Whoever thought of this idea, whoever went along with this idea, whoever approved of this idea, and whoever participated in this idea should be canned.
No exceptions.
The credibility of the Administration hinges on being above the board with the American public, and that these FEMA officials thought that this idea would float strikes me as showing just how incredibly tone deaf those officials are.
The Administration should not sit back and let this situation fester. By all accounts, the FEMA reaction to the California wildfires has been good, but this event totally undermines what little credibility FEMA has with the American people.
A top to bottom review of FEMA must be undertaken and all the dead wood removed. Period.
No exceptions.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2 official apologized yesterday 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.All that said, it is curious why FEMA couldn't provide more lead time for the presser and why weren't the media available knowing that FEMA would be having pressers throughout the day?
"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. ....
FEMA announced the news conference at its Southwest Washington headquarters about 15 minutes before it was to begin Tuesday afternoon, making it unlikely that reporters could attend. Instead, FEMA set up a telephone conference line so reporters could listen.
In the briefing, parts of which were televised live by cable news channels, 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. Certainly . . . I should have stopped it," said John P. "Pat" Philbin, FEMA's director of external affairs. "I hope readers understand we're working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it."
Would the media have asked different questions? Quite possibly, although there's no way to know what would have been asked. It's easy in hindsight for the media types to say that they'd have asked different or more pointed questions, but there's simply no way to know whether FEMA's response to those questions would have been any different than what was said.
The truth matters.
A bogus presser undermines the fact that the government's response to the wildfires was better than during Katrina - at all levels of government. That's why things ran much more efficiently. The evacuations were handled better by state and local officials, and the federal government came in as they said that they would within hours of the wildfires threatening thousands of homes to provide assistance.
McQ wonders why everyone is being so hard on FEMA when the media fakes the news just as badly. Interesting point, but there's a question of accountability here. We need both to be more accountable and trustworthy. Just because the media screws up early and often doesn't mean we should accept incompetence on the part of the government.
Hat Tip: Captain Ed.
Michelle Malkin has a photoshop contest going for FEMA's logo and new acronyms for the agency.
Now, keep FEMA's (mis)operation in mind next time you hear someone say that the health care system should be entrusted to the government, or that the government should handle sectors of the economy instead of private sector. That includes education.
Government, especially bureaucracies, have no incentives in and of itself to improve its operation. Elections may change the names at the top, but the bureaucrats live on, and they are resistant to change.
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