You say tomato, I say embargo: A study ripens too early, as magazine breaks an embargo

Via CC BY-SA 3.0 license (click for original)

Here’s one story that needed more time to ripen.

An email from the Science press team sent about 40 minutes before the 2 p.m. scheduled embargo lift of this week’s issue:

Following heavy criticism, FDA says controversial embargo policy is “not to be used under any circumstance”

Several months after a damning expose demonstrating that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was violating its own official policy by using a controversial embargo practice, the agency has said it will no longer use so-called “close-hold embargoes.”

Such embargo agreements restrict whom reporters can talk to before embargoes lift, unlike standard embargoes in which journalists can share information for comment as long as their sources understand it is under embargo. I’ve called this an attempt to turn reporters into stenographers.

In a letter today to the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), outgoing FDA Acting Assistant Commissioner for Media Affairs Jason Young acknowledges that at times, the agency’s policy “was not adequately followed.” And Young — whose last day at the FDA is today, ahead of the Presidential inauguration — writes (bolding his) that