Rather than being a quiet facilitator for the media, the Food and Drug Administration’s press office has been the subject of unflattering news because of its hiring and firing practices and its attempts to control FDA employees’ interactions with the media, leading to the resignation of press officer Beth Martino.

 

Martino, 31, came to the FDA after working for Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Under Martino’s watch, the press office fired several senior specialists in their fifties and older, while career employee Donna Avallone, 62, was stripped of her title and reassigned by Carl Chitwood, a 37-year-old Martino appointee put in charge of FDA web communications.

 

The department’s inspector general began investigating the office’s hiring practices, which included Chitwood giving a job to a former colleague even though other individuals were more qualified for the position.

 

Before Martino arrived on the scene in March 2010, the Association of Health Care Journalists and ten other journalism organizations had already publicly criticized the FDA media operation for demanding that journalists and FDA employees obtain permission from higher-ups before an interview could take place. The FDA also imposed a policy that insisted that members of the press office be allowed to listen in on interviews.

 

The FDA was forced rescind its interview restrictions after it became clear that they were contrary to the White House’s effort to make government more transparent.

 

Martino stirred up more confusion in February of this year regarding the FDA’s position on press embargoes. Normally, the FDA (or any other agency or organization) will agree to release a report to the media in advance of publication as long as the information is not published before the official announcement. This gives the press time to consult outside experts before the embargo is lifted. But Martino’s office told the press that embargoed reports could not be shown to outside experts before the reports were published even if the embargo was respected.

 

Martino has accepted a job as a public affairs advisor for the American Health Care Association.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

FDA Press Officer Leaves Amid Controversy (by Ed Silverman, Pharmalot)

FDA Probes Hiring Practices At Its Media Office (by Ed Silverman, Pharmalot)

AHCJ asks FDA to Re-evaluate Embargo Policy (Association of Healthcare Journalists)

FDA Purges Press Office of Older Employees (by Ed Silverman, Pharmalot)

Health Reporters Protest FDA Press Restrictions (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Letter to FDA Demands that Agencies End News Gathering Constraints (Association of Healthcare Journalists)