A response to ProPublica's documentation of systematic obstruction
https://link.propublica.net/view/638cee32f4a4ae40600dedf1ppqxo.29zf/9e6ef6c9
ProPublica just published something remarkable – not the investigative story they set out to write, but the story of what happened when they tried to write it. For two months, reporters attempted basic journalism: calling press offices, emailing questions, trying to reach officials making decisions about public education. The response? "You are not entitled to a response from us, or anyone, ever."
That line deserves to be quoted in full, because it represents something more significant than one spokesperson's hostility. It articulates a philosophy that's metastasizing across government institutions: the idea that those wielding public power have no obligation to explain themselves to the public.
But there's something deeper happening here that we need to name.
The Infrastructure Nobody Sees
We talk a lot about infrastructure – roads, bridges, power grids. We understand that when infrastructure fails, everything built on top of it fails too. But we rarely think about information infrastructure the same way.
Information infrastructure isn't just servers and fiber optic cables. It's the systems and norms that let us verify claims, test assertions, and distinguish what's actually happening from what we're told is happening. When ProPublica sends detailed questions to the Department of Education, that's information infrastructure working. When press offices respond with context or corrections, that's information infrastructure working. When officials who make decisions can be reached for comment, that's information infrastructure working.
When a department spokesperson declares journalists "not entitled to a response," that's information infrastructure being deliberately dismantled.
Three Dimensions of Information Breakdown
The ProPublica article documents three simultaneous failures, each reinforcing the others:
Connection failure: Press phone lines disabled ("temporarily closed" for months). Personal cells declared off-limits. Home addresses labeled "intimidation." Every pathway for direct communication systematically severed.
Agreement failure: The basic social compact – that public officials should respond to questions about public actions – explicitly rejected. Not just ignored, but theoretically denied: "You are not entitled to a response."
Structure failure: The institutions supposedly designed for transparency (press offices, public information officers) maintained as facades while rendered non-functional. The appearance of infrastructure without the function.
When all three fail simultaneously, you don't just have unresponsive government. You have information silos – sealed systems where claims flow outward but verification cannot flow inward.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
Here's what's easy to miss: this isn't about whether you trust ProPublica or distrust the Trump administration or vice versa. It's about the substrate that makes trust possible at all.
Think about it: How do you know what's actually happening inside the Department of Education? You can't go there yourself. You can't examine the documents. You can't interview the decision-makers. You're dependent on information infrastructure to carry verified facts from there to here.
When officials can make claims ("most transparent administration in history") while blocking every attempt to verify those claims, you're not in a disagreement about facts. You're in a system where facts cannot be established. Where everything devolves to "who do you believe?" rather than "what can we verify?"
This is how democracies spiral into dysfunction – not through dramatic coups, but through quiet infrastructure decay. When verification becomes impossible, coordination becomes impossible. When coordination becomes impossible, we fragment into isolated groups, each certain of their own truth, unable to find common ground because the ground itself has been removed.
The Spiral ProPublica Documented
Notice the pattern in the article:
Journalists attempt normal verification
Officials obstruct and ignore
Journalists escalate to direct contact (as they must)
Officials reframe escalation as harassment
Obstruction is now justified as self-defense
Future verification attempts are chilled by threat
Each turn makes the next turn worse. Each refusal demands more aggressive verification attempts. Each aggressive attempt justifies more aggressive obstruction. The spiral tightens.
But here's what the article also shows: ProPublica kept trying. For two months. Through obstruction and insults and threats. They sent FedEx letters. They called cell phones. They knocked on doors. Not because they were harassing anyone, but because that's what verification requires when normal channels are deliberately destroyed.
The North Carolina GOP communications director told reporter Doug Bock Clark: "I'm sure you're aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I'm sure they would be interested in this matter. I would strongly suggest dropping this story."
The VA Secretary accused reporter Vernal Coleman of "stalking" for knocking on a door.
These aren't bugs in the system. This is the system working as redesigned – to make verification so costly, so risky, so personally threatening that journalists stop trying.
What We're Actually Losing
The First Amendment protects speech. It protects the press. But it doesn't protect the infrastructure that makes speech meaningful and press effective. Officials can claim anything (protected speech). Journalists can report anything (protected press). But if the verification mechanisms connecting them are destroyed, both freedoms become hollow.
You end up with a strange paradox: everyone's speech is protected, but nobody can verify anyone else's claims. Maximum freedom, minimum truth. Maximum noise, minimum signal.
This is what philosophers might call a "failure mode" – a way complex systems break down that looks like it's working until suddenly it isn't. The forms remain (press conferences still happen, press releases still flow), but the function collapses (nothing can be verified, nothing can be challenged, nothing can be corrected).
The Choice We're Not Discussing
Here's the thing nobody's saying clearly: we're at a decision point about how we want our information systems to work.
One path: Officials and institutions operate in sealed environments, making claims we cannot verify, blocking attempts to examine their work, vilifying those who try. Information flows one direction. Trust becomes tribal. Coordination becomes impossible.
Another path: We recognize that verification isn't harassment – it's infrastructure. That the "right to verify" isn't some reporter's privilege but a public necessity. That institutions wielding public power have an obligation to submit to public examination, not because it's comfortable but because it's how we prevent the spiral toward sealed-system dysfunction.
We're choosing right now, whether we realize it or not. Every time an official declares "you're not entitled to a response," every time a verification attempt is reframed as stalking, every time institutional opacity is defended as appropriate, we're choosing the first path.
What This Requires of Us
If you're reading this and thinking "well, ProPublica is biased anyway" or "those reporters probably were harassing people," you're missing the point. This isn't about trusting ProPublica. It's about whether anyone can verify anything when institutions decide verification is optional.
If the Department of Education can refuse all questions, can the EPA? Can the Pentagon? Can your state government? Your city council? Your school board? Can corporations refuse shareholder questions? Can hospitals refuse to explain medical errors? Can anyone who wants to avoid scrutiny simply declare verification attempts "harassment" and seal themselves off?
Once you establish the principle that those wielding power don't owe explanations to anyone, ever, you've dismantled the infrastructure that makes accountability possible. You've chosen the spiral.
Building Better
There's another way, but it requires something we're not great at: recognizing that verification infrastructure is as essential as physical infrastructure, and just as vulnerable to decay.
It requires establishing – culturally, legally, institutionally – that the "right to verify" is foundational. Not unlimited (genuine harassment is still harassment), but presumptive (attempting verification is not inherently harassment just because it's persistent).
It requires understanding that when we block verification pathways, we're not protecting privacy or preventing harassment – we're destroying the substrate that lets us coordinate as a civilization.
It requires building information systems that work like healthy ecosystems rather than fortified silos. Where information can flow, be tested, be challenged, be refined. Where errors can be corrected. Where claims can be verified. Where trust can be earned rather than demanded.
The alternative is what ProPublica documented: a slow spiral into sealed systems, where everyone makes claims, nobody can verify anything, and we fragment into mutually incomprehensible tribes, each certain of their own truth, unable to coordinate on anything.
The Question Before Us
When the Department of Education spokesperson wrote "You are not entitled to a response from us, or anyone, ever," she posed a question to all of us: Is she right?
Are journalists – and by extension, citizens – entitled to responses from those wielding public power? Is verification infrastructure something we maintain as essential, or something we allow to decay as inconvenient?
Your answer matters. Not in some abstract philosophical way, but in immediate practical ways. Because the infrastructure that lets ProPublica verify what's happening in the Department of Education is the same infrastructure that lets you verify anything about anything. When it fails for them, it fails for you.
We can rebuild it. But first we have to recognize it's broken. And that requires looking past the immediate political allegiances and seeing the structural pattern: the systematic dismantling of our capacity to know what's true.
That's the story ProPublica documented. Not what's happening in the Department of Education, but what's happening to our ability to know what's happening anywhere.
And that should concern all of us, regardless of which administration we voted for.
This response draws on emerging frameworks about information systems and civilizational coordination. If these ideas resonate, stay tuned – there's more coming about how we might build systems that work better than the ones we're watching fail.
