HHS televisions tuned into Fox News

From: Politico

A security guard looks out of the headquarters of News Corp.,
which owns the Fox News Channel,  in Midtown Manhattan on April 19.
  AP Photo

The televisions in public areas at the Health and Human Services Department headquarters in Washington have been switched to Fox News. Now the same change appears to have applied to other HHS buildings, including Food and Drug Administration buildings in Maryland.

According to two people who work at the agency, the televisions at the Hubert Humphrey building had previously rotated among the three main cable channels every three days or so. But since shortly after the Trump administration took over, the televisions have been on Fox News.

One of the sources suggested that the information came from "high up" in the agency. (Our colleague Dan Diamond first pointed out in January that the televisions were tuned to Fox.) Now, a new internal email that appears to be from the agency's White Oak campus in Silver Spring, posted to Twitter by several reporters, says current administration officials ordered the change.

The email states in part: “The reason for the change is that a decision from the current administration administrative officials (sic) has requested that all monitors, under our control, on the White Oak Campus, display Fox News.”

BuzzFeed and The Wall Street Journal report that some of the televisions have since been turned off or switched back to other networks.

A spokesperson at FDA denied that such a directive was sent.

"There was no directive or memorandum from the Administration that went out to employees about broadcast news channels displaying on monitors in common areas throughout the FDA’s White Oak campus," the spokesperson said.

The change in televisions does not seem to be widespread across other agencies. Sources at the Departments of Labor and Agriculture have said in recent weeks that their televisions are not restricted to one channel. Spokespeople for Health and Human Services did not respond to specific questions about the televisions at the HHS headquarters.