Dear AWN, Members and Friends,
Getting a subscription to Crikey.com is a valuable exercise.
You think it's hard getting your vital news piece into the mainstream newspaper?
Here's why. Crikey, UTS, and the Australian Independent Centre for journalism have done a study :-
'2203 stories. 10 newspapers. A five-day snapshot. Six months' worth of research. For the next fortnight, Crikey will be rolling out the results of Spinning the Media -- a joint investigation with UTS' Australian Centre for Independent Journalism into the role that public relations plays in making the media. Coverage includes in-depth interviews with editors, journalists and public relations professionals plus features that breakdown the study into rounds such as health, crime and travel.'
Spinning the media: the editors fire back. Or don't. |
Australian Centre for Independent Journalism's Wendy Bacon and Sasha Pavey write: |
AUSTRALIAN JOURNALISM, FUTURE OF JOURNALISM, SPINNING THE MEDIA |
The Australian Centre for Independent Journalism wrote to the editor of each newspaper asking for an interview. We sent them the findings for their newspaper and an explanation of how we did the snapshot survey. The idea was to give the editors a chance to view their paper's results: the percentage of articles that were PR driven, the percentage that were not only PR driven but lacked any additional work by the journalist, and a rank out of 10 so that each editor could gauge how they fared in comparison to the rest. Crikey and the ACIJ felt that it was only fair the editors had a chance to respond before publication and also, to defend their papers. Just four of the 10 editors agreed to be interviewed, three from News Corporation. No Fairfax editor agreed to be interviewed. The reactions to our invitations for comment ranged from dismissive to enraged. Some editors engaged in a flurry of correspondence with the ACIJ, but made it clear that the contents of those conversations were not for publication, so unfortunately we can't share them with you. The editors interviewed were Chris Mitchell, The Australian's editor in chief, Courier Mail editor, David Fagan, editor of The West Australian Brett McCarthy and Hobart Mercury editor Gary Bailey. Editor of The Daily Telegraph Garry Linnell was too busy to do the interview or to nominate anyone to do it on his behalf. The editor of The Financial Review Glenn Burge, The Age editor Paul Ramage and Herald Sun editor Simon Pristel, all declined to be interviewed. The editor of the Adelaide Advertiser Melvin Mansell was not available. Sydney Morning Herald editor Peter Fray requested some evidence of the findings. We sent him two extensively researched examples. His comments on these two examples are included in other stories in which they are dealt with specifically. Fray then declined an interview unless we sent him every example. We declined to do this. Across all newspapers, this involved hundreds of examples. Our timeframe did not allow a separate examination of every article published in each edition that week. Fray then declined to be interviewed but made this comment:
Of all the editors interviewed for this investigation, Mitchell was the only editor to take the results of his paper in stride. Unlike Fagan, McCarthy and Bailey, Mitchell was not surprised at the amount of PR-driven material in his paper. He goes as far as to say that in the news section of The Oz, he thought it would be 100%. The full interview with Mitchell is published in a separate item below. All of the editors disputed the ‘no significant work done by journalist’ figure. The editors agreed on several fronts. All agreed that the PR machine has grown, particularly over the past five years, and that spin is now so pervasive it is impossible to avoid and at times, impossible to overcome. However, they didn't think that this growth in PR has affected the quality or practice of journalism in their papers. As McCarthy would say, news is news. But do readers care where it comes from? More specifically, editors said that the business and police rounds were the most PR imbued. Fagan had this to say:
Penetrating the police media unit is also difficult and journalists have had to find ways around it using alternative sources and Freedom of Information requests. In other words, what you and I might call good old-fashioned journalism. This on the subject from Mitchell:
To follow is a snapshot of the interviews we conducted with the four editors who agreed to go over the results: The West Australian -- Brett McCarthy. Interviewed by Flint Duxfield: On not having a problem with his journalists relying on PR for story ideas:
On the alleged increase in pressure in the newsroom on journalists in recent times:
Read the full interview transcript here. The Hobart Mercury -- Gary Bailey. Interviewed by Alex Taylor: On being surprised at his paper’s result: "Very, very surprised … I did my own survey of The Mercury from the 9-11 September and putting on my blackest of black hats, I could only come up with 51 story leads which might have been driven by PR." "Not including international or overseas or AAP content."
"You’ve got to get the context, the imputation of the survey is that [PR-driven journalism] is a bad thing."
"I’m the first to confess that these things [unchecked PR] do go through … for instance, there was a story on Bank West which was just a straight re-write [of a media release]."
On staff cuts:
"Last year The Mercury has reduced staff by 10 full-time equivalent people mainly in sub-editing [14 production staff] and we’ve lost one general reporter and one sports reporter but I am delighted to say staff has responded to the challenge and we’re more efficient than ever: I think our papers are better [for the reduced staff size], as far as our reporting staff go, we zero in on the stories we think are important and more tailored to our audience." On the fact that it the issue is different for a smaller, locally focused publication:
"I would have some very cogent arguments for our local [content] -- very small stories that are basically public service announcements, an awful lot of public service announcements are in our paper." "We’re not relying on PR more and more, the great majority of our content is local and event-driven PR would be important, but we encourage people to ring the paper and alert us to stories. We have to rely on PR, it’s how businesses and organisations communicate what is important to them." Read the full interview transcript here. The Courier Mail -- David Fagan. Interviewed by Sasha Pavey: On the relationship between PR and the media:
On his paper's result of 27% of articles relying on PR with no significant work by the journalist:
On the nature of PRs:
Read the full interview transcript here. |