TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Fake Briefing Bad Idea, FEMA Says

ADVERTISEMENT

By SPENCER S. HSU, The Washington Post

Published: October 27, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2 official apologized Friday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters while real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions.

'We are reviewing our press procedures and will make the changes necessary to ensure that all of our communications are straight forward and transparent,' Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA's deputy administrator, said in a four-paragraph statement.

'We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment,' Johnson said, a view repeated Friday by press officers at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, who criticized the event.

FEMA announced the news conference at its headquarters here about 15 minutes before it was to begin Tuesday afternoon, making it unlikely reporters could attend. Instead, FEMA set up a telephone conference line so reporters could listen.

In the briefing, Johnson stood behind a lectern, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

'It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened,' said John 'Pat' Philbin, FEMA's director of external affairs.

'Trying to manipulate the press and the public will only tarnish their FEMA's current success,' House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT