CDC Instructed by Trump administration to ignore media requests from Voice of America

On April 30, 2020, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released an email sent from Michawn Rich, a Department of Agriculture spokesperson who had been detailed to the CDC to help with media requests about the coronavirus. Rich’s email instructed new CDC communications staff to ignore media requests from Voice of America (VOA). The document specifically singles out requests from VOA journalist Greta Van Susteren and links a story published in the White House daily newsletter accusing VOA, a U.S.-funded broadcaster, of promoting foreign propaganda. The CDC has yet to comment, according to Voice of America. 

Key Players

The CDC is a national public health agency, based in Atlanta and run under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services. Since the coronavirus pandemic first broke out in the United States in early 2020, the CDC has played an instrumental role in providing updates on health regulations and guidelines — such as those for social distancing, lockdown strategies, and wearing face masks — as well as data showing which regions and populations have been hit hardest by the virus.

Greta van Susteren is an American political commentator, lawyer, and host of Voice of America’s weekly news program, “Plugged In.” Van Susteren also works for the U.S. broadcaster Gray Television, where she hosts “Full Court Press,” a weekly news program. Recently, van Susteren has reported extensively on the coronavirus pandemic. In the past, she has been a news anchor for CNN, NBC, Fox News, and MSNBC. 

Further Details

On March 19, 2020, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, an independent group focused on preserving and expanding freedom of speech, filed a FOIA request for documents covering social media and press strategies concerning the coronavirus outbreak, according to Voice of America. On April 2, the Knight Institute filed a lawsuit to expedite the process in response to allegations that CDC experts were being prevented from speaking with journalists. The lawsuit alleges that CDC officials had been instructed to coordinate with the Office of the Vice President prior to speaking with the press. The suit was filed before Rich’s email containing explicit instructions regarding media engagement.

Rich’s email, sent April 30, explicitly cited an April 10 edition of the White House’s evening newsletter. The headline reads, “Amid a Pandemic, Voice of America Spends Your Money to Promote Foreign Propaganda.” Among other charges, the article claims VOA “amplified Beijing’s propaganda” as it relates to the coronavirus. The newsletter said this helped the Chinese government maintain a level of secrecy that “allowed the deadly virus to spread across the world.”

Rich’s email was one of four documents obtained by the Knight Institute via the FOIA request filed March 19 and expedited April 2. The Knight Institute published the documents June 9. According to Voice of America, two of the documents were heavily redacted, including one titled “Draft CDC Communication and Media Strategy for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Response,” which was fully redacted.

Anna Diakun, staff attorney at the Knight Institute, expressed concern to VOA about the “politicization of public health messaging,” as well as the Trump administration’s attempts to stage-manage CDC communications, as per Voice of America. 

Thus far, the role of the vice president’s office has been blocked out in the documents obtained by the Knight Institute. A May 20 article from CNN covered allegations from sources within the CDC, alleging that the White House “hamstrung” CDC attempts to mount a concerted response to the coronavirus outbreak as early as February. “We’ve been muzzled,” a current CDC official said to CNN. “What’s tough is that if we would have acted earlier on what we knew and recommended, we would have saved lives and money.”

Despite instructions from Rich regarding official agency media policy, Just Security, an online forum analyzing national security, reported that CDC officials need not seek preapproval from a supervisor before publicly expressing their personal views: “The COVID-19 communications policy doesn’t appear to contain such a carve-out.” The Office of the Vice President has declined VOA’s request for comment, according to The Washington Examiner. 

Outcome

VOA calls CDC’s actions “troubling,” decries White House interference in coverage

In a June 14 statement, then-VOA director Amanda Bennett expressed shock in reaction to the documents obtained from the CDC under the FOIA. “VOA, a federally-funded independent news organization, strongly rejects the accusations and calls on the CDC to immediately withdraw the instructions,” Bennett wrote. “For a federal agency’s public affairs office to categorically deny in advance interview requests from VOA journalists, including our colleague Greta Van Susteren, based on a White House opinion statement referring to an Associated Press story about COVID-19 shared by the VOA newsroom as ‘propaganda,’ is even more troubling.”

Concerning the alleged blacklisting, Van Susteren commented to VOA she did not know if the administration’s behavior itself was unusual, but that such a blatant attempt by the White House to muzzle a federal agency certainly is. “No administration, whether it’s Obama, Bush 41, or Clinton or anybody going back has liked the media,” she said. “But I’ve been at all these news organizations and I have never had this happen to me before.”