companies pulling the strings of the FDA were able to control the messaging of the ruling to make it about "we're in support of this" rather than "we're removing all our competition by employing the FDA as our market enforcer"
- SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
  But finid still isn't wrong and you aren't either. The FDA definitely seems to be controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. I guess sometimes these industries step on each others toes getting things done, and in the e-cig case pharma won over tobacco. P.s. friendly note that your first sentence is against HN rules.
- finid 10y ago
  Sorry, I don't depend on breaking news before I become familiar with something that affects me. How the FDA operates, or how it is operated, is no news for those who have been following the FDA. So the e-cig regulation was no news. I wish how food companies where allowed to market a particular type of cereal as good for you made the breaking news reel. And before you say there's solid science behind it, wasn't there an article the other day about how food companies control(led) food and nutritional scientists? I always try to look at the big picture, not just a breaking news item.

pnathan 10y ago

A few points. This is the aim, in part, of PR firms/departments: to shape and control the narrative, the public relationship. That a behind-the-scenes method is used to control the relationship should not be a surprise. That it is being embraced by the scientific authorities is surprising, frankly, and disappointing to me. That said, it would be absolutely stunning to peek under the covers of major journalism outfits and understand exactly how the sausage gets made and how the flows of power route. Why does X get covered, Y doesn't? How much do journalists take direction, in practice, from outside sources, and how much investigative journalism do they really do? I don't know.

jnordwick 10y ago

This is really disturbing: From the article: "Documents obtained by Scientific American through Freedom of Information Act requests now paint a disturbing picture of the tactics that are used to control the science press. For example, the FDA assures the public that it is committed to transparency, but the documents show that, privately, the agency denies many reporters access—including ones from major outlets such as Fox News—and even deceives them with half-truths to handicap them in their pursuit of a story. At the same time, the FDA cultivates a coterie of journalists whom it keeps in line with threats. And the agency has made it a practice to demand total control over whom reporters can and can't talk to until after the news has broken, deaf to protests by journalistic associations and media ethicists and in violation of its own written policies." So let see if I understand this... 1- They tell their friendly reporters who they can and can't talk to with conditional embargos. 2- They don't let reports they view as hostile into the press releases. 3- They actively thwart these reporters viewed as hostiles by intentionally telling them lies and half-truths. This is completely absurd, A federal agency is manipulating the story it wants and the side it wants to tell it. It is picking the winners and losers, and the winners keep quiet about the scam because it they start to be seen as trouble makers, soon they will start getting the Fox News treatment too.

Fordrus 10y ago
See, I do feel for the FDA. Trying to message things properly is like trying to send a smoke signal in a hurricane. When, for any given thing you want to regulate, there are 4 incredibly wealthy special interest groups trying to warp your message to protect the profit margins of the companies they represent, rather than keep safety or anything else in mind there, making sure that you don't take "Totally reasonable measure A" and get the people you're protecting messaged, "HOW DARE YOU, MY FREEEEDOM!" - that's quite difficult. But despite my understanding of that, the HUGE problem there is that "Totally reasonable measure A" and "Draconian Evil Measure X" look almost exactly the same to us onlookers, and when the FDA, or anyone, uses "Morally Ambiguous Embargo Y" to protect their actions, why, the rational response from us as onlookers is the ASSUME that they're performing "Draconian Evil Measure X." So what, exactly, is the answer? I don't think there IS one presently out there that isn't incredibly messy, but I hope we can still discover it - that is, figure out how to protect the almost certainly true and reasonable actions from the 'bad guys,' while not falling afoul of the rational reaction of the 'good guys' (us, in this case, the people being protected) and coming under attack from THEM.

rtkwe 10y ago

One point I think in support of these types of embargoes is that news about an FDA announcement can have huge financial and business impacts and seeking responses would very likely leak that information to the businesses that will be impacted by announcement X.

curious_fella1 10y ago
Couldn't they just add a condition that anyone who is reached out to for comment can't act on that information until the embargo has passed?
- rtkwe 10y ago
  That'd be neigh impossible to enforce and a lot of people wouldn't agree to those terms.
  - rdiddly 10y ago
    Is it not insider trading at that point, enforceable by the (admittedly pathetic) SEC?
- mcguire 10y ago
  That would be the traditional embargo. This article concerns conditional embargoes.

DubiousPusher 10y ago

This makes a pretty good argument for selecting news sources that aren't "first to print". If a news source is willing to be behind the curve, it indicates they're willing to report the news second hand and at least have the possibility of pursuing some due diligence.

rdiddly 10y ago
The truth is worth waiting for? I like it.
jerf 10y ago
I agree. It's tempting to jump to the natural conclusions about how bad all the people involved are, but this would lose a lot of its force if media gave up its game of shaving minutes or seconds off first publication and developed an ability to stick with a topic beyond one "news cycle", the very term of which implies the existence of the problem. It could be easier to fix the structural issues than the people issues. Given how short a news cycle is becoming, perhaps this is not such a great thing to ask for anymore. I like watching "Angry Joe's" reviews for video games, which I note can come out up to a month after the official release date. You may find his review style offputting and I don't always agree with his conclusions, but it's obvious that he actually puts the time in, whereas other journalists are, at times, clearly reviewing games on the basis of playing through the first couple of levels yesterday. I'd like to see this in more media.

ISL 10y ago

Are there good references for journalistic standards for embargos? From a science (and future funding) perspective, large collaborations with important results are interested in making a splash (which, referenced in the article, backfired for BICEP). They're interested in quality reporting, but they want to have the opportunity to bring the discovery (think Higgs, gravitational waves, etc.) to the world. Science stories are hard to report, as the journalist, even one with a science background, needs to come quickly up to speed with a nuanced field. What's the best way to ensure that a science story can be reported well, as argued for in this article, without the embargo getting jumped? "Hello, Dr. Not-in-ATLAS/CMS physicist, we've never met before, but I work for the NYT and I'm working on a story appearing Thursday, around the same time as the CERN press conference. If both experiments had observed a single Higgs at 125 GeV mass, what would it mean? Interesting. Also, please don't tell anyone." Such an embargo would last only tens of seconds after the physicist hung up the phone (and for good reason, as free exchange of information is paramount in academia). How would you like to see scientists report results? Would you prefer that researchers present results to an unprepared press at the same time as the journal article appears, with improved reporting a week later, or get informed but embargoed reporting at the same time as the announcement?

striking 10y ago
The SPJ code of ethics[1] states that journalists should (because the "highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public"): – Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility. – Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage. – Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content. – Expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations. . TechCrunch said in 2008 that they will break every embargo they agree to.[2] Edit: they later (2011, 2012) backed down from that pledge. See CobrastanJorji's comment below (thank you!) . The Society of American Business Editors and Writers argue that they are useful to keep the standard of journalism high, but that "journalists are ultimately responsible to the public."[3] . And just for fun, and to make matters more concrete, here's a Slate article in which an example (an article published by the WaPo) is raised that calls the embargo system into question.[4] . [1]: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/ [3]: https://sabew.org/2012/05/the-embargo-and-business-journalists/ https://sabew.org/2012/05/the-embargo-and-business-journalis... [4]: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/11/breaking_news_not_transcribing_it.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20... I hope this can help answer your question.

c3534l 10y ago

Why on earth would NPR accept that deal? I thought the whole point of public radio was that it was that by relying on donations it could maintain its independence and objectivity. There is no longer any reason for them to exist.

tarequeh 10y ago
It's hard for me to understand that why NPR would give up their journalistic freedom to receive the briefing one day early. Is it that kind of a deal-breaker to report an FDA announcement a day later than some others?
- godshatter 10y ago
  In a perfect world, NPR would have done their article a day late, with the proper quotes from those affected, and would have explained in a footnote that this information would have been out a day earlier except that NPR could not ethically agree with the FDAs terms which were blah, blah, blah.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    Then, for the next story, the FDA wouldn't even tell NPR about the possibility of the briefing, so NPR would start researching their story when other news organizations published their stories. The NPR would be release its story several days after the people who had the scoop, and fairly likely, its article would sink and vanish.

noobermin 10y ago

One great idea is to just not give embargoes, just give everyone the same information at the same time. It seems like an embargo is a favor to the media companies, feeding this frenzy of "get out first" journalism. Instead, they should be all be "left in the cold" to quote the article.

arca_vorago 10y ago

While thinking about the FDa, please keep in mind how pervasivly Monsanto has inserted former employees into its ranks for their putposes (especially now in light of the Bayer buyout move). Sure big pharma et al have as well, but it's monsanto that pops up on my "6 degrees of kevin bacon" social graphs of them.

heisenbit 10y ago

Embargoes are an effective tool to ensure an certain minimum depth of reporting, control timing and prevent misunderstanding causing negative publications. They can be used to implement some limited idea of fairness and they can be used to exercise control. Embargoes are a communications and marketing tool. Whether public institutions should value story telling over letting the facts stand for themselves is really the question. The culture today puts a lot value on stories...

tn13 10y ago

Is there any studies to indicate FDA is useful to Americans in any way? Despite the absolutely mindblowing sh*t-pile of regulations that this agency creates every year there does not seem to be any major difference between lifespans of Americans and neighboring Canada. Not to mention the EpiPen like fiascos are a direct result of FDA's collusion from very people it swears to protect us. FDA's existence seem to put a significant cost on doctors, pharma companies, patients and everyone related with no apparent benefit. Surely we can point one or two occasions where FDA might have saved American health but have we measured the times it actually harmed Americans by peddling falsehoods, increasing cost of drugs and delaying innovation ? Plenty of research seem to exist to point out that FDA might be doing more harm to us than good. http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php http://www.fdareview.org/05_harm.php

vkou 10y ago
Canada has an FDA equivalent, called Health Canada (The HPFB, to be precise.) It has a very similar process for drug approval, including a mindblowing shit-pile of regulations for what constitutes approval, what can and cannot be sold, and what the government will pay for. On, and the best part? It piggybacks off FDA approval, via mutual exchange of information between the parties. If you got FDA approval for your drug, you will have a much easier time selling it in Canada. Don't tear down a fence, unless you understand why it was built. Medicine is a shit-pile of complicated, and there's no shortage of people willing to peddle snake oil - or, starting from the best intentions, grossly misunderstand the efficacy of a treatment. There are always compromises that have to be made, between ensuring timely, affordable access to drugs, and being sure that those drugs actually behave as advertised. Some of the tradeoffs currently made may not be optimal - however, to dismiss them out of hand, without thoroughly understanding them is hubris.

neil_s 10y ago

Is it just me that sees a legitimate need for close-hold embargoes in specific cases? In this case, the FDA was releasing new rules that would affect medical device manufacturers and hence their stock prices. If reporters went around asking industry people for comment about this, then they would have been spreading material non-public information that would very likely affect stock prices in those manufacturers. The embargo doesn't ban reporters from interviewing outside sources altogether. It only bans them from doing so until a certain time. If the journalist wants to be responsible, they can start interviewing after that time, and then publish a well-researched paper. Lots of assumptions are being made about intentions, but perhaps this article makes the issue seem more evil/conspiracy-like than it is.

briandear 10y ago
So what if it affects stock prices? I am not sure why that concerns the FDA.

massysett 10y ago

It's fair to blame the FDA, but this article absolves journalists of any responsibility. No one is making them show up for these dog and pony shows. Reminds me of when I read stories saying that a government official briefed reporters in the condition that the official not be named. The press in that situation willingly let itself become the government's propaganda arm. Journalists need to look in the mirror here too.

tomohawk 10y ago

The 1st amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Here, the US Government is clearly abridging the freedom of the press. It doesn't matter if it is 'consensual'. It is prohibited. This is yet more evidence that this administration is one of the worst ever in terms undermining the ability of the press to provide accountability and transparency.

aetherson 10y ago

Someone -- I think here on HN -- described the catch 22 for journalists: They need access in order to do their jobs. But they will get denied access as soon as they use that access to tell a story that substantially upsets the people they cover. You basically get one chance in your career as a journalist to really do the right thing, and then after that you can't do your day-to-day job.

Kinnard 10y ago

This is especially troubling given the ruinous dietary advice they were bribed into trumpeting, essentially poisoning a generation of Americans: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-ind... They cannot be trusted.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
It's a mess out there. Everyone's bribing. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/13/some-context-for-that-nyt-sugar-article/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/13/some-context-for-that-n...
kvb 10y ago
What's the link to the FDA?
pekk 10y ago
Which company should we have listened to instead of the FDA? Or should we just give up and decide for ourselves, for example, that vaccines cause autism, or that the government shouldn't even try to prevent poisonous foods from being sold?

Kinnard 10y ago

suprgeek 10y ago

"Manipulating the media" - what about the much more serious concern of the revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA? This door spins almost as fast as the one between the Big Banks and the SEC. The current commissioner of the FDA used to be a paid consultant for the the Pharma industry and that was the reason they backdoored him into the spot [1] (after getting him in as some other position) [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/health/fda-nominee-califfs-ties-to-drug-industry-raise-questions.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/health/fda-nominee-califfs...

mcguire 10y ago

"Also in 2014 the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) used a close-hold embargo when it announced to a dozen reporters that researchers had discovered subtle signals of gravitational waves from the early universe. “You could only talk to other scientists who had seen the papers already; we didn't want them shared unduly,” says Christine Pulliam, the media relations manager for CfA. Unfortunately, the list of approved scientists provided by CfA listed only theoreticians, not experimentalists—and only an experimentalist was likely to see the flaw that doomed the study. (The team was seeing the signature of cosmic dust, not gravitational waves.) “I felt like a fool, in retrospect,” says Lemonick, who, as one of a dozen or so chosen journalists, covered the story for Time (at the time, he was not on the staff of Scientific American)." This is a major problem with science coverage. Media is forced to run what is effectively a press release. Stories that are then retracted (the story of easily-generating pluripotent stem cells a few years ago didn't pass my limited smell test and were then revealed to be faked) cause the public to be rightfully distrustful of science coverage and science. Not to mention the handling of regulatory bodies; has anyone seen any coverage of e-cigarettes after the FDA's regulations change that didn't have sentences to the effect of, "E-cigarettes are promoted as safer than cigarettes. But this shows the aren't completely safe."?

a3n 10y ago

> The deal was this: NPR, along with a select group of media outlets, would get a briefing about an upcoming announcement by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a day before anyone else. But in exchange for the scoop, NPR would have to abandon its reportorial independence. The FDA would dictate whom NPR's reporter could and couldn't interview. If I was an editor, that deal would have been a much more interesting story than whatever they were explicitly trying to report.

djcjr 10y ago

--TL;DR-- Another government agency is more controlling with (mis)information, and the integrity and usefulness of news media declines further.

known 10y ago

If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed.