Officials gagged … again

Date: 17/10/1996

The old, rarely-honoured rule that Commission officials do not talk to journalists has been reinforced in a recent warning missive sent out to all staff.

The alert goes out from time to time, but seldom lasts for long, particularly as officials cannot move within a kilometre of the Breydel these days without being ambushed and dragged off for lunch by some journalist or other determined to find his or her equivalent of the Watergate scandal.

But the most recent declaration explains yet again that officials must refer any scribes who approach them to the Spokesman's Service.

This is now one of the first laws drummed into new staff joining the Commission.

The bureaucracy will be pleased to know that this is being taken to heart in some quarters, but the spokesman's group is fed up with getting calls along the lines of: “Excuse me, I was talking to an A-grade the other day and I asked him if he had a good holiday and he said I had to speak to the porte parole for the Tourism Commissioner.”

Entre Nous suggests that, in the absence of any increase in the size of the spokesman's group to tackle the extra work load, every official should be declared to be an honorary porte parole, empowered to chat freely in the interests of openness and transparency...