Letter to the editor: PAOs shouldn’t rely only on social media to communicate
Mike McGill, a long-time former press officer for the General Services Administration, responds to Federal Drive’s Tom Temin’s column highlighting the need ...
Mike McGill, a long-time former press officer for the General Services Administration, responds to Federal Drive’s Tom Temin’s column highlighting the need for federal press officers to have personal and frequent communications with members of the media.
I write today regarding my experience as a press officer at General Services Administration during the Bush II and Obama administrations. For most of the 15 years I was at GSA, I served as press officer for the Public Buildings Service in their National Capital Region. I had many dealings with the press.
During Bush II, White House oversight of agency press relations was quite permissive. GSA headquarters basically delegated responsibility for press relations in most instances to their regional offices. For non-controversial matters, I could merely clear a proposed response to a press query with my boss, the PBS Regional commissioner and, if he felt it necessary, with the regional administrator. I responded as a “GSA spokesman.” I also drafted press releases with the same review process and had them issued by HQ, which added a little rider at the bottom about what a great job GSA was doing. I could also call reporters on my own initiative to inform them of things like major lease awards. We would routinely notify the GSA press office in HQ of our activities, but only went to them immediately after an inquiry when it appeared controversy might arise. This approach enabled me to respond very quickly to press queries, meeting the reporter’s need for timely information, and getting the GSA story out in the public.
Enter the Obama administration. The first few GSA press secretaries had worked in the Obama campaign and generally were fairly young and totally unaware of how GSA functioned. The first, Sahar Wali, informed all of us regional press officers that the new administration wanted to communicate more directly with the public instead of letting the press interpret our message. Therefore, they intended to greatly downplay the number of press releases and instead make announcements on our website or through social media.
In cases where we were particularly insistent on getting word out, they would tell me they would put it on the website first and then tell reporters to look it up. They also said that henceforth, all press communications would be handled by HQ, with my role and that of my colleagues in the other regions consisting of referring press calls to HQ or informing HQ of what was being requested, giving them a proposed response, and they would then call the reporter.
The new process worked terribly. HQ would take far too long to respond to a reporter, resulting in reporters calling me and complaining. HQ did not have the depth of knowledge on the issues involved, so they would then have to get back to me for answers to follow up questions. They completely halted any heads up notices about new lease awards, so either the broker or the tenant agency would tell the press and they would get the credit.
It became most problematic when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed (the relief act for the Great Recession). For this, the Office of Management and Budget said that no press responses could be made without clearing them with OMB first, and OMB either took forever or refused to respond. Considering that GSA received $1.1 billion from this act, of which about $400 million went to my region, the region in which Congress sat, this restriction was absurd and damaging to the credibility of the ARRA.
So, like what it appears the Trump administration intends to do, if GSA’s experience is comparable to that of cabinet agencies, it seems to me that President Trump is simply intensifying the approach the Obama administration initiated in 2009.
The one thing I do not understand about the supposedly new Trump policies regards communication directly with the public. At GSA, under both Bush II and Obama, all public communication was supposed to be cleared at least through the regional press officer, so that the agency could speak with a single voice and not end up being indiscreet or contradicting itself. This applied to the press, members of Congress, and the general public, although so far as I know we had few queries directly from the general public.
Perhaps part of the problem stems from the rise of social electronic media. These mechanisms give agency HQs the ability to communicate with the public and bypass the press, but doing so poses far greater risk if things get out of control. I am not a fan of social media, and I really enjoyed my interactions over the phone with the press.
Letter to the editor: PAOs shouldn’t rely only on social media to communicate
Mike McGill, a long-time former press officer for the General Services Administration, responds to Federal Drive’s Tom Temin’s column highlighting the need ...
Mike McGill, a long-time former press officer for the General Services Administration, responds to Federal Drive’s Tom Temin’s column highlighting the need for federal press officers to have personal and frequent communications with members of the media.
I write today regarding my experience as a press officer at General Services Administration during the Bush II and Obama administrations. For most of the 15 years I was at GSA, I served as press officer for the Public Buildings Service in their National Capital Region. I had many dealings with the press.
During Bush II, White House oversight of agency press relations was quite permissive. GSA headquarters basically delegated responsibility for press relations in most instances to their regional offices. For non-controversial matters, I could merely clear a proposed response to a press query with my boss, the PBS Regional commissioner and, if he felt it necessary, with the regional administrator. I responded as a “GSA spokesman.” I also drafted press releases with the same review process and had them issued by HQ, which added a little rider at the bottom about what a great job GSA was doing. I could also call reporters on my own initiative to inform them of things like major lease awards. We would routinely notify the GSA press office in HQ of our activities, but only went to them immediately after an inquiry when it appeared controversy might arise. This approach enabled me to respond very quickly to press queries, meeting the reporter’s need for timely information, and getting the GSA story out in the public.
Enter the Obama administration. The first few GSA press secretaries had worked in the Obama campaign and generally were fairly young and totally unaware of how GSA functioned. The first, Sahar Wali, informed all of us regional press officers that the new administration wanted to communicate more directly with the public instead of letting the press interpret our message. Therefore, they intended to greatly downplay the number of press releases and instead make announcements on our website or through social media.
In cases where we were particularly insistent on getting word out, they would tell me they would put it on the website first and then tell reporters to look it up. They also said that henceforth, all press communications would be handled by HQ, with my role and that of my colleagues in the other regions consisting of referring press calls to HQ or informing HQ of what was being requested, giving them a proposed response, and they would then call the reporter.
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The new process worked terribly. HQ would take far too long to respond to a reporter, resulting in reporters calling me and complaining. HQ did not have the depth of knowledge on the issues involved, so they would then have to get back to me for answers to follow up questions. They completely halted any heads up notices about new lease awards, so either the broker or the tenant agency would tell the press and they would get the credit.
It became most problematic when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed (the relief act for the Great Recession). For this, the Office of Management and Budget said that no press responses could be made without clearing them with OMB first, and OMB either took forever or refused to respond. Considering that GSA received $1.1 billion from this act, of which about $400 million went to my region, the region in which Congress sat, this restriction was absurd and damaging to the credibility of the ARRA.
So, like what it appears the Trump administration intends to do, if GSA’s experience is comparable to that of cabinet agencies, it seems to me that President Trump is simply intensifying the approach the Obama administration initiated in 2009.
The one thing I do not understand about the supposedly new Trump policies regards communication directly with the public. At GSA, under both Bush II and Obama, all public communication was supposed to be cleared at least through the regional press officer, so that the agency could speak with a single voice and not end up being indiscreet or contradicting itself. This applied to the press, members of Congress, and the general public, although so far as I know we had few queries directly from the general public.
Perhaps part of the problem stems from the rise of social electronic media. These mechanisms give agency HQs the ability to communicate with the public and bypass the press, but doing so poses far greater risk if things get out of control. I am not a fan of social media, and I really enjoyed my interactions over the phone with the press.
–Mike McGill
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