Media Access to Government Meteorologists Restricted?

Posted on October 6, 2005

A report in the Raw Story says that media requests for interviews with meteorologists from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including the National Weather Service (NWS), now has to be approved first by the Department of Commerce. Some NOAA mets were surprised when they were informed by Raw Story of this change.

"I have been worked for NOAA for roughly 15 years," said a NOAA employee speaking of both the Department media policy and the Teet email. "There has never been a blanket policy of needing approval before granting an interview with a national media outlet."
Another NOAA employee, also wishing to remain anonymous, concurred.
"This is a big change in our policy with the media," he said. "This comes all the way down from DOC," he added, indicating that such media decisions were formerly made at the local level.

It isn't clear why interview requests can no longer be handled by the local NWS centers but at a minimum it ads another layer of bureaucracy to the interview process. The Raw Story article has a copy of the memo that was sent to NOAA employees about the change in procedure. The new procedure makes little sense and seems likely to slow down the transfer of information from the NOAA and the NWS to the public.

WEATHER