Hard News: Spin Spun
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But every media organisation ran the "spin doctor" line whole
Which "spin doctor" line was that? Those words don't appear in the press release. It does call Labour "the 'most spun' Government in history", which seems fair enough.
In a sense, you and I funded the writing of the stories.
I for one am happy to help criticise this greedy incompetent government.
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"What the Tribune Group has done to that paper is just wrong"
yes, a bit like what APN has done to the Herald really isn't it Russell?
Good bit of back-peddling there Craig
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I didn't see the SST story but I'd been thinking a bit about this issue over the w'end, funnily enough.
The infamous '54 spin doctors at MSD' isn't a particularly new story - I think it emerged from a select committee a few months ago. Used it in a column myself in October, I think, because it emerged just before I happened to find an old press release from Steve Maharey from 1992 which deplored the number of spin doctors being hired by the Bolger govt....
The thing I've noticed happening over the past few years is a growing sense among journalists that they are really up against in when dealing with govt depts. I know of one other govt agency with 50 people in its comms team: I was assured these are not all spin doctors but support staff.
How many support staff does the average journalist have, I wondered.
What I find increasingly common among journalists - and in extreme situations I've done it myself, although I've learned to watch it because its not particularly good - is that you find yourself, almost unconsciously, taking the attitude that they've got all these resources behind them to get the 'good news' out: I've got fuck all by comparison, so fuck'em. You do go in against some of these govt agencies knowing full well they've got a howltzer and you've got a couple of grenades, so you tend not to give them much of a break.
I'm not alone in this. And I have to wonder whether there isn't a bit of a law of diminishing returns happening with the huge hiring of media managers in the public sector.
Funnily enough - and this is purely anecdotal - it looks to me as though many of the country's corporates now have fewer media staff than they had a decade ago.
Couple of other points: the Nats don't have an army of spin doctors working for them. Opposition parties, even the largest one, don't get much of a budget for this sort of thing. They have five media people.
At ministerial level, I doubt Labour has more spin doctors than the Nats had when they were in power - at least, per minister. Of course, Labour has more ministers...
One other point: I can well recall many journalists running Trevor Mallard's line on INCIS and other govt IT screw ups in the late 1990s. This sort of behaviour is not new.
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A few people I know find the OIA little more than a lemon squeezer trying to get blood from a stone when dealing with the Police.
They be a menacing crew, Snail Insurgents and the like. The work is continuing at a Snails pace though :P -
from RB.
In a sense, you and I funded the writing of the stories.
indeed. as a public servant i'm happy to do my job and respond to OIA. they're one of the ad hoc tasks you're employed to undertake.
but let's not forget that every OIA will usually tie up me for a couple of days, at least one or two managers for several hours if not a day (each), possibly a comms advisor, and possibly a legal advisor.
so... you factor salaries and overheads and you can be talking about thousands of $$ per request. this isn't always the case, but they can be very, very expensive in time and money (if the request is ridiculously large you can charge the requester for time and photocopying costs. the waitangi tribunal pinged me for $80 when i was studying)
some government agencies, the ones who tend to attract the most attention, have people whose main job is to complete and return OIA. that's a dedicated salary right there, with overheads you could be looking at $80k per annum.
but i guess democracy and transparency has a cost, aeh?
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"i guess democracy and transparency has a cost, aeh?"
everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die
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Are there some news organisation who are worse than others (as in reporting undigested news releases)? I suspect the Herald may well head the list but could be that it is because I am beginning to regard this paper with deep, deep loathing.
I am thankful for the weekly delivery of the Guardian Weekly and the News Statesman as they give me a world perspective missing in NZ newspapers--but I do long for a local equivalent in the print media (for all that blogs such as this provide).The only problem with the GW and NS is that regular reading can leave you with the feeling that much is not well with the world--or. on occasion, that nothing is well with the world! And should I care about Gordon Brown?
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... media releases: where once we only had the mediated version via the newspapers, we can now consult the original on Scoop.
Can't agree more. Scoop is necessary reading if you want to know where much of the news comes from. Course it doesn't catch the more selective releases.
It would be interesting if (like travel stories) news stories had to be accompanied by a note advising if they were initiated by a news release and/or sponsorship of some kind.
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the hollowing out of New Zealand's newsrooms
Back from the holidays and catching up on the goings on at PA, I got to this piece after earlier in the evening reading Con Houlihan’s latest column in the Irish Indo. Con must be well into his eighties and still fighting the good fight. Here he describes the demise of the Irish Press and Evening Press.
Reverse Spin indeed.
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Good bit of back-peddling there Craig
While Idiot/Savant and I disagree on a lot, he did come up with a serious and civil dissent that deserved to be responded to in the same spirit. You... not so much.
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Rare gaffe during Clark eulogy <from Herald transcript>:
"Sir Ed's achievement on that day cannot be underestimated."
Have a good think about what that actually means....
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Poneke has an interesting post on the original topic, which includes praise for a DomPost reporter who actually did go and get her own scoop.
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I think I got it Ben ...but it took me a while.
My concern about media is not that they reprint releases. Some of them actually might be well written (eh Jason?) and actually true (shock horror).
My concern is that other media pick up the story uncritically and do not develop it. Why do the media believe what each other say and print. I would have thought they would have been the last ones to trust each other's writings...
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I think I got it Ben ...but it took me a while.
I only got it because I've seen it before.
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Oh dear, just to confirm that its not only the Govt who are good at this game, take a look at the TVNZ politics page.
" More spin doctors on govt payroll
" Jan 20, 2008 10:49 AM" The National Party says in the past five years government agencies have taken on an extra 210 communications staff and contractors under the Labour-led administration....[next 3 paragraphs headed] National says... State services spokesman Gerry Brownlee says... Brownlee says...
Could they be any clearer that they are quoting direct from the press release?
An alternative perpsective may be that , when I worked in Wellington a few years ago I was always rather pleased that the communications staff managed to get our point of view across, so why should it bother me so when an opposition party does the same?
Last but not least, TVNZ has just managed the same treatment of the news release put out by Bill English on 'thestandard.org.nz'.
I despair. Is this really an election year; Public Address you are a beacon of light. Thank you
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The TVNZ page (re. spin doctors) says they sourced the story from Newstalk ZB. I'm not sure, but I think this makes it even worse, in that they are reprinting someone else's poor reportage.
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I only got it because I've seen it before.
And I got it because ... I'm a freak for that stuff?
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Last but not least, TVNZ has just managed the same treatment of the news release put out by Bill English on 'thestandard.org.nz'.
Really? Mike Williams seemed to get plenty of time for response and rebuttal. He didn't do a terribly good job (seriously, why is he allowed out in public without a choke chain?) but that's hardly TVNZ's fault.
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Meanwhile, while we're on the subject of regurgitating undigested spin -
how about this?**Prime Minister takes issue with house-cost findings**
5:00AM Tuesday January 22, 2008
By Anne GibsonAn international survey that found New Zealand the least affordable country for house buyers was widely attacked yesterday and its findings questioned.
Prime Minister Helen Clark disputed conclusions from the fourth annual Demographia survey, which she said was as misleading.
She said the survey's sample of countries was too small and lacked enough European nations to have any real meaning.
OK, so the PM got to put up some unchallenged spin of her own. First, I hardly find it surprising that a politician facing an election this year is going to "take issue" with politically embarrasing news reports. But on what basis did Clark make the claim? Is it accurate, or valid, or pure political spin? Well, Anne Gibson might have asked the questions and gotten a satisfactory answer. But I'll be buggered if I can find them in the actual story.
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Call me a crank if you must, but I'd just like the public service to be just that -- and observe a pretty basic (if not flawless, but that's a whole other can of worms) mechanism for public scrutiny and accountability.
So do I. And in my experience of using the OIA, it generally does.
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So do I. And in my experience of using the OIA, it generally does.
Fair enough. And I wasn't just blowing smoke above - thanks for the serious and civil dissent. Don't think you've changed my mind, but a contrary POV isn't a bad thing at all.
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The TVNZ page (re. spin doctors) says they sourced the story from Newstalk ZB.
TVNZ's website sydicates Newstalk's items for 'breaking news' stuff, I think - when they don't have a video or transcript of their own but still want to be up with the play as a news website. It's more a case of transmitting someone else's reportage than reporting it.
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Demographia isn't a real research team right? It's a property spiv's attempt to get his speculative city-fringe "landbank" zoned for development.
Their "survey" only considers English speaking countries, presumably because he doesn't speak any foreign languages. Houses are actually more affordable in continental Europe, where they have *stricter* development controls, but don't fetishise property ownership as in the English speaking world.
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And I got it because ... I'm a freak for that stuff?
Did you instantly think "Hmmm, I wonder if she's saying it was zero, or infinitely negative?"
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Craig:
OK, so the PM got to put up some unchallenged spin of her own.
Have been away on work for a while but as this is a subject that matters to me I'll add something more at this late stage.
Craig, I don't think your example is appropriate. While "spin" is in the title of this discussion I think you're introducing a new subject. Yes, spin is carried out by Labour as well as National. But everyone spins their (or a parroted) version of a story. The issue is whether the reader is given enough information to understand the potential bias of the story. We assume readers are smart enough to draw their own conclusions if given the sources.
If the PM is quoted saying something, I assume she could be representing the Labour party. If on the other hand if I read an article prompted by a news release and there is no attribution of the argument/data provided by the news release to the people/organisation who wrote it, I might assume the journalist came up with the story (and accompanying angle) from their own investigations. This in turn might lend more credibility to the story than it might deserve.
I have no problem with news being provided to journalists by professional media relations people (up until several years ago I had jobs that included media relations responsibility, and I think I wrote well sometimes). The issue is whether journalists writing stories prompted by such material acknowledge (and maybe quote) their source. If they pretend the story is their own they are doing their readers a disservice.
It used to be that if you regularly ripped off stories from other media organisations or parroted news releases as your own without adding any breadth or depth or new angle, you would lose credibility among your peers and with your boss. Now it seems the (big) boss wants content and volume over quality. I don't like to hear people calling journalists lazy. Journalists work bloody hard in a dire situation where every day they have to provide a lot of copy with minimal resources and backup. It is one of the hardest jobs out there if you want to do it right. And there are many sacrifices made along the way.
But imagine if media organisations were compelled to disclose if articles in their publications were mostly written or initiated by other parties. It would show how few resources were put into news and might give good journalists a break!
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