{"id":3619,"date":"2011-01-21T14:41:44","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T19:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3619"},"modified":"2011-01-24T18:20:05","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T23:20:05","slug":"is-it-time-to-fire-the-messengers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/01\/21\/is-it-time-to-fire-the-messengers\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it time to fire the messengers?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An opinion piece by the <a href=\"http:\/\/poststar.com\/news\/opinion\/columns\/wdoolittle\/article_ef774a72-24df-11e0-b8f7-001cc4c03286.html\">Glens Falls Post-Star&#8217;s Will Doolittle<\/a> is getting talked about a lot today by North Country journalists.<\/p>\n<p>Doolittle says it&#8217;s time to fire a lot of the media spokespeople who work for various state agencies (&#8220;flacks,&#8221; we call them in the trade).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When Gov. Andrew Cuomo is deciding how to pick the 10,000 or so state workers he wants to lay off, he should look at the state&#8217;s press officers.<\/p>\n<p>Many are former reporters and editors who switched to the low stress and good benefits of state employment.<\/p>\n<p>A handful make a good-faith effort, through their dealings with the media, to provide the public with public information.<\/p>\n<p>Most are defensive and uncooperative. They obfuscate and mislead. If you&#8217;re persistent, they stop taking your calls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a bit insider-baseballish &#8212; something we journalists deal with a lot, but which many members of the public might yawn over.<\/p>\n<p>But Doolittle&#8217;s certainly right that these media people play a powerful role as gatekeepers and middle men, controlling a lot of the info that we gain access to about our government.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?\u00a0 Do the various state agencies need designated spokespeople to handle the media and our questions?\u00a0 Or should we have direct access to the actual staffers and public servants who know the issues best?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An opinion piece by the Glens Falls Post-Star&#8217;s Will Doolittle is getting talked about a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[30,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}