Below is the text of an article I contributed to the current issue of the Walkley magazine
"The reaction to the Ketchum affair, and many other recent PR disasters, suggests that the public wants strong protections against these frequent erosions of the independence of the media and of public commentary more broadly."
PR is almost universally characterised as ‘spin’ and as an occupation that inevitably involves at least a mild form of duplicity. Despite this world-weariness, when specific examples of unethical PR behaviour come to light they are greeted with dismay.
A few years ago the cash for comment saga, involving prominent radio broadcasters John Laws and Alan Jones, drew long and protracted media coverage. It was quite a circus and its consequences have been surprising.
In 2004, the Media Watch team won a Walkley award for their "Cash for Comment II" program for an investigation that revealed the Australian Broadcasting Authority's (ABA) Professor Flint's "sympathies with the views expressed by broadcaster Alan Jones when Flint had been chairing an inquiry involving Mr Jones".
The Walkley judges said that: "this significant and comprehensive story cut to the core of ethical issues in Australian radio".
Forced to resign, Flint ironically became one of the main casualties of the whole unedifying years-long spectacle. Meanwhile, its unlikely that much has changed in the day to day world of commercial radio.
Jones and Laws defended themselves vigorously against any suggestions that they had misled their listeners by not revealing contracts with companies they talked about on-air.
An essential part of their defence was that their commercial arrangements did not influence their comments nor did they say anything they did not believe to be true.
Laws pointed out (interview with Andrew Denton, ABC TV, May 2004) that: "there is a clause in my Telstra contract that says that I may, if I choose, be of critical...be as critical of Telstra as I wish". So there! Independence guaranteed by contract.
Laws also argued that he was an 'entertainer' on commercial radio and his audience understood that he was, of course, paid to promote his sponsors and their products. His critics, he said, tended to underestimate the intelligence of the Australian public.
The problem with the "I believed in my comments" defence is that it is not an objective, or even a practical, test of independence.
The latest use of this defence has been by Armstrong Williams, America’s most prominent conservative black media commentator, in a scandal that broke in January this year.
Through a contract with Ketchum, one of America’s big PR outfits, Williams was paid $US240,000 by the Bush Administration to promote its No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act through his regular radio and TV broadcasts.
Williams, a former aide to Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas who has his own public relations company, was also engaged to help with a range of other promotional activities.
Williams admitted that these arrangements might be seen as unethical by some but, of course, he denies misleading his audience because he believes in Bush’s education reforms.
By the end of January, media reports had identified two other columnists, Maggie Gallagher and Mike McManus, as also receiving government contracts to promote programs.
President Bush was prompted to publicly order his Cabinet Secretaries to not pay columnists and Senators Kennedy and Lautenberg had signalled their intention to introduce a ‘Stop Government Propaganda Act’ in the Senate which would have the effect of making Bush’s instruction legally-binding.
No doubt, as with cash for comment, this saga will go on for some time yet.
These episodes in Australia and the USA emphasise the importance of our traditional method of judging independence, which has been to maintain a clear line between editorial content and advertising.
No-one gets upset, for instance, when they see Sigrid Thornton promoting a product on TV because its clearly an advertisement. There is no pretence that these ads represent independent commentary.
On the other hand, the pressure is always on to get 'favourable mentions' in the editorial pages because their value is much greater, per column inch, than advertising.
Its a flawed methodology, but its instructive to note that some PR companies value editorial space at three to six times the cost of a similar quantity of advertising.
The public discount advertising on the basis that people like Thornton are paid to say what they say. Whereas, journalists are presumed to be independent (not paid to support particular products and viewpoints) and any favourable comments they make therefore have the ring of a third party endorsement.
This independent validation of a 'message' is absolutely vital to the success of most communication campaigns.
PR activity, for the most part, involves trying to get time-strapped and resource-poor journalists to make an assessment of your product, service or organisation rather than someone else's.
Nevertheless, the pressure is always on to step over the mark and use deceptive means to access the brand power of editorial independence.
Reading a new book, Talespin (Kogan Page 2005), by Gerry McCusker, an Australian PR practitioner, I was struck by just how often these deceptive efforts explode in the perpetrators’ faces.
The book covers 79 PR disasters most of which are the consequence of some mixture of hubris, arrogance and deception. Disturbingly, they are all recent and you would remember most of them.
Some of these PR disasters involve astroturfing, the practice of creating, or fostering, individuals and groups to falsely create, or inflate, a 'public' viewpoint which journalists will then report on.
One of the most high-profile recent Australian examples was a two-year letter-writing campaign instigated by one of Turnbull Porter Novelli's then directors Ken Davis.
The campaign against Nova FM (owned by a competitor of Davis's client, Austereo) involved around 50 letters from an imaginary Peter Johnston. The letters went to MPs, regulators, the media and others. Several were published, including by the Age, and they eventually led to a parliamentary radio industry inquiry.
Astroturfing is not always so clear cut. It’s a broad spectrum from the flagrantly fraudulent to seemingly innocuous donations to research and public advocacy groups.
The clearly fraudulent end of the scale is easy to condemn. What about the support of good, or at least, legitimate causes?
Big business funds groups that develop and promote business-friendly economic policies. Trade unions support think-tanks that argue for more interventionist approaches. Pharmaceutical companies fund health groups and university researchers. Some respected anti-obesity activists also work for the diet industry. Oil companies support global warming sceptics. And so on, the examples are numerous.
Many of these people regularly appear in the media as experts. They help shape the editorial component of our daily media intake.
Does it matter, and where do we draw the line?
These groups and individuals would strongly resist any suggestion that funding sources influence their views. Like Williams, Jones and Laws, they too believe what they say.
Real transparency is hard to achieve. We can identify the organisation that the experts come from but it is not so easy to disclose funders and agendas in the space available in traditional media.
Online there is more space and a greater ability to follow the trail through links and searchable databases.
SourceWatch (formerly disinfopedia), a project of the Centre for Media and Democracy in the USA, is the type of service that can help us put the jigsaw together and make our media environment more transparent.
But with something like the current Armstrong Williams case we had no idea that independence had been diminished until after the arrangement was revealed by investigative journalists.
There seems to have been no obligation on Williams, Ketchum or the US Department of Education to be up-front about the pay-for-play contract.
The contract itself only became public following a freedom of information request by USA TODAY.
During the Ketchum affair, Jay Rosen, of the New York University journalism school, strongly criticised PR bloggers (including me, see his blog PressThink) for not being more evident in their criticism of Williams and the ‘pay-for-play’ arrangement.
Yet, it is doubtful that PR bloggers criticising ‘unethical practices’ will make any more difference then the formulaic responses of the PR associations, which around the world have been shown to be inadequate in their responses to major public scandals like the Williams-Ketchum affair.
No matter how often we condemn these practices, companies and governments will still look for an arrangement that will give them the edge in public debates and there will always be a broadcaster willing to be paid for supporting something they believe in anyway.
Equally, the power of ideas, or angry community reaction, is so strong that those companies and governments will always be tempted to support or create anything that helps their cause.
Ultimately, the only solution is a stronger regulatory response which both punishes severely the clearly fraudulent and promotes more effective disclosure in the areas that are less black and white.
The reaction to the Ketchum affair, and many other recent PR disasters, suggests that the public wants strong protections against these frequent erosions of the independence of the media and of public commentary more broadly.
Good thoughtful piece, Trev, and one of the better contributions to the debate on what constitutes objective reporting, what constitutes propaganda and what constitutes advertising.
It's an important distinction because to provide people with false or misleading information that may cause them to make harmful decisions is, I would argue, prima facie, immoral and unethical.
By the way, I don't see Sourcewatch (previously called Disinfopedia - is this spin?) as the gold standard of objectivity. It is, when all is said and done, just another platform.
Posted by: Keith Jackson | 01 March 2005 at 06:28 PM
It is the question of obligations of our governmental representatives that has me incensed by the breaking news of these scandals. If we are truly represented by our elected officials, how then do they justify manipulating the media in such ways?
Whether it is citizens in the USA (where I live) or elsewhere, most democratic societies have in place protections for both reasonable individual expression and the press.
I recently set forth the notion and continue to hold it that when our elected officials and their appointees knowingly manipulate the media to their own political ends that they are in effect conspiring to diminish these constitutionally given freedoms.
In my opinion, freedom of the press not only includes the freedom to print whatever news seems relevant to the day, but also the freedom from manipulation by governing officials and their appointees or contractors.
Posted by: Dwight Stickler | 03 March 2005 at 12:19 AM