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Press relations
Q: It seems that the press is very important in that regard.
MR. COSTLE: When I became administrator, the national environmental press was represented by four publications: the Washington Star, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. I asked their reporters about finding a chief press officer, and they all basically told me the same thing: "You have somebody now who is really good, Marlin Fitzwater." He and I developed a wonderful working relationship. Every day he earned the respect of the press. He never permitted the agency to mislead or misrepresent.
Q: Did you ever find yourself using the press against Congress or trying to mobilize public perception?
MR. COSTLE: Never against individual members of Congress. But we did try to capture the high ground of public opinion. The press plays an absolutely critical role for the agency in our modern communications age. But you don't manage the press. You manage your own actions, with an awareness of how the public and the press are likely to perceive what you're doing. If the public doesn't know the issues, doesn't understand them, or isn't concerned about them, then you've got trouble. The other side of that coin is that you never run around yelling fire in a crowded theater. That's irresponsible. So did we use the press? Yes, in the sense of making sure the press knew what was going on.
One of the risks, obviously, is that press coverage can cause something to spin out of control. An example of that was the premature release of the Love Canal chromosome study, before it had been peer-reviewed. I think that directly contributed to the subsequent panic. Whose fault is that? The press? I can't say that. It was newsworthy. But whoever leaked the information in the first place was irresponsible.
Q: Do you think the press had the level of sophistication, at that time, to understand things like peer review?
MR. COSTLE: Perhaps some of the smaller papers didn't, but some did: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the former Washington Evening Star.
Q: Did you find yourself using the press, even in subtle ways, against the administration, or against some part of it such as OMB?
MR. COSTLE: I never looked at the press as an agent, because the press would never willingly be anybody's agent. If reporters thought you were trying to use them, it would be the fastest way I can think of to burn your bridges with them. My rule was that you are doing the public's business, and you do the maximum amount of it in public. Sometimes, of course, agency staff has to meet in private to decide what they are going to do. Those discussions need to be free and open, without fear of repercussion. But I felt that in the long run that doing the public's business in public view would serve EPA's interests. We might not make everybody happy, but we were trying to do our job, and we'd have to stand or fall on that.