I tried to break a story this morning but all I got was hog-tied in federal red tape.
I don’t want to say too much about the story since I don’t have everything nailed down yet.
It involves someone stealing something your tax dollars pay for.
I know from talking to several sources I trust that there is a story there.
I started out by reaching out to the federal case agent himself.
I got them number from a source I haven’t worked with in quite some time but one I still trust.
The case agent passed me on to the department’s public affairs division.
The Washington D.C. based public affairs officer got back to me in a timely fashion.
To her credit, she was nice, professional, and did what she could.
But due to the large federal bureaucracy, there was little she or the case agent could do.
She told she had to call her boss, who then had to call the case agent’s boss, who then would take to the case agent.
Hopefully, then the case agent would confirm to his boss what I had, his boss would take that to her boss, her boss would give the information to her, and then she would call me.
Whew! See what I mean!
Anyway, I finally got a call back at 4 PM that she was having no luck.
She said it really something she couldn’t confirm anyway and directed me to another federal department.
So I’ll call them tomorrow and start all over.
Like I said, I’m confident there’s a story here and I will get some answers—- after I unwrap all this bureaucratic red tape.
Posted by Scott Leamon at 07:18 PM. Filed under: leamon •
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Posted by ( jerry63 ) on February 18, 2011 at 12:56 am
Scott, I hope that you can get all that Red Tape with the Federal Government Unwrapped and can get your news story it seems to be that anymore there is all kinds of Red Tape involved when you have any dealing with a Federal or State Government and in your position as a News Reporter that it is ten times harder to get access to the information that you need to get to the Heart of the story.
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