El Camino Healthcare District board raises concerns over restrictive new media policy under consideration

The El Camino Healthcare District board held off on voting on a new media policy that some board members worry would constrain their ability to speak freely to the press.

Among the proposed changes, brought to the board at its May 16 regular meeting, was a new policy that when board members respond to the media, they must ensure their statements don’t “negatively impact the corporate reputations of El Camino Healthcare District or El Camino Health.”

The majority of the board voiced major concerns about this clause in particular.

“I’m extremely nervous about this,” said board member John Zoglin. “I don’t know who decides if it negatively impacts the corporate reputation. And I’m very nervous about putting that kind of constraint.”

Board member Dr. Carol Somersille echoed Zoglin’s concerns, saying she “thought that was an odd phrase to put in there.”

“It assumes that we will not have discretion when speaking to the media,” she said.

Board Chair Julia Miller, who had her title as board chair revoked during a separate special meeting later in the evening, agreed that the proposed language was “very constraining.”

“I think it’s part of our elected position to make observations about things, what we possibly need improving or changing,” she said, asking staff to clarify who wrote the changes.

According to Christopher Brown, director of strategic communications, the changes were initiated by a request from Board Chair Miller to update the media policy. Brown told the Voice that the recommendations provided at the May 16 meeting were provided jointly by the communications, governance, legal and compliance departments.

Vineeta Hiranandani, El Camino Health’s vice president of marketing and communications, said during the meeting that the goal of the proposed policies is to protect El Camino Health’s public image.

“We have a metric that we use called favorability, and depending on how the media have covered us on different issues, that favorability reading can go down, or it can stay where it is, or it can go up,” Hiranandani told the board. “One way to help impact that is to have a coordinated message to the media. And so we want to make sure that we are aware, if we reach out to the media, that there could be an impact to our corporate reputation.”

Zoglin said he still found the added language troubling, and asked if staff could provide examples of other institutions with publicly elected officials who are similarly constrained in how they can speak to the media. El Camino Health CEO Dan Woods said staff would look into the board’s questions and come back with more information at the next meeting in June.

According to David Loy, legal director at the First Amendment Coalition, “the proposed prohibition on comments that ‘negatively impact the corporate reputations’ of the district or El Camino Health would present significant First Amendment problems by restricting speech of public officials on matters of public concern,” Loy told the Voice in an email.

“By prohibiting speech before it occurs,” Loy added, “the proposed policy would impose a prior restraint.”

Loy cited the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Alexander v. United States, which held that “prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.”

The board agreed that they’d like to see the item come back at the next meeting for further discussion.

Brown told the Voice in a statement after the meeting that “media policies are commonplace for organizations and we are in the process of updating the district’s media policy.”

“Our process includes getting feedback from the board on any proposed changes, and presenting another draft at the next board meeting,” he said.

This story has been updated to reflect that then-Board Chair Julia Miller requested a change in media policy, according to staff.