WATCH: Relations between Beltway beat reporters and federal agencies are necessarily adversarial. The former want information in big troughs; the latter want to apportion it in quarter-teaspoon quantities, accompanied by off-the-record “context.” That conflict often yields snippy email correspondence, snark and occasional shouting matches on the telephone. Yet the sort of language coming out of the press office of the Environmental Protection Agency represents an all-new brand of hostility.
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