[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 177 (Thursday, November 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16851-S16853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     IMAGE-ENHANCING EFFORT AT DOE

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, those of us in public life are accustomed 
to being surprised as the morning newspaper is delivered to us each day 
to find extraordinary examples of bureaucratic abuse, waste, and misuse 
of the taxpayers' dollars. I must say, this morning the level of my 
outrage at this most recent abuse, which I will comment on in just a 
moment, has been unsurpassed in my recent memory.
  As the Wall Street Journal reports this morning, the Secretary of the 
Department of Energy, Mrs. O'Leary, has 

[[Page S 16852]]
hired an investigative service at taxpayers' expense in the amount of 
$43,500.
  This is not a clipping service. All of us are familiar with clipping 
services. I think they have a legitimate purpose in ascertaining what 
types of information may be being printed, broadcast, as the case may 
be, about the functions of an agency. But this is an image-enhancing 
effort in which the Secretary has engaged, again at taxpayers' expense, 
to the amount of $43,500, an investigative service. This outfit is 
known as ``Carma International.'' They were charged with not only 
clipping stories but doing some investigative reporting, both as to the 
reporters themselves and the stories. I think, if I might just share a 
paragraph or two very briefly with my colleagues, the flavor of this 
story will be very clear.

       From April through August, the service, Washington-based 
     Carma International, tracked more than two dozen individual 
     reporters and hundreds of newspapers, magazines and 
     newscasts. It also pored over thousands of stories, giving 
     each one a numerical ranking based upon how favorable or 
     unfavorable it was. It then calculated scores for how 
     favorably or unfavorably the DOE fared on various issues, 
     from nuclear waste to Mrs. O'Leary's own reputation. And it 
     scrutinized sources quoted in those stories.

  Then, Mr. President, it went on to compile a ``Top 25'' list of 
``Unfavorable Sources.''
  I must say, in a previous generation, this has a striking similarity 
in terms of the mentality involved of the Nixon ``Enemies List.'' This 
is not an attempt to gather information or ascertain what has been 
reported. This is a subjective analysis of ``look how the reporters 
from a particular news service or news organization are treating us.''
  For this kind of money to be expended at taxpayers' expense is simply 
outrageous. I cannot conceive of a rationale or a justification to 
spend this kind of money.
  So I am going to ask in a moment this article be printed in the 
Record, but also indicate it is my intention to call upon the Secretary 
to reimburse the American taxpayers at her own expense for what I 
believe to be a truly outrageous expenditure of taxpayers' dollars, 
without any public use or justification at all, primarily driven, I 
suspect, by the ego of the individual involved and by a paranoia that 
seems rampant at some levels in the agency.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the article from the Wall 
Street Journal of this morning be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Turning the Tables, Energy Department Reports on Reporters


It paid $43,500 in tax dollars to find ``unfavorables,'' ``a little bit 
                               of Nixon''

                           (By Michael Moss)

       Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary had an image problem. Her 
     department seemed to be taking a drubbing in the press for 
     everything from nuclear waste-disposal problems to its 
     allegedly bloated bureaucracy.
       Mrs. O'Leary wanted those unfortunate stories to go away. 
     Badly. So she hit on a plan: She would ``build communication 
     and trust,'' explains Barbara Semedo, the Department of 
     Energy's press secretary.
       And just how did she plan to build that trust?
       By reporting on the reporters.
       In an extraordinary tale of man-bites-dog, Mrs. O'Leary 
     quietly hired an investigative service to poke into the 
     reporters who were poking around the DOE. From April through 
     August, the service, Washington-based Carma International, 
     tracked more than two dozen individual reporters and hundreds 
     of newspapers, magazines and newscasts. It also pored over 
     thousands of stories, giving each one a numerical ranking 
     based on how favorable or unfavorable it was. It then 
     calculated scores for how favorably or unfavorably the DOE 
     fared on various issues, from nuclear waste to Mrs. O'Leary's 
     own reputation. And it scrutinized sources quoted in those 
     stories, coming up with its own ``Top 25'' list of 
     ``Unfavorable Sources.''
       The result: detailed monthly reports, chock full of 
     colorful graphics and charts, with each report culminating in 
     favorability rankings for reporters, sources and news 
     organizations. All for $43,500--paid for with U.S. tax 
     dollars.
       The DOE's Ms. Semedo defends the investigations, saying a 
     reporter's unfavorable rating ``meant we weren't getting our 
     message across, that we needed to work on this person a 
     little.''
       Some of the journalists and sources who were scrutinized 
     aren't so sanguine. None knew about the existence of the 
     lists before being contacted by this newspaper yesterday. 
     It's ``an enemies' list,'' says Jerry Taylor of the Cato 
     Institute, a libertarian think tank, who ranked No. 25 on the 
     July list of unfavorables. ``I guess it shows you there's a 
     little bit of Nixon in everybody in the federal government.''


                             bottoming out

       Carma is part of a small but growing cottage industry of 
     firms that analyze reporters--and reporters' sources. 
     Government agencies and corporations have long used clip 
     searches, which find articles about them or about issues in 
     which they are interested. But these new services go much 
     further, coming up with pseudo-scientific methodology to rate 
     reporters. Some of the services, not including Carma, also 
     delve much deeper. They interview reporters' sources, their 
     employers and their friends and colleagues, and report on 
     information about the reporters' personal lives and 
     activities outside of work.
       The DOE provided copies of reports for two months, April 
     and July, which make clear which reporters and news 
     organizations were considered friendly--and which weren't. 
     Its July report, for example, ranked the Associated Press's 
     H. Josef Hebert dead last, with a 30.8 overall score. That 
     month, he wrote an article that said ``sloppy'' Energy 
     Department monitoring at weapons facilities led to radiation 
     exposure, and another about victims of secret government-
     radiation tests during the Cold War.
       If a reporter gets ``too good a rating, you aren't doing 
     your job,'' Mr. Hebert said yesterday. Also scoring 
     relatively low in July was Matthew Wald of the New York 
     Times, who received a 46.7 for stories on plutonium storage. 
     (The Wall Street Journal didn't appear in the reports.)
       At the other end of the spectrum were several reporters for 
     smaller newspapers, including Tony Batt of the Las Vegas 
     Review-Journal, who got a 56 in the July report. ``I've never 
     been rated before, especially by a government agency,'' says 
     Mr. Batt, who works in the paper's Washington bureau. ``I'm 
     uneasy about that.''


                          ``slanted'' stories

       DOE resorted to this latest tactic after a 1993 survey it 
     commissioned found it to be one of the least-trusted entities 
     around--right ``down with Congress,'' Ms. Semedo marvels. At 
     first, the department thought it would monitor the press 
     itself, at an estimated cost of about $80,000, she says. Then 
     DOE officials heard about Carma, which also had done work for 
     the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service.
       Carma, which stands for Computer-Aided Research and Media 
     Analysis, warns in brochures that ``stories are sometimes 
     `slanted.' '' It boasts that if a reporter seeks an interview 
     with a CEO, Carma can find ``if a predetermined bias has 
     shown up in past coverage,'' thus giving the CEO ``a 
     strategic advantage.''
       For DOE, Carma went through a rather complex process to 
     evaluate reporters and stories. Carma employees--generally 
     former academics or people with journalism backgrounds--
     scrutinized close to 800 articles some months, paying close 
     attention to captions, photos and headlines, says Albert J. 
     Barr, president. Each employee also was armed with a list of 
     55 issues DOE had identified, from energy taxes to worker 
     safety. For every article, the employee singled out which 
     issues were discussed and assigned a score of 0 to 100 to 
     each issue mentioned, with 50 signaling a neutral comment and 
     100 an extremely favorable one.
       Using the individual scores of every issue in a single 
     article, Carma employees worked out an overall score for the 
     article. That score was then fed into a computer, which 
     calculated a cumulative rating for the reporter involved and 
     for each of the issues mentioned.


                         surprise: no surprises

       And with all that scientific scrutiny, what bombshells did 
     DOE uncover?
       Well, actually, none. ``It confirmed what those of us who 
     work with these reporters daily know--who is going to write 
     what and how are they going to cover us,'' Ms. Semedo says.
       Indeed, Carma's ``Top 25'' lists of favorable and 
     unfavorable sources hardly required sophisticated analysis. 
     Topping the April list of ``Favorable'' sources: Mrs. O'Leary 
     herself. And leading the pack of ``Unfavorables'': Sen. 
     Robert Dole, a longtime critic of the agency who has 
     suggested it should be dismantled. Also making appearances on 
     the ``Unfavorable'' list were such obvious choices as 
     Beatrice Brailsford, program director of Snake River 
     Alliance, a watchdog group created in response to an Idaho 
     DOE project; and civil-rights attorney Roy Haber, who is 
     representing people suing over exposure to radiation 
     beginning in 1944.
       ``This is wild, it's absolutely wild,'' Mr. Haber said 
     yesterday, calling the list ``disturbing'' and 
     ``frightening.'' He added, ``This will be investigated in 
     great depth, and we're going to find out the genesis of who 
     promulgated that list.''
       At this point, he may no longer have to worry. If the 
     reports are any judge, the DOE's reputation only got worse 
     during the time Carma monitored the press, with its overall 
     favorability steadily dropping from 52 in January to 50, or 
     neutral, in July. Certainly, the DOE wasn't helped by its 
     admission that cleanup of former weapons-production sites 
     could cost at least $230 billion, or by press reports sniping 
     about Mrs. O'Leary flying first class and patronizing 
     expensive hotels.
       Ms. Semedo, who in an earlier interview said Carma had been 
     dropped for budgetary reasons, said yesterday, ``It wasn't 
     particularly useful, and we stopped the service.'' 

[[Page S 16853]]
     Anyway, she added, Secretary O'Leary only read a few of the reports: 
     ``She found it too complicated.''

  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  If there is no Senator seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of 
a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I permitted to 
speak as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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