Science reporters play the access game too: What embargoes have to do with Greenwald, Snowden, and Assange

Do science reporters, on a smaller scale, make the same kinds of deals for access as political reporters? Recent criticisms of Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange have led me to mull that question.

David Carr, the New York Times media columnist, wrote this week:

CDC lengthens embargo time on MMWR

Starting this week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is lengthening the embargo on its flagship publication, the MMWR.

An email sent to media last week:

PNAS breaks its own embargo on insect paper

An email from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to its press list yesterday afternoon:

Due to a production scheduling error, PNAS is lifting the embargo early on the following paper.

Article #13-00759: “Induced Plant Defenses, Host-Pathogen Interactions, and Forest Insect Outbreaks,” by Bret D. Elderd et al.

PNAS tells us:

Scientists like the gag order of the Ingelfinger Rule, says new paper

via BUMC http://www.bumc.bu.edu/academies/namesakes/ingelfinger/

There’s an interesting paper on the “gap” between science and the media in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). What caught Matt Shipman‘s eye enough to send it to Embargo Watch was a passage about the Ingelfinger Rule:

Astronomy press officer: “embargoes are becoming less and less practical”

Hubble in orbit, courtesy European Space Agency

Embargo Watch readers are probably familiar with a lot of arguments against embargoes at this point, mostly about how they can restrict the flow of scientific information and give journals and other institutions too much control. But what about how practical they are for press officers who create them?

Last Wednesday, a longtime space writer email emailed Rick Fienberg, the press of officer and director of communications for the American Astronomical Society (AAS), confused about an embargo.

The AAS had passed along an embargoed European Space Agency (ESA) release about Hubble news for 9 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, August 15. But EurekAlert had the same news embargoed for 7 p.m. Eastern on the 14th. 

Trust lifts embargo early on state obesity rankings after AP independently finds data

Here’s another reminder of why it’s important to pay attention to the nuances of early embargo lift announcements.

Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) puts out an annual report — along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — that ranks American states and the District of Columbia by obesity rates. The findings rely to a large extent on CDC data — that will be important in a moment — and the report was embargoed until next Tuesday, August 20, until last night, when TFAH sent this message to its media list:

Lancet Infectious Diseases lifts embargo on camel-MERS study early after Telegraph break

A note to the Lancet Infectious Diseases press list yesterday: