TGIF has long conveyed the relief of not only the ordinary American worker happy that the work week is done, but also that of officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who can’t wait to bury the news.

 

Fridays are notorious in the public relations business as the best day of the week to announce bad news—so it gets ignored by the media or given less than optimal attention. While many federal agencies are known to rely on the Friday practice, the EPA has really embraced it, according to a new study.

 

The nonpartisan Resources for the Future, which researches environmental issues, went through 21,493 EPA press releases produced over a 15-year period (August 1994 through October 2009). Researchers found that Friday and the day before a holiday were the most common days used by environmental regulators to inform the media about its latest findings or actions against polluters. More innocuous press releases were less likely to be released on a Friday.

 

The EPA under President Bill Clinton was especially guilty of dumping news on Fridays about corporations whose stock might be hurt by news of a violation or punishment, according to the findings, while “the Obama and Bush White Houses were no slouches,” writes The Washington Post.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

EPA Guilty of the ‘Friday News Dump’ Phenomenon (by Emily Heil, Washington Post)