Reporter for conservative paper says Pruitt’s EPA put “extreme pressure” on him to “be their lickspittle”
Wash. Examiner's John Siciliano spoke on a panel about how EPA pushes right-wing media to generate favorable coverage
Published
Right-wing media outlets The Daily Caller and the Washington Free Beacon have often acted as de facto press offices for Scott Pruitt's Environmental Protection Agency. Media Matters has documented how the two publications have defended Pruitt in the face of his many scandals and tried to discredit sources of information about his misdeeds. Now we learn from Washington Examiner reporter John Siciliano, who covers energy and environment for the conservative-leaning newspaper, that the EPA's press office tried to strong-arm him into writing flattering pieces about the agency and complained to his editors when he refused.
Speaking on June 11 on a panel about media coverage at a conference organized by Citizens' Climate Lobby, a nonpartisan climate activist group, Siciliano recounted the EPA’s attempts to coerce him and his paper to print favorable stories, which he described as “a really bizarre pressure play on their part that I’ve never experienced from an agency, a cabinet-level agency, to enforce an agenda on a journalist.” Siciliano also discussed how the agency referred to him in pejorative terms and pitted him against other journalists -- practices the agency has used against other environmental journalists.
From the June 11 panel titled “Covering Climate Change in the Current Political Landscape”: