Bureaucrats Optimize to Avoid Headlines

A NASA contract dispute revealed that civil servants rejected bonus protection after launch failure to avoid a 'Washington Post pays bonus for failed mission' story. The piece generalizes this to show how embarrassment risk, not mission risk, drives extra testing, paperwork, and conservative contracting. The result is process bloat that protects reputations while wasting resources. — If reputational optics govern public agencies, reform must realign incentives and accountability to mission outcomes rather than media risk management.