Detroit News. September 5, 2023.
Editorial: Lansing fails to deliver transparency
It’s been several months since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer held a formal press conference in which she took unfiltered questions from the media. That is setting the tone for an administration that came into office promising transparency and accountability and five years later has delivered neither one.
Press conferences give the public an unscripted lens into government. They are part of the good working of governance.
Yet just last week, following her “What’s next” address, the governor took zero questions from reporters to further expand on the progressive platform she presented — unusually timed after the budget has passed and the legislative session is winding down.
She is happy, however, to sit down with publications that will bolster her national image, including the Atlantic, Vanity Fair and Bloomberg News.
It’s not a new approach for Whitmer.
She hid from the press for extensive periods during the COVID pandemic in 2020, going for as long as five months at a time without in-person briefings. Instead, her administration would only allow reporters to participate virtually and would select individuals to ask her questions after they had been posted in the video application.
When then-director of the Michigan Department of Human Health and Services Robert Gordon abruptly resigned in 2021, Whitmer — again, virtually — refused to answer numerous questions about the nature of his departure.
And...
WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s years-long campaign to undermine faith in U.S. elections has gained broad traction with the American public, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, p...