Following the Hurricane Katrina debacle, FEMA has been the subject of close scrutiny this week, as the agency scrambles to help respond to the wildfires in Southern California. Naturally, that includes effective public-relations efforts, and feeding news outlets evidence that FEMA knows what it’s doing.
So, on Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, FEMA’s deputy administrator, held a press briefing in DC, which was covered live on MSNBC, Fox News, and other outlets. Johnson, to borrow a phrase, did a heckuva job.
Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he would take a few questions. The first questions were about the “commodities” being shipped to Southern California and how officials are dealing with people who refuse to evacuate. He responded eloquently.
He was apparently quite familiar with the reporters — in one case, he appears to say “Mike” and points to a reporter — and was asked an oddly in-house question about “what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration” signed by the president. He once again explained smoothly.
After FEMA press secretary Aaron Walker interrupted to say, “Last question,” someone asked Johnson whether he was satisfied with FEMA’s response to the emergency. Johnson hailed the agency’s triumphant performance: “…I think what you’re really seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership, none of which were present in Katrina.”
There were no tough questions, no skepticism, and nothing that strayed from the FEMA line. Just softball after softball. Why were the assembled reporters so pathetic?
Because they weren’t reporters at all. FEMA hosted a press conference with questions from FEMA staffers pretending to be reporters.
The agency gave reporters 15 minutes’ notice before the press briefing, making it almost impossible for most reporters to get FEMA’s DC offices (which are nowhere near downtown or Capitol Hill). But the agency didn’t want to hold a press conference on national television without questions, so FEMA employees stood in and gave Johnson the chance to “wax on and on about FEMA’s greatness.”
Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We’re told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of external affairs, and by “Mike” Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John “Pat” Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.
Asked about this, Widomski said: “We had been getting mobbed with phone calls from reporters, and this was thrown together at the last minute.”
The administration pays pundits to toe the Bush line, and it sends out fake-news segments for local TV stations to air, so I suppose it stands to reason that it would host press conferences with administration employees pretending to be reporters.