Longtime salmon spokesman silenced (not a gag order?)

[uppityperson]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003031855_noaa01m.html

For more than a decade, Brian Gorman has been the government's voice on salmon in Seattle, doling out news releases and explaining policies on everything from threatened Puget Sound chinook to Columbia and Snake river dams.

But as of this spring, Bush administration officials have directed that all questions about salmon policy in Washington state be handled by political appointees, often as far away as Washington, D.C. "I essentially have been told that I can't speak about salmon issues to reporters," said Gorman, chief spokesman in Seattle for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which oversees Northwest salmon policy.

NOAA officials say the change is merely a way to better coordinate public information. But it's only the latest example of the Bush administration tightening how employees of federal natural-resource agencies handle politically charged topics.
(clip)
It was a "coordination issue, not a gag order," he added. Lohn denied Gorman's quote had played a role...(a little bit more @ link)

[acmavm]

1. Is the NOAA a government organization, or do they just get

money from the government?

[nsd]

5. NOAA is part of the Commerce Department. /nt

[acmavm]

6. Thank you.

[sutz12]

2. It was a "coordination issue, not a gag order,"

Yeah right. Hard to control the spin when you have people who actually know what they are talking about telling the truth.

That's not even :sarcasm:, it's the truth. :shrug:

[donsu]

3. guess that means Salmon is about to go extinct

or its so full of mercury/toxins it is too lethal to eat

[1monster]

4. Oh, great. I had salmon for dinner last night.

Is it too late for syrup of ipecac?

[dysfunctional press]

7. most salmon is farm-raised

it's not going extinct, and it's not lethal to eat.

[mike_c]

8. shut up and take your soma....

"And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is."

--Aldous Huxley