Telstra Australia…redefining the journalist/pr relationship

Rewriting the rules on how to perform PR, Telstra Australia's vitriolic and journalist abusing Rod Bruem

The relationship between public relations representatives and journalists has always been a tenuous one at the best of times, but one can only wonder at the level of total incompetence and bizarre actions of Telstra Australia in its dealings with the media.

Earlier this year Australian Personal Computer magazine web editor, Dan Warne, published details of a survey conducted on Telstra Australia’s Now We Are Talking (NWT) website (http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au) that showed almost 100 per cent of respondents felt it was Telstra Australia’s fault that Australia did not have a high-speed broadband network.

Prior to publishing the story Mr Warne contacted the Telstra Australia PRO responsible for the blogsite and asked for some basic statistics, including visitor numbers and the composition of the audience.

The next day the story, titled What Telstra didn’t want to hear appeared in ACP magazine (http://apcmag.com/comment/reply/6078#comment_form).

Given that NWT is a patronising and self-serving website that Telstra Australia uses to push it’s own barrow in its ongoing fight with the government and others in the telco market, the result of the poll was definitely not what Tesltra Australia was hoping to achieve.

What was surprising was that the telco-sponsored site allowed the survey to continue to such a point before it deleted all trace of it, as it does with similar comments that fail to support Telstra Australia’s goals and aims.

Mr Warne said that as a result of the story he was deluged by vitriolic emails from Rod Bruem, Telstra Australia’s then editor-in-chief for blogging, that accused him of having manipulated the poll results, being a liar (because he hadn’t warned Bruem he was writing the story), and of not being a journalist.

As Mr Warne quiet rightly points out, a journalist doesn’t need to ask a company’s permission to write a story about them.

Equally so, not every story a journalist writes about a company will be favorable and any PR person or company director who thinks otherwise has their head well and truly buried in the sand.

In this instance it was information from Mr Bruem that NWT received 100,000 unique visitors per month that added credibility to the poll results that Mr Warne was writing about.

It’s equally fair to say that any competent PRO would have taken one look at the survey results and immediately known that such a negative response from what is supposedly a supportive website presented a major PR problem.

Each day I view numerous job vacancies for public relations and media relations practitioners.

In fact the advertisements are so numerous that the PR industry must be either the most fluid industry sector in Australia, or every organisation, company and group believes it need a publicist to get its message across.

Without fail almost all of them stipulate a requirement of “must have strong media contacts.”

The supposed head-hunting guru’s who draft these advertisements, often complete with typographical and grammatical errors, seem to believe that a public relations person with strong media contacts will be able to ensure a company’s positive story is published, or likewise, ensure a negative article is not.

Such notions are purely ridiculous.

Among what a good public relations or media relations practitioner is able to do is to identify a company’s strengths and focus on aspects of an organisation that are unique or newsworthy.

At the same time a good practitioner will also advise a company on areas where it is exposed to bad media coverage, advise it of its level of exposure, and have ready a plan or statement to reduce the corporate damage as much as possible.

Launching a tirade of abuse at journalists is neither an effective or professional public relations strategy.

For any public relations officer to react in such a manner is not only childish, but also highlights the inability of that person to come up with an adequate strategy to counter the negative story they are complaining about.

The obvious response in this instance would have been to attempt to prove the survey had been sabotaged or deliberately manipulated and presented some facts to support the claim.

To accuse a journalist of doing so is ridiculous.

Mr Warne is not the only person to suffer a vitriolic attack from Mr Bruem or the NWT website he was responsible for.

Earlier this year NWT attacked Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel, claiming: “Under his watch, investment in fixed telecommunications infrastructure has sunk to record low levels, while all the time Mr Samuel has steadfastly refused to admit there is any problem with regulation or indeed the regulator itself.”

He has also vitriolically attacked Pam Williamson and the entire Fairfax media organisation, as well as the ABCs Kerry O’Brien and a whole host of others whose job it is to write articles that are often critical of Telstra.

Mr Bruem’s attempts to prove he has a pair by attacking all and sundry in the media seems to have had some results.

Earlier this year he was appointed media and communications assistant to Tesltra Australia ceo Sol Trujillo, a move that has seen a marked decrease in the organisations rabid attacks on Australia’s journalists.

Interestingly, almost all the posts by Mr Bruem on the NWT website have also been deleted.

Earlier this year Mr Warne took the brave step of writing about the relationship between journalists and PROs.

Titled The PR Industry meets journalism: down the rabbit hole, the article makes for interesting reading and provides a unique perspective of the relationship seen from the journalists stand point.

It should be compulsory reading by all involved in public relations, as well as the recruitment guru’s who pen the sometimes ridiculously worded job advertisements and the people who brief them.

In part it describes, “the intense fawning, cajoling flattery from the staggeringly vast army of PR professionals that spend their days sucking up as hard as they possibly can to journalists”, as well as “the extraordinary freebies and gold-plated service that journalists get.”

Perhaps the whole point of Mr Warne’s blog, and the thing that many PROs or their corporate masters totally ignore, is best summed up by when he says: “What they need to realise is that there’s a strong correlation between the quality and value of their products or services and what I write… rather than a correlation between how gushing their PRs are.”

Mr Warne’s article on public relations and journalism relationships, along with a variety of comments from people on both sides of the PR/journalism divide can be read at: http://danwarne.com/the-pr-industry-meets-journalism-down-the-rabbit-hole/.

ENDS:
© John Le Fevre, 2007

AFL slays Australian media

The club channel seven named at the center of the drugs controversy

When Melbourne’s Channel Seven network broke the news last week that players at a Melbourne based AFL club were receiving therapy for illegal drug use and that a leading player from the same club had been investigated for drug trafficking they rapidly became the pariah of the Australian news media.

Not surprisingly, the AFL and the AFL Players’ Association (AFLPA) both strongly condemned the actions of the station, with the AFLPA slapping a ban on the station, and injunctions being sought and granted to prevent the network from revealing the names of the players or further identifying the club.

Rival media organisations and commentators looking to gain favour with the AFL quickly whipped themselves into a frenzy in their attempts to use the most condemning superlatives they could think of to criticise the actions of Dylan Howard who broke the story, as well as the network.

While some journalists supported the network, others were pathetic in the way they bent over backwards to endear themselves to the players and the AFL.

Of particular note is Herald-Sun columnist and ultra conservative puritan Andrew Bolt, who waxed lyrical in his column arguing against the publics right to know and labelling the Channel Seven story as “shabby.”

According to Mr Bolt, Seven’s “duty” lay “in seeing that private medical records stayed private, and in returning them to their owners.”

What an absolutely ridiculous statement for a journalist to make. Perhaps Mr Bolt would prefer to write his news from press release handouts or interviews organised by PR spin-doctors. That’s sure to give the Australian public an unbiased perspective, not.

The broad condemnation of both the story and the reporter behind it only serve to highlight the degree to which the “news” that is dished up to Australians is sanitised and manipulated, and the lack of independence the news media has.

The fact that the story had supposedly been offered to three rival media organisations and they declined to run it only further highlights the sad state of affairs of the Australian news media.

This is compounded by Channel Seven and the Herald-Sun’s decision on Tuesday to abandon the challenge to the late night injunction gained by the AFL and the AFLPA after the story broke.

The comments and actions of Channel Seven’s rivals is also interesting, if not bewildering.

Drug use in the AFL has been an ongoing story for the last three years. Despite broad criticism of its three-strike rule, the AFL and its patronising AFLPA has steadfastly refused to adopt a zero tolerance stance similar to that taken by other Australian sporting codes including the NSW NRL.

According to the AFL and the AFLPA, the Seven network breached the players’ privacy by purchasing documents that had allegedly been found in the street.

This stance by both the AFL and the AFLPA is self serving and nothing more than an attempt to protect those who have broken the law, protect the revenue stream for the forthcoming finals series and to deflect the increasing negative publicity the sport is attracting over players using illegal drugs.

While both the AFL and the AFLPA freely lambasted the network, neither condemned the actions of the players or the club involved.

When the Victorian Health Minister weighed into the matter, also criticising the network, she joined a growing group of people who dodged the primary issue.

Channel Seven is not responsible for protecting the rights or privacy of anyone. Its job is to report on news.

The person who breached the confidentiality of the players and the club are the owners of the clinic administering the treatment. They are the ones with the duty of care to ensure patient records are kept securely.

While Seven identified the club, it didn’t reveal the names of the players. So where is the breach of personal privacy?

It also sought and gained confirmation from the Victorian Police that a leading player from that club had been the subject of a drug investigation earlier this year.

While media organisations in Australia are happy to splash the names of international sporting stars detected of drug abuse across their pages or in their broadcasts, when it comes to the AFL many rapidly back away.

If drug abuse is a problem in any sporting code it ought to be a concern to everyone, not the least being the AFL.

The AFL’s actions in this latest matter have been extraordinary to say the least. Instead of investigating the club and its players, it chose to shoot the messenger.

Perhaps because the revelations by Channel Seven served nothing more but to highlight that the AFL’s much-lauded drug screening program isn’t adequate enough.

Whether Channel Seven paid for the documents or not is also immaterial. The network obtained the accusing documents, verified the information contained in it to the best of its ability and ran the story.

An examination of the online FairfaxDigital Australian rules football blog-site, www.realfooty.com.au, along with several other bulletin boards, shows that many people believe drug use in the AFL is an issue that ought to be brought into the open.

Many of the posts show that football followers of all codes were interested in the story, with many supporting the networks right to broadcast the news. Many also took the view that professional sports-people, who are held up as role models, loose the right to privacy in matters such as drug use.

The most strident and vocal opposition to the Channel Seven story on the www.realfooty.com.au blog-site came from members/supporters of the Hawthorn Football Club. These same people were no-where near as vocal earlier this year when West Coast Eagle Ben Cousins’ drug rehabilitation treatment was front-page news.

The charging of the people who sold the documents to Seven with “theft by finding” is another interesting twist to the story. It would be interesting to find out when the last such charges were laid against anyone.

It will also be interesting to see if any action is taken against the owners of the clinic who failed to keep the records safe and secure in the first place.

One can only wonder if the same actions would have resulted if the medical documents had referred to a politician, a judge, lawyer or school teacher.

Would a ban by school teachers, judges or lawyers on speaking to a specific news organisation have seen so many news commentators falling over themselves in an attempt to condemn the actions of those who broke the story?

Would people then have argued so passionately that what Seven had done was wrong?

One can’t help feeling not.

In the meantime, Australians should feel safe and secure in the knowledge that their daily news diet has been well scrutinised and sanitised so as not to offend.

And if you happen to walk down the street and come across a draft of John Howard’s resignation speech, or a police or medical report with details that your children’s’ school principle is a suspected crack-smoking paedophile, don’t expect any support from the media. Your duty is to protect the privacy of that person and return the documents.

This whole episode has shown that ‘freedom of the press” is just another outdated catch-cry that even many who work in the industry don’t subscribe to anymore.

Big business, professional associations and spin-doctors take note. Prepare your press releases carefully and diligently deliver them to news organisations. The people who select the news Australians read every day welcome them.

And if anything negative should happen to be written about your group or clients, just impose a ban on the news organisation concerned and race off to the Victorian Supreme Court to have your rights to privacy protected and the role of the Australian news media hamstrung further.

ENDS:
© John Le Fevre, 2007

Australian journalism’s day of shame

The revelation of comments allegedly made by Federal Treasurer Peter Costello to three Canberra press gallery journalists over a presumably boozy dinner more than two and a half years will forever damage the relationship Australian journalists have with their sources.

Australian journalists have in the past had an admirable reputation for protecting their sources and respecting the confidences of those who provide them with background information.

Indeed, Australian journalists, like their counterparts in other countries, have been prepared on numerous occasions in the past to go to jail rather than reveal their sources of information.

The decision by the trio, Tony Wright of Melbourne’s The Age, Paul Daley of The Bulletin, and  ABCTV journalist Michael Brissenden, to suddenly all decide that previously agreed to off-the-record comments were in fact quotable raises serious ethical questions.

The fact that Mr Brissenden couldn’t quote the correct date for the dinner in itself also raises questions as to the accuracy of the rest of the comments he claims he noted at the time.

The organisation that represents Australian journalists is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). In addition to being the journalists union it is also their professional body and sets a code of ethics it expects all Australian journalists to follow.

The code of ethics states, “respect for truth and the public’s right to information are fundamental principles of journalism.”

Item one of the code of ethics states journalists will, “report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost  to give a fair opportunity for reply.”

Item three states journalists will, “aim to attribute information to its source. Where a source seeks anonymity, do not agree without first considering the source’s motives and any alternative attributable source. Where confidences are accepted,  respect them in all circumstances.”

While each of the three journalists concerned has attempted to justify their change of heart in the last couple of days, it is doubtful if this will wash with majority of people.

Don’t expect to see any action being taken against the three by the MEAA though. It became pretty much of a toothless tiger many years ago, and in any event is primarily concerned with looking after its members working for large Australian media organisations, not with taking its AUstralian journalist members to task.

For that reason I stopped being a card carrying member of the MEAA many years ago.

Whether the Federal Treasurer made the comments or not is not particularly relevant.

What is relevant though is the judgement and motivations of all three Australian journalists not to use the comments at the time they were made. A time when they were most relevant, or at the very latest, at the time when they claim the treasurer said was the deadline for certain things to occur.

There is little doubt that the comments would have lead themselves to blistering headlines at the time along the lines of “Costello Gives PM Ultimatum”, “PM . . . Dead Man Walking”, “Costello Claims Howard Can’t Win,” or ‘Costello’s Plans For Top Job”, or such.

The fact that all three, agreed to treat the comments as off-the-record or deep background and to not use them in articles they were writing at the time, or since, raises a host of questions.

Whether the comments were off-the-record or not is really not in question.

Mr Wright said in The Age on August 15, “it was never said during the dinner that the conversation was on or off the record and such meetings were widely viewed as providing background information.”

He further says, “the treasurer’s press secretary David Alexander rang and told them his remarks were off the record. He and Mr Daley decided to instead use the information as background for other stories.”

The common theme to the justifications by all three in breaching a fundamental tenet of journalism is that they did so because Peter Costello was asked about these comments and he said, “no, I didn’t, not from me, (and) by-the-way, journalists make things up”, and suggested that the comments had been fabricated by the journalists.

The actions by the three only serve to highlight the continuing decline in Australian journalistic standards.

Once upon a time the Australian public were amongst the most informed people in the world. Australian journalists regularly broke major stories and exposed corruption and dastardly deeds.

Australia’s major media organisations were prepared to spend money funding investigative teams of journalists to dig up stories and come up with banner screaming headlines that pricked the Australian conscious.

At the time news rooms were mostly the domain of crotchety old men whose cynical view of life was forged from extensive experience at plying their craft and was something akin to a badge of honour they wore.

To these journalists of old a “scoop” was a matter of pride. Confidences were protected and their word that something was off-the-record was better than any contract the best legal brains could draft.

Enter any major news room now and what older and experienced journalists that still remain are sitting at the copy editor tables, editing and reshaping the material supplied by young, fresh faced graduates who increasingly rely on press releases as the primary source at least of their stories.

Media organisations these days will not pay the money necessary to fund investigative teams of journalists, or the salaries reasonably expected by those with many years of experience.

While Messrs Wright, Daley and Brissenden might attempt to justify their actions and smirkingly sit in front of TV camera’s waving sheets of paper and proclaiming, “these are my notes of the meeting”, the harm they have done is considerable.

To young Australian journalists just starting their careers they have shown them that a “scoop” isn’t of such importance anymore to a journalist.

To those people that journalists rely on for their background information they have shown that an Australian journalists word that something is off-the-record really means that it is only off the record unless the journalist wants to use it against you at some time.

And finally, to the public who consume the product that journalists turn out, they’ve shown the way that essential facts and information are with-held, distorted and manipulated by those the public place their trust in to inform them.

As I said, the actions of the three raise serious questions of ethics. If not journalistic ethics, then at the very least questions as to their own personal morals and ethics.

And coming only a few weeks before a federal election is expected to be called, one can only wonder what other reason’s were behind the disclosure by the three at this point in time.

ENDS:
© John Le Fevre, 2007

Australian journalism; Journalism ethics; MEAA; Code of ethics; Tony Wright; The Age newspaper; Michael Brissenden; Paul Daley; The Bulletin magazine; ABCTV Australia; Canberra press gallery