What’s Off the Record at N.H.T.S.A.? Almost Everything

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

If you want to know something as simple as who heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, don’t bother to ask the safety agency’s communications office. Without special permission, officials there are no longer allowed to provide information to reporters except on a background basis, which means it cannot be attributed to a spokesman.

Without such attribution, there are few circumstances under which most reporters will report such information. This makes for interesting dealings with the office charged with providing information about the nation’s top automotive safety agency.

... The agency’s new policy effectively means that some of the world’s top safety researchers are no longer allowed to talk to reporters or to be freely quoted about automotive safety issues that affect pretty much everybody.

"My God," said Joan Claybrook, who was N.H.T.S.A. administrator from 1977 to 1981 and is now president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. Given that N.H.T.S.A. is the leading source of automotive safety information in the United States, its researchers are public officials and people are entitled to "know what information they have, whether it is on paper or in their heads," Ms. Claybrook said.


Read more: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/whats-off-the-record-at-nhtsa-almost-everything/index.html?hp

[dickbearton]

1. Information to be released...

only after approved by the Office of Propaganda. Welcome to
Fascist America.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. Have we hit rock bottom?

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Nope.

It's rocks all the way down.

[tom_paine]

5. Not even close. I estimate the Bushies are only 40% of the way to their Final Solution

(what that will look like in particular, no one can guess, but I think we can safely say it is unlikely that Jews will be rounded up specifically for being Jews)

I only now wonder if a Democrat shall be allowed to briefly possess the Throne of Amerika, 2008-2012, to sort of give us a rest and make the economy more proudtive so the next Bushie Emperor will have something to loot, too.

Maybe, we will get a rest, but somehow, knowing history, I think not.

[Occulus]

6. gays

Thee are PLENTY of people out there who are willing to post things like "we need to put all you people on trains" when talking about homosexuals.

Gays will be the first target if any such thing is ever done.

[LibertyLover]

7. Followed very closely

by all followers of non-Judeo-Christian religions.

[annabanana]

4. k&r. . . . . n/t