Under typical circumstances, reporters call Kevin Trager with questions about Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg’s priorities, his decisions, his reactions to important events.
But two weeks ago, Trager, Greenberg’s press secretary, called an LPM News intern demanding answers.
Trager volleyed a list of questions at the intern, Andrea Galliano, related to his reporting on the growing problem of animal and human waste in the downtown area.
Earlier in the day, Galliano attended a press event at a homeless shelter to ask Greenberg about adding public-use bathrooms in the downtown area. Greenberg did not take questions after his speech, so Galliano followed up with the mayor in person directly after the press conference. The interaction lasted about two minutes, Greenberg answered both of Galliano’s questions and then each thanked the other for their time.
A few hours later, Trager called Galliano wanting to know if he had “stuck a microphone in the face” of the people who have no access to public restrooms and are forced to defecate on the streets, sidewalks and alleys around downtown. And he wanted to know — asking repeatedly — why Galliano, a recent Columbia Journalism School graduate, thought it was appropriate to approach Greenberg after the public event.
“You didn't email me and ask for an interview with the mayor. You ambushed him,” Trager said. “You stuck a microphone in his face.”
Asking questions — tough questions — is a reporter’s job and it’s a problem when press secretaries try to curtail access to elected officials, multiple media experts told the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.
Experts say the issue is becoming more acute in modern media as politicians and staffers feel more emboldened to bully reporters in an attempt to control their message and censor press access.
And there is a clear public interest in knowing how government spokespeople — who are paid by taxpayers — behave as they fulfill their public duties, said Kelly McBride, the senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute.
“Press secretaries and public information officers are the government officials who are appointed to interface with the public. Journalists are often a stand-in for the public,” she said. “When an official belittles or bullies a member of the public, even if that person is a journalist, the public should know.”
When asked this week to comment about the exchange with Galliano, Trager said reporters are welcome to ask questions whenever.
Yet throughout the 6-minute, Friday afternoon phone call two weeks ago, Trager shouted at Galliano and asked why he didn’t first ask for an interview about the topic. In fact, he did. Galliano asked to discuss the issue of biohazardous waste with Deputy Mayor Nicole George, whose job it is to oversee public health and services, but Trager said she would not help. Trager insulted Galliano for reporting on the issue.
“How is it the mayor’s fault that they pooped on the street,” Trager asked. “How am I supposed to take you seriously when you’re doing a story about people pooping in the street? How am I supposed to take that seriously?”
To local elected officials, downtown business leaders and homeless services providers, a lack of public restrooms as hundreds of instances of biohazardous waste pile up across the city’s central business district, is a serious topic worth discussing.
The Louisville Downtown Partnership tracks how much biohazardous waste is cleaned from the city’s downtown streets. Galliano’s reporting revealed the issue is growing with more than a quarter of the 3,380 instances of biohazard waste coming in the first six months of this year.
“It’s an issue that needs to be studied, for sure,” said Metro Council Member Ken Herndon, a District 4 Democrat who represents the downtown area.
A “one-way” system
Reporters can provide a window into the issues that vex the public, said Kathy Kiely, the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She said officials should see that as an opportunity to further their goals, not a threat.
And, she said, a mayor should be ready to answer questions when they’re out in public.
The job of a government spokesperson, like Trager, is to share information with the public and help reporters navigate systems to find answers, Kiely said.
“Not be a hall monitor,” she said.
On Tuesday, when asked about Trager’s response to Galliano’s reporting, Greenberg said he is “happy to answer any question at any time.”
Public officials and their public relations staffers are not bound by legal mandate to talk to reporters, said Jared Schroeder, associate professor at the University of Missouri’s journalism school. It gives news organizations little recourse if local government leaders refuse to respond, he said.
Schroeder said Trager’s approach is “part of a growing trend in which public officials seek a one-way communication system.”
“Speaking to the press, but not with them,” he said.
‘What’s going on here’
Limiting a reporter’s access to elected officials and government employees is “censorship by PIO,” according to the Society of Professional Journalists, an Indianapolis-based advocacy group.
In December 2023, Greenberg’s office failed to notify LPM News, the Courier Journal and several other local news outlets about a press conference at which the mayor detailed his opposition to a controversial local housing ordinance.
Joe Gerth, a Courier Journal columnist, grilled Greenberg at a later press event.
“What’s going on here?” Gerth asked. “Are you trying to shut out news organizations that don’t write stories or broadcast stories the way you want them written and broadcast?”
Greenberg said that wasn’t his intent.
The issue sparked a complaint from the Louisville chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Asked about Trager berating an LPM News intern who was asking Greenberg questions, the local SPJ said every journalist “has a right to do their work without intimidation.”
“It is reprehensible to hear the mayor's press secretary speaking with such contempt toward a reporter and attempting to bully him simply for asking questions,” the SPJ’s board said in a written statement. “Intimidation of this kind undermines democracy and the public trust.”
Greenberg, on Tuesday, said he doesn’t think “it’s appropriate to yell at or belittle anyone.”
Trager worked for several years as a local television reporter in Wyoming, Nashville and Louisville, once highlighting local lawmakers pushing former Mayor Greg Fischer to do more to help the city’s homeless population.
