Rating Of Reporters Draws Rebuke p.18

By: Debra Gersh Hernandez

Dept. of Energy Secretary contends her authorization to analyze
media coverage was not intended to create media enemies list
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Secretary Hazel O'Leary was harshly rebuked after the Wall Street Journal revealed she had authorized an analysis of DoE media coverage that included the rating of reporters.
Although the analysis by Washington-based Carma International ranked reporters on the basis of how favorable their coverage of Energy was, O'Leary said that was not what she intended.
DoE, she said in a released statement, "did not use taxpayer dollars to create or develop a list of media 'enemies.' The Department did not produce a list of favored reporters. It did not determine that some reporters should be denied access or not provided full information. It did not request any investigation of reporters. It did not contract with a company that performs investigations of any sort.
"In addition," she added, "we did not find the information to be very useful."
Carma International is one of a number of firms that conducts content analysis of media coverage. For its DoE work, Carma was paid $46,500 which, at the direction of the White House, will be paid directly from O'Leary's office budget.
Conducting this type of analysis in-house would have cost approximately $170,000, she said.
O'Leary maintained that the report was intended to show DoE public affairs staffers how effective they were at getting their message to the press, and where they needed improvement.
"The objective," she said, "was to improve the quality of information available to all requesters. To our regret, the type of analysis Carma provided was not what I had anticipated in requesting that the Office of Public Affairs track performance. I had no interest in ratings of individual reporters' coverage."
Lauded for her efforts to release previously classified information about radiation experiments conducted on humans years ago, O'Leary was criticized on many fronts for this report.
White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta upbraided O'Leary for using "poor judgment," and White House spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters that such "rating and scoring of individual news organizations is an unacceptable practice."
The seven reports, which covered the period of January to August 1995, also rated DoE attention from Congress and sources other than the news media.
Rated last in the July report was Associated Press reporter H. Josef Hebert, who told the wire service, "As far as I'm concerned, if you have too good a rating, you aren't doing your job."
In fact, many of the highest rankings were for DoE officials, and some of the lowest were for Congressional critics of the department.
O'Leary was slated to appear before the House Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on Nov. 17 to discuss the report further.
?("The Department did not produce a list of favored reporters. It did not determine that some reporters should be denied access or not provided full information. It did not request any investigation of reporters.") [Caption]
?(-Hazel O'Leary, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary) [Photo & Caption]