14 ms·

I am looking for reasonable explanations for this, but keep coming up blank. I grew up in a country where this sort of censorship and fact hiding was the norm,

I am looking for reasonable explanations for this, but keep coming up blank. I grew up in a country where this sort of censorship and fact hiding was the norm, and hated it. I now live in a country that is much freer, but for the first time since 1938, no longer has an active US ambassador, with no replacement in sight, since President Trump fired all US ambassadors to foreign countries on the afternoon of his inauguration... [0] [0] - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-fires-us-ambassadors-no-replacements-a7538256.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum...

barney54 10y ago
Here's an explanation--the new management of the agencies want to review the social media policies.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  > social media policies social media policies is sci-fi way of saying "people saying things" though.
  - barney54 10y ago
    True, but this isn't a case of people speaking from their own point of view. The social media account represent the Departments in an official capacity.
    - joshkpeterson 10y ago
      This is great and all, but climate change is going to kill a lot of people so......
- cyberferret 10y ago
  In my line of business, I get to inherit web and mobile apps from other developers all the time. One thing I never do is to completely shut down the app and take it offline while I scour through the code to ensure everything is ok. Not unless there is a glaring problem or security hole that is already evident. It is ironic that the person giving the orders to restrict his subordinates from tweeting can still continue tweeting his stream of consciousness stuff carte blanche...
  - loafa 10y ago
    Fair enough, but the EPA twitter account isn't exactly mission-critical for anyone, it can afford to not tweet for a little while. Also I don't think it's particularly ironic that the President of the United States gets certain privileges which his subordinates don't.
    - fpgeek 10y ago
      Except, in the general case, that isn't true. Many of the Park Service social media accounts that were shut down do disseminate emergency information. That part of the "shutdown" was rolled back once the issues were understood, but in the interim those kinds of Twitter feeds were pointing people to their Facebook page for up-to-date information. I guess we're lucky that no one included Facebook in the shutdown order and even luckier that there was no relevant emergency while the social media policy was being clarified.
  - vacri 10y ago
    > It is ironic that the person giving the orders to restrict his subordinates from tweeting can still continue tweeting his stream of consciousness stuff carte blanche... Kind've, kind've not. If you're a government agency and you employ a new staffer outside of PR, you're not expecting them to tweet stream-of-consciousness. Trump, on the other hand, was largely elected because he did do this and it's expected of him.
    - facetube 10y ago
      What evidence is there of this? From this vantage point, it looks like he was elected despite his Twitter falsehoods (read: lies) and stream-of-(un)consciousness, not because of it. He lost the popular vote by three million votes. He is historically unpopular.
      - vacri 10y ago
        He did lose the popular vote, and I'm definitely not a Trump apologist. But however you want to carve it, over 60 million people got out there on election day(-ish) and spent effort to vote for him in a non-compulsory election. I'm first in line to criticise the primitive Electoral College, the cancerous state of US gerrymandering, and the vapidity of the two-party tribal system, but voter turnout was high. Bush and Gore each got 50M votes in the 2000 election. Obama/McCain was 70M/60M (also: McCain's loss was much greater than Trump's). Clinton/Trump was 65M/62M. Unless Trump's numbers were rapaciously Russian-ified, he still put in a solid showing with voluntary voters. Trump's appeal was his unorthodox, un-polished dog-whistle politics, and his faithful lapped up his 'tell-it-like-it-is' approach, even if the 'like-it-is' part was fabricated out of whole cloth.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  The new management of the agencies want to review the social media policies. With the aim of installing Orwellian-style thought control practices† at every level, affecting every last publicity statement, blog post, and tweet. You forgot that part. † Based on what his press secretary (and other lackeys) attempted to have us believe about the size of the inaugural day crowds (and the millions of people who voted fraudulently in the past election) -- in addition to things Trump himself has said about climate change, and a whole bunch of other issues -- that's not hyperbole; that's quite literally what's happening.
  - jquery 10y ago
    This is different than every Presidential transition of power, how? I don't see what's Orwellian about it. Presidents have always controlled the official department media their agencies put out.
    - kafkaesq 10y ago
      This is different than every Presidential transition of power, how? It's the aims of the control, and the utter brazenness with which the new administration attempts to manipulate facts and reality in general that are different. There's never been an administration (well, maybe in the 19th century; but I mean, not since the dawn of modern journalistic reporting) that blatantly and transparently lied about such publicly known and immediately fact-checkable things as crowd sizes on inaugural day. I don't see what's Orwellian about it. This morning the press secretary asked you -- yes, you -- to not see anything wrong with the fact that President still believes that "millions of people voted illegally" in the last election. And that he has "studies and evidence" on which he bases that belief. You don't see anything Orwellian about that?
      - ColanR 10y ago
        Don't forget that he's press secretary for the one guy who actually made accurate polling assessments prior to the election. If your source on disproving the "millions of illegal votes" is one of the same sources that thought Hillary was going to win in a landslide, then you have nothing to say. I'm not going to say I agree there were illegal votes, but I am holding out for better evidence.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  Except that there is no management, because they haven't staffed the administration as fast as usual, so they just put out a gag order instead of risking someone going "off message". It's incompetence coupled with ineptitude.
- px1999 10y ago
  I've worked in government (thankfully not US federal) and when departments review their specific operations/policies, they rarely grind to a halt, it's business as usual while things get evaluated/decided and policies built behind the scenes. The only reason that you'd do something this public is to make it a spectacle and give people the impression that you're doing important busy work at all levels; or to try to assert/show dominance.
- dashundchen 10y ago
  Except it's not just social media: It's freezing the grants and business of the EPA. [1] It's stopping the publication of federal ag research [2] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/23/trump-administration-tells-epa-to-freeze-all-grants-contracts/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-business%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.ca10b4006729 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-usda-idUSKBN1582OB http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-usda-idUSKBN1582...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
Meta: people say they keep looking for explanations. Explanations are offered. Then the explanations are downvoted and an argument ensues. It may be fine that you don't understand or like the explanations, but saying "I really don't understand X" and then punishing anybody who tries to explain it isn't much of a way to have a reasonable public discourse. (This wasn't directed at you, just at the community at large. I've seen several of these comment questions and they never end well. Might be time for a politics pause for a day or two)
- codeddesign 10y ago
  Agreed. Anything remotely neutral about the new administration is met with a mob and pitch forks. Discussion is good. Saying you don't understand because you don't agree with answers is like saying you don't understand why a homosexaul is homosexual. Last time I checked, that's called "bigotry"
  - icanhackit 10y ago
    > Saying you don't understand because you don't agree You can't make an assessment about whether you agree if you don't understand - the latter must must happen before the former can come to pass. It would either be the case that you don't understand because the explanation is complex or it contains logical fallacies...the latter applies to your statement above. > is like saying you don't understand why a homosexaul is homosexual. It's fine to say you don't understand why a homosexual is homosexual - however it's not fine to impose restrictions, punishment, violence or torment for what goes on between consenting adults. You're allowed to find it odd or not to your taste, but you're expected to live and let live. > Last time I checked, that's called "bigotry" Bigotry is intolerance stemming from a preconceived opinion that isn't based on reason or experience. And I'd agree that the liberal/progressive side can exhibit such intolerance - I've been on the receiving end despite considering myself progressive. But if we're going talk about the old classics like racism, homophobia, and sexism -- the conservative side knows the art better than any.
    - wooter 10y ago
jquery 10y ago
The existing social media managers are openly hostile to the new boss, with irrelevant-to-their-organization tweets going out about the inauguration crowd-size? To your latter point regarding the fired ambassadors, it's the most scandalous thing since 2008, when Obama did the exact same thing - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/obama-gives-political-ambassad.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/obama-gives-poli...
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Point taken, but I believe when Obama did it, there was already someone appointed to take the outgoing ambassadors place immediately (at least, here, it was the case). A changing of the guard in these roles is (as the article I posted pointed out) the norm. However, In the current case, no one knows who the replacement is, or when he/she will be taking on the role, thus leaving us officially without an ambassador for the foreseeable future, and also resulting in the longest gap in 70 odd years that we have not had an official ambassador.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    I don't think it actually matters in the short run. Career FSOs do the actual work in embassies, which is why you see big campaign donors and mid-level party hacks appointed as ambassadors to all but the most powerful countries.
  - candiodari 10y ago
    > Point taken, but I believe when Obama did it, there was already someone appointed to take the outgoing ambassadors place immediately (at least, here, it was the case). Unless I'm misremembering, that wasn't the case. Obama was appointing ambassadors regularly for a few months.
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      Not an appointee, but it's worth noting that there is a deputy chief of mission at every diplomatic post. This person is always a career diplomat with extensive experience, and is in place for precisely this reason. To take over and run the mission until a politically appointed ambassador is present.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
nether 10y ago
Everyone these days is ostensibly "pro-science," just as many anti-vaxxers claim to be "pro-vaccine." The administration merely wants to review the scientific integrity of the EPA's work, and prevent the likelihood of any erroneous, possibly non-scientific data from being spread.
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  Who has the administration added to the candidate pool that has the necessary skill and qualifications to verify the scientific integrity of the EPA's work? This is really reaching for a rationalization.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
The explanation is basically the Trump administration wants to control all media messaging (as most administrations do), but is so far behind on staffing the posts at EPA and others that the secretary level people who should be in place to handle this haven't been nominated in most cases, let alone confirmed. The fact that their solution to their own failure to get people in place is to make things worse by releasing a blanket gag order is another self-inflicted PR wound. If the "gag order" is in place after they have media people in place, or if it lasts more than a month or so, then I'd be worried.
- ianai 10y ago
  I hope that's "all" that's going on here. That's horrible, but it smells a lot more like signalling complete shutdowns.
  - nikdaheratik 10y ago
    Well that's the thing the administration doesn't seem to get: you shouldn't try and micromanage things if you don't know how it works. And they're so paranoid about their media "image" that they leave the chance for FUD to creep in without encouragement. And not everything in their agenda is acceptable to most Americans, so it's hard to tell what's FUD and what's just their usual policy.
- ra1n85 10y ago
  Well thought and explained. The sausage making of a (particularly dramatic) presidential transition is on display.
- Amygaz 10y ago
  Who needs PR people and gag order when every day we get Spicer who barfs everything about what Trump believes is true or not?
  - inferiorhuman 10y ago
    That is his job. Spicer is very explicitly a PR person.
y_u_no_rust 10y ago
Stop being a baby -- Once we get the costly illegals out of our country things will start getting better there will even be less terrorist attacks because we won't let them past the gate.
fixxer 10y ago
Meh. This is pretty common in the private sector in various forms, either explicit or implicit. I wouldn't call this censorship. They can still, I presume, communicate their concerns with oversight groups.
- kej 10y ago
  Maybe the government ought to be held to higher standards than the private sector?
  - fixxer 10y ago
    If tweets are the def of high standards, then we're fucked. Seriously, this is idiotic.
gvd 10y ago
I actually think the fact that many people in the US coming from less free/developed countries is a problem (not the fact that they are here). They might come here thinking..wow this is great..this must be how it's supposed to be (together with the existing citizens who constantly hear they live in the greatest/free-est country on the planet). While when e.g. a Northern European comes here they are amazed by what kind of shit-show it sometimes is in this country. I think it prevents real change from happening. Questioning why things are they way they are. Should some of the fundamental just be changed/replaced? What country do we want to live in? Do we want people worrying about going bankrupt because they got sick or went to school? Do we want to worry about drinking lead poisoned water? etc etc. Sorry, I went way off topic. Trump apparently also want to defund PBS/NPR. I see a clear pattern here. None of these ideas will save substantial money and will erode democracy. Who else is going to educate the busy citizen about world events? CNN/Fox?
- jakeogh 10y ago
  NPR is one of the worst propaganda outlets. It insulates it's listeners from opposing viewpoints to a degree that I think is unhealthy, I'm often in awe of the sophistication of it. When they have a opposition expert on, it's very rarely someone I consider credible. They misrepresent the viewpoint of the opposition, and it's hard to believe it's not deliberate. I watched them (along with the rest of the MSM to be fair) lead their flocks to war many times now. Like FOX, xNBC, CNN (worse than even NPR) they represent the global government faction. Each plays it's part, but it's not really different. Government should not be funding the media at all. http://fair.org/extra/psyops-in-the-newsroom/ http://fair.org/extra/psyops-in-the-newsroom/
  - gvd 10y ago
    I disagree. Government can fund media, without you immediately thinking of Russia. Being Dutch originally, I would refer you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_public_broadcasting_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_public_broadcasting_syst... Note that this is not a closed system where there is no private news/tv. Also, look at DW (Deutsche Welle) and BBC. Whatever your opinion, these still provide much better information than whatever you can get in the US (well, you can actually get BBC/DW). I would love to hear a better approach.
true_religion 10y ago
I don't know how saying governemnt officials should speak through a specific medium is 'censorship'. Any organisation will want to control its message, and having your officials use a channel that's 140 characters maximum leads to only being able to talk about issues in the most flimsy of ways. Personally, I think there should be less Twitter and more published in-depth reports.
- vhost- 10y ago
  Why does trump get to use twitter, but the EPA can't?
  - true_religion 10y ago
    Because Trump is the boss. It's the same way that most companies don't allow random department heads to speak directly to investors, but force everything to be filtered through the board meeting notes, and SEC filings. What the EPA reports may be factual, but the presentation of facts, when they are spoken of, and how often, are all political practices. Is it important for the EPA to tweet daily "hey guys, you know climate change is caused by humans?". No, we know it is and don't deny it is. What's controversial is: how do we reign in the problem, what are we willing to give up to do so, and how do we coordinate with our allies and competitors ? The EPA's tweets may not be helpful in getting Chinese support, or encouraging a positive practical debate on how 3rd world nations can both improve their economies with limited technology and still be part of the climate change solution----or even if such a thing is necessary in the short term.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      >Because Trump is the boss. Democratic countries have representatives, not bosses. This includes for the civil service.
      - true_religion 10y ago
        I think you must be taking boss to mean something differently from me. Your direct report, is your boss regardless of if you are in civil service or not---often your 'boss' is not an elected official, but part of the bureaucracy. Your bosses direct report is also your boss (transitive law), and so on till you hit the pinnacle of the executive branch---Trump. I'm not saying he's some kind of mob-leader boss.
drak0n1c 10y ago
The firing of ambassadors is not very surprising. WikiLeaks revealed that many of Obama's ambassador appointments were basically sold to the biggest donors as a form of fundraising for the DNC. This became a hot campaign topic. http://observer.com/2016/09/wikileaks-guccifer-2-0-obama-sold-off-public-offices-to-donors/ http://observer.com/2016/09/wikileaks-guccifer-2-0-obama-sol...

barney54 10y ago

Here's an explanation--the new management of the agencies want to review the social media policies.

Avshalom 10y ago
> social media policies social media policies is sci-fi way of saying "people saying things" though.
- barney54 10y ago
  True, but this isn't a case of people speaking from their own point of view. The social media account represent the Departments in an official capacity.
  - joshkpeterson 10y ago
    This is great and all, but climate change is going to kill a lot of people so......
cyberferret 10y ago
In my line of business, I get to inherit web and mobile apps from other developers all the time. One thing I never do is to completely shut down the app and take it offline while I scour through the code to ensure everything is ok. Not unless there is a glaring problem or security hole that is already evident. It is ironic that the person giving the orders to restrict his subordinates from tweeting can still continue tweeting his stream of consciousness stuff carte blanche...
- loafa 10y ago
  Fair enough, but the EPA twitter account isn't exactly mission-critical for anyone, it can afford to not tweet for a little while. Also I don't think it's particularly ironic that the President of the United States gets certain privileges which his subordinates don't.
  - fpgeek 10y ago
    Except, in the general case, that isn't true. Many of the Park Service social media accounts that were shut down do disseminate emergency information. That part of the "shutdown" was rolled back once the issues were understood, but in the interim those kinds of Twitter feeds were pointing people to their Facebook page for up-to-date information. I guess we're lucky that no one included Facebook in the shutdown order and even luckier that there was no relevant emergency while the social media policy was being clarified.
- vacri 10y ago
  > It is ironic that the person giving the orders to restrict his subordinates from tweeting can still continue tweeting his stream of consciousness stuff carte blanche... Kind've, kind've not. If you're a government agency and you employ a new staffer outside of PR, you're not expecting them to tweet stream-of-consciousness. Trump, on the other hand, was largely elected because he did do this and it's expected of him.
  - facetube 10y ago
    What evidence is there of this? From this vantage point, it looks like he was elected despite his Twitter falsehoods (read: lies) and stream-of-(un)consciousness, not because of it. He lost the popular vote by three million votes. He is historically unpopular.
    - vacri 10y ago
      He did lose the popular vote, and I'm definitely not a Trump apologist. But however you want to carve it, over 60 million people got out there on election day(-ish) and spent effort to vote for him in a non-compulsory election. I'm first in line to criticise the primitive Electoral College, the cancerous state of US gerrymandering, and the vapidity of the two-party tribal system, but voter turnout was high. Bush and Gore each got 50M votes in the 2000 election. Obama/McCain was 70M/60M (also: McCain's loss was much greater than Trump's). Clinton/Trump was 65M/62M. Unless Trump's numbers were rapaciously Russian-ified, he still put in a solid showing with voluntary voters. Trump's appeal was his unorthodox, un-polished dog-whistle politics, and his faithful lapped up his 'tell-it-like-it-is' approach, even if the 'like-it-is' part was fabricated out of whole cloth.
kafkaesq 10y ago
The new management of the agencies want to review the social media policies. With the aim of installing Orwellian-style thought control practices† at every level, affecting every last publicity statement, blog post, and tweet. You forgot that part. † Based on what his press secretary (and other lackeys) attempted to have us believe about the size of the inaugural day crowds (and the millions of people who voted fraudulently in the past election) -- in addition to things Trump himself has said about climate change, and a whole bunch of other issues -- that's not hyperbole; that's quite literally what's happening.
- jquery 10y ago
  This is different than every Presidential transition of power, how? I don't see what's Orwellian about it. Presidents have always controlled the official department media their agencies put out.
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    This is different than every Presidential transition of power, how? It's the aims of the control, and the utter brazenness with which the new administration attempts to manipulate facts and reality in general that are different. There's never been an administration (well, maybe in the 19th century; but I mean, not since the dawn of modern journalistic reporting) that blatantly and transparently lied about such publicly known and immediately fact-checkable things as crowd sizes on inaugural day. I don't see what's Orwellian about it. This morning the press secretary asked you -- yes, you -- to not see anything wrong with the fact that President still believes that "millions of people voted illegally" in the last election. And that he has "studies and evidence" on which he bases that belief. You don't see anything Orwellian about that?
    - ColanR 10y ago
      Don't forget that he's press secretary for the one guy who actually made accurate polling assessments prior to the election. If your source on disproving the "millions of illegal votes" is one of the same sources that thought Hillary was going to win in a landslide, then you have nothing to say. I'm not going to say I agree there were illegal votes, but I am holding out for better evidence.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
Except that there is no management, because they haven't staffed the administration as fast as usual, so they just put out a gag order instead of risking someone going "off message". It's incompetence coupled with ineptitude.
px1999 10y ago
I've worked in government (thankfully not US federal) and when departments review their specific operations/policies, they rarely grind to a halt, it's business as usual while things get evaluated/decided and policies built behind the scenes. The only reason that you'd do something this public is to make it a spectacle and give people the impression that you're doing important busy work at all levels; or to try to assert/show dominance.
dashundchen 10y ago
Except it's not just social media: It's freezing the grants and business of the EPA. [1] It's stopping the publication of federal ag research [2] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/23/trump-administration-tells-epa-to-freeze-all-grants-contracts/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-business%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.ca10b4006729 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-usda-idUSKBN1582OB http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-usda-idUSKBN1582...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

Meta: people say they keep looking for explanations. Explanations are offered. Then the explanations are downvoted and an argument ensues. It may be fine that you don't understand or like the explanations, but saying "I really don't understand X" and then punishing anybody who tries to explain it isn't much of a way to have a reasonable public discourse. (This wasn't directed at you, just at the community at large. I've seen several of these comment questions and they never end well. Might be time for a politics pause for a day or two)

codeddesign 10y ago
Agreed. Anything remotely neutral about the new administration is met with a mob and pitch forks. Discussion is good. Saying you don't understand because you don't agree with answers is like saying you don't understand why a homosexaul is homosexual. Last time I checked, that's called "bigotry"
- icanhackit 10y ago
  > Saying you don't understand because you don't agree You can't make an assessment about whether you agree if you don't understand - the latter must must happen before the former can come to pass. It would either be the case that you don't understand because the explanation is complex or it contains logical fallacies...the latter applies to your statement above. > is like saying you don't understand why a homosexaul is homosexual. It's fine to say you don't understand why a homosexual is homosexual - however it's not fine to impose restrictions, punishment, violence or torment for what goes on between consenting adults. You're allowed to find it odd or not to your taste, but you're expected to live and let live. > Last time I checked, that's called "bigotry" Bigotry is intolerance stemming from a preconceived opinion that isn't based on reason or experience. And I'd agree that the liberal/progressive side can exhibit such intolerance - I've been on the receiving end despite considering myself progressive. But if we're going talk about the old classics like racism, homophobia, and sexism -- the conservative side knows the art better than any.
  - wooter 10y ago

jquery 10y ago

The existing social media managers are openly hostile to the new boss, with irrelevant-to-their-organization tweets going out about the inauguration crowd-size? To your latter point regarding the fired ambassadors, it's the most scandalous thing since 2008, when Obama did the exact same thing - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/obama-gives-political-ambassad.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/obama-gives-poli...

cyberferret 10y ago
Point taken, but I believe when Obama did it, there was already someone appointed to take the outgoing ambassadors place immediately (at least, here, it was the case). A changing of the guard in these roles is (as the article I posted pointed out) the norm. However, In the current case, no one knows who the replacement is, or when he/she will be taking on the role, thus leaving us officially without an ambassador for the foreseeable future, and also resulting in the longest gap in 70 odd years that we have not had an official ambassador.
- gozur88 10y ago
  I don't think it actually matters in the short run. Career FSOs do the actual work in embassies, which is why you see big campaign donors and mid-level party hacks appointed as ambassadors to all but the most powerful countries.
- candiodari 10y ago
  > Point taken, but I believe when Obama did it, there was already someone appointed to take the outgoing ambassadors place immediately (at least, here, it was the case). Unless I'm misremembering, that wasn't the case. Obama was appointing ambassadors regularly for a few months.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    Not an appointee, but it's worth noting that there is a deputy chief of mission at every diplomatic post. This person is always a career diplomat with extensive experience, and is in place for precisely this reason. To take over and run the mission until a politically appointed ambassador is present.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nether 10y ago

Everyone these days is ostensibly "pro-science," just as many anti-vaxxers claim to be "pro-vaccine." The administration merely wants to review the scientific integrity of the EPA's work, and prevent the likelihood of any erroneous, possibly non-scientific data from being spread.

bobwaycott 10y ago
Who has the administration added to the candidate pool that has the necessary skill and qualifications to verify the scientific integrity of the EPA's work? This is really reaching for a rationalization.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

The explanation is basically the Trump administration wants to control all media messaging (as most administrations do), but is so far behind on staffing the posts at EPA and others that the secretary level people who should be in place to handle this haven't been nominated in most cases, let alone confirmed. The fact that their solution to their own failure to get people in place is to make things worse by releasing a blanket gag order is another self-inflicted PR wound. If the "gag order" is in place after they have media people in place, or if it lasts more than a month or so, then I'd be worried.

ianai 10y ago
I hope that's "all" that's going on here. That's horrible, but it smells a lot more like signalling complete shutdowns.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  Well that's the thing the administration doesn't seem to get: you shouldn't try and micromanage things if you don't know how it works. And they're so paranoid about their media "image" that they leave the chance for FUD to creep in without encouragement. And not everything in their agenda is acceptable to most Americans, so it's hard to tell what's FUD and what's just their usual policy.
ra1n85 10y ago
Well thought and explained. The sausage making of a (particularly dramatic) presidential transition is on display.
Amygaz 10y ago
Who needs PR people and gag order when every day we get Spicer who barfs everything about what Trump believes is true or not?
- inferiorhuman 10y ago
  That is his job. Spicer is very explicitly a PR person.

y_u_no_rust 10y ago

Stop being a baby -- Once we get the costly illegals out of our country things will start getting better there will even be less terrorist attacks because we won't let them past the gate.

fixxer 10y ago

Meh. This is pretty common in the private sector in various forms, either explicit or implicit. I wouldn't call this censorship. They can still, I presume, communicate their concerns with oversight groups.

kej 10y ago
Maybe the government ought to be held to higher standards than the private sector?
- fixxer 10y ago
  If tweets are the def of high standards, then we're fucked. Seriously, this is idiotic.

gvd 10y ago

I actually think the fact that many people in the US coming from less free/developed countries is a problem (not the fact that they are here). They might come here thinking..wow this is great..this must be how it's supposed to be (together with the existing citizens who constantly hear they live in the greatest/free-est country on the planet). While when e.g. a Northern European comes here they are amazed by what kind of shit-show it sometimes is in this country. I think it prevents real change from happening. Questioning why things are they way they are. Should some of the fundamental just be changed/replaced? What country do we want to live in? Do we want people worrying about going bankrupt because they got sick or went to school? Do we want to worry about drinking lead poisoned water? etc etc. Sorry, I went way off topic. Trump apparently also want to defund PBS/NPR. I see a clear pattern here. None of these ideas will save substantial money and will erode democracy. Who else is going to educate the busy citizen about world events? CNN/Fox?

jakeogh 10y ago
NPR is one of the worst propaganda outlets. It insulates it's listeners from opposing viewpoints to a degree that I think is unhealthy, I'm often in awe of the sophistication of it. When they have a opposition expert on, it's very rarely someone I consider credible. They misrepresent the viewpoint of the opposition, and it's hard to believe it's not deliberate. I watched them (along with the rest of the MSM to be fair) lead their flocks to war many times now. Like FOX, xNBC, CNN (worse than even NPR) they represent the global government faction. Each plays it's part, but it's not really different. Government should not be funding the media at all. http://fair.org/extra/psyops-in-the-newsroom/ http://fair.org/extra/psyops-in-the-newsroom/
- gvd 10y ago
  I disagree. Government can fund media, without you immediately thinking of Russia. Being Dutch originally, I would refer you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_public_broadcasting_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_public_broadcasting_syst... Note that this is not a closed system where there is no private news/tv. Also, look at DW (Deutsche Welle) and BBC. Whatever your opinion, these still provide much better information than whatever you can get in the US (well, you can actually get BBC/DW). I would love to hear a better approach.

true_religion 10y ago

I don't know how saying governemnt officials should speak through a specific medium is 'censorship'. Any organisation will want to control its message, and having your officials use a channel that's 140 characters maximum leads to only being able to talk about issues in the most flimsy of ways. Personally, I think there should be less Twitter and more published in-depth reports.

vhost- 10y ago
Why does trump get to use twitter, but the EPA can't?
- true_religion 10y ago
  Because Trump is the boss. It's the same way that most companies don't allow random department heads to speak directly to investors, but force everything to be filtered through the board meeting notes, and SEC filings. What the EPA reports may be factual, but the presentation of facts, when they are spoken of, and how often, are all political practices. Is it important for the EPA to tweet daily "hey guys, you know climate change is caused by humans?". No, we know it is and don't deny it is. What's controversial is: how do we reign in the problem, what are we willing to give up to do so, and how do we coordinate with our allies and competitors ? The EPA's tweets may not be helpful in getting Chinese support, or encouraging a positive practical debate on how 3rd world nations can both improve their economies with limited technology and still be part of the climate change solution----or even if such a thing is necessary in the short term.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    >Because Trump is the boss. Democratic countries have representatives, not bosses. This includes for the civil service.
    - true_religion 10y ago
      I think you must be taking boss to mean something differently from me. Your direct report, is your boss regardless of if you are in civil service or not---often your 'boss' is not an elected official, but part of the bureaucracy. Your bosses direct report is also your boss (transitive law), and so on till you hit the pinnacle of the executive branch---Trump. I'm not saying he's some kind of mob-leader boss.

drak0n1c 10y ago

The firing of ambassadors is not very surprising. WikiLeaks revealed that many of Obama's ambassador appointments were basically sold to the biggest donors as a form of fundraising for the DNC. This became a hot campaign topic. http://observer.com/2016/09/wikileaks-guccifer-2-0-obama-sold-off-public-offices-to-donors/ http://observer.com/2016/09/wikileaks-guccifer-2-0-obama-sol...