The New York Sun this morning reveals that NYC’s Department of Education has created a “truth squad” deploying its press office staffers to read education Web logs and Web sites “in a hunt for factual errors and misinformation.” Sol Stern, Eduwonkette, Fordham’s Gadfly and A-Rus are among those on the DOE required reading list. Stern describes the practice as Orwellian.
I love a good controversy as much as anyone, but for better or for worse, this seems much ado about nothing. This, simply put, is what PR people do. It’s like getting upset at teachers for writing lesson plans. You could certainly raise questions about how government press offices have morphed from putative public information officers to functioning overtly as political operatives and image makers, and whether that’s a legitimate use of public dollars, but that’s been going on for a very long time now from the White House on down. If you have PR people on the public payroll, they’re going to do what PR people do–advocate aggressively for the programs, policies and people they serve.
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But reminders of the number of PR people on the public payroll tend to raise eyebrows. The public gets grumpy when it feels it is paying the people who are spinning it.
That’s precisely my point, Rachel. The real question is not what New York’s DOE is doing, but what the function of communications staff in government roles is supposed to be in a democracy. The role has morphed and the numbers of staff grown over the last several decades. It’s now an unabashed advocacy role. The question, in my opinion, is not the operational details, but the legitimacy of that advocacy function. I would never argue that there should not be a public information officer. That’s absolutely vital to responsive government.
A few quotes nicely chart the progression:
“Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.”
–Abraham Lincoln
“The flow of ideas, the capacity to make informed choices, the ability to criticize, all of the assumptions on which political democracy rests, depend largely on communications.
–John F. Kennedy
“The press secretary’s job is to present the president’s positions and thoughts in a manner that helps him advance his agenda, while also helping the press learn what the government is doing. It’s a balancing act that requires careful judgment in service to two masters”
— Ari Fleisher, White House press secretary to President George W. Bush.