The Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Association and Student Press Law Center (SPLC) joined 35 other journalism groups to send President Barack Obama a letter calling on him to end various federal agencies' restraint on transparency.

According to USA Today, the letter's co-signers said public officials are more often being encouraged to direct journalists to their agency's public affairs office. By attempting "to control what the public is allowed to see and hear," the group of journalism advocates called these kinds of practices censorship.

"The stifling of free expression is happening despite your pledge on your first day in office to bring 'a new era of openness' to federal government - and the subsequent executive orders and directives which were supposed to bring such openness about," reads the letter.

Frank LoMonte, executive director of the SPLC, said certain public relations practices are beginning to border on lying.

"It's nothing new for government agencies to try to focus the public on positive, upbeat stories and downplay their mistakes and shortcomings," he told USA Today. "That's an understood part of public relations. But public-relations offices are going way past 'spinning' the news and are affirmatively getting in the way of access to the news."

As government institutions, LoMonte said public colleges and universities commit some of the same truth-bending practices. He said this kind of poor transparency is affecting both professional and student journalists.

"Student journalists really are stepping up and assuming more and more of the responsibility for investigative reporting with the erosion of paid professional newspaper staffs," LoMonte said. "You have college students at places like Arizona State and Kent State doing serious in-depth reporting about issues of national concern like the quality of care in VA hospitals, and that reporting brings them directly up against the barricades that government agencies at all level are imposing."