Well some are. I would also hazard a guess that most if not all articles that appear in magazines have gone through an editorial process. Even professional media reporters/writers are edited. Why would this be any different?
A magazine article is a different thing altogether. When a scientist writes an article for a magazine, they are free to editorialize, and then it is the prerogative of the magazine editors to approve.
When an article is written for a scholarly publication, it is subject to the rigors of science, ie. do the conclusions follow from the results, is the methodology correct, etc. If something doesn't look right, comments are sent back to the author. Then they adjust accordingly.
Politicians are not qualified to deem what is and what is not admissible.
This is the fundamental problem in bringing the findings of science to the public. Not all citizens have access to journals. Not all citizens can understand the difference between a good article and a bad article. Simply being published in Science, or Nature, or Geophysical Research Letters doesn't mean that the investigation is gold standard. The test of how good an article is, is how often it is cited, how the findings can be replicated with other valid methods of analysis.
Government censorship of science is wrong. The behaviour of a molecule is independent of political ideology, and scientists should be free to report their findings.
If all requests for information by the media are subject to approval from Ottawa, then we have a problem. They haven't told us who will be approving messages. They haven't told us what the qualifications are of this person or people. And they canceled the program we had where a science office advises politicians.
There shouldn't be any surprises to Baird anyways, unless there is a problem between the information moving from researchers to Department executives. And if that is the problem, this action is wrong, especially given what I've already said about the advising office being canceled. The remedy would not seem to address the true problem.