It is quite clear we bemoan the state of journalism and its bent towards sensationalism. The question is, how innocent are we really? Today the lead story on the online news page for what was once Australia’s most reputable newspaper reads-
“Award no company wants: Australia’s biggest brands named and shamed over the ‘shonkiest, meanest and silliest rip-offs and scams.'”
There was also a picture of a ‘celebrity’ chef who does ads for one of the leading supermarkets and I must say this headline nearly sucked me in. It got me super curious. It took all my willpower not to click the link even though my head screamed “this is exactly the type of mindless gutter current affairs sensationalist journalism you hate and to click will be to validate it!!”
I didn’t click then but I still want to now. You see, I am trying to reform. I have seen the light and I know that to click will make me as bad as them – complicit as judge jury and executioner in the court of public opinion. I am not saying I am there yet and I am sure there will be the odd click-up along the way but I am trying to be a better surfer, one click at a time.
How about you?
In the age of social media everyone can criticise. Everyone can offer their opinion. The online news sites like the Sydney Morning Herald become more sensational by the day as journalists try to outdo one another for the best piece of dirt. Everything is on trial.
This must change. We have to stop being so critical. There is healthy criticism and criticism for the sake of it (or for headlines that sell) we must begin using the new communications tools the internet provides to start generating some ideas and some answers to the problems that are ailing our society not just moaning about them.
This is my challenge to you. The moaning is easy. The answers are hard.
Here is an answer. As an easy first step, we could start by stopping – stop clicking on the headline that seems too weird to be true – the more we click the more it is perceived to be selling – the more we will see that type of headline in the future. Stop feeding the sensational beast and start the fight back.
It is up to us to clean out the courtroom – to put a stop to costly trials that are nothing but media hype. If we don’t the argument will always be that the media is providing what people want. We have to show them that we don’t want it. We have to demonstrate that they have misread public opinion.
Make a start today….
Jay Blumler argues that, “Notions of a ‘public interest’ cannot be divorced from the fabric of the societies to which they are to be applied.” This of course seems very reasonable but as he suggests these notions have had a rough time of it of late because of six interlinked post-war changes that have transformed society – 1) individualisation 2) Consumerism 3) Privatisation 4) Specialisation and social complexity (subgroups and cultures within a society) 5) Anti-authoritarianism 6) Globalisation.
What strikes me with these is that through the first three we have become exceedingly more self absorbed rather than collectively minded and in the last three we are struggling to understand just what public or society really stands for anymore. So isn’t it obvious that self interest comes before public interest in the end, and isn’t it only going to get worse? How can we expect the media to put ‘public interests’ before ‘self interests’ when perhaps the fabric of society would suggest the two are one and the same?
I believe communications practitioners must ensure that the public is on board with the ‘problem’ before they sell major infrastructure ‘solutions’. If they fail to do so then their project is doomed to destruction in the court of public opinion.
Henry Rosso, a fundraising guru in the United States, firmly advocated that for philanthropic organisations to successfully raise funds it is best they focus on the issue being solved not the organisation solving it. He believed people emotionally engage to a greater extent with an issue than with an organisation.
I feel the same applies for infrastructure. Engagement with the problem should come first. A former Minister for NSW Transport, Carl Scully argued that Sydney was caught up in the popular mythology that any transport infrastructure must provide a ‘silver bullet’ solution for all Sydney’s transport ailments – particularly for Western Sydney. A solution that is not feasible or possible. And so with the Sydney Metro as soon as it became clear that the project was not going to be a blanket solution it was written off as too expensive (as are most other such solutions).
Where was the focus on the problem of hundreds of buses out of the clogged city streets (particularly George st) at peak times? Why was the problem of where to house (and maintain) the sleeping trains in explaining the problem that lead to the Rozelle to central as a first step solution? Why was the fact that Victoria Road (the road the metro was to roughly follow) is currently the most congested bus line in Australia kept under wraps?
We didn’t understand the problem – what hope did the solution have?
The media loved to mention the metro cost at every opportunity. The Sydney Metro lost the media agenda and in February this year it was aborted. It joins a long list of such projects growing at an alarming rate.
Maybe this is the problem that will spur you communicators into action on major infrastructure…
Do you think websites like Get up are effective vehicles for the generation of public good?
Questions are mounting on the ‘authenticity’ of news media – even the old broadsheet papers.
Jay Blumler suggests there are strong tensions between media aims that need closer scrutiny in media criticism.
Blumler questions whether the media aims “to do justice to a subject or a problem or a situation or the aims and activities of a subgroup in terms of what it is really like,” have been replaced by a media “prepared to distort the picture just for the sake of holding attention, to heighten drama or to confirm the existing impressions (even prejudices) of audience members.”
If this is the case – and I would argue that it is – then can anyone expect a fair trial in the court of public opinion?
There is, what those from the Barthes school of semiotics might call, a Myth of the ‘greedy tycoon’. It rears its ugly head whenever an ‘ordinary everday’ person or group of people feel aggrieved by the actions of what they perceive to be money hungry companies looking to take advantage of the public (and themselves) in order to profit. I am not saying such a person doesn’t exist but I would suggest that this myth is wheeled out too often whenever someone wishes to receive attention to their plight or interests.
There is a particularly blunt and crude example of this myth circulating currently courtesy of the Public Health Association of Australia.
As a non-smoker myself, of course I believe the anti-smoking plight is just but I do wish to question the method. This advertisement mounts an easy and lazy argument against an advertising campaign advocating the defeat of plain cigarette packaging legislation proposed by the Federal Government. The point the Public Health ad is making is that the Australian Alliance of Retailers behind the anti-plain packaging campaign is bankrolled by the tobacco industry. And so, to urge the public to dismiss the campaign altogether, the myth of the ‘greedy tycoon’ is reinvented.
My concern is that no matter how legitimate the cause might be this method of reinventing the ‘greedy tycoon’ myth gas broader cultural ramifications that are causing long term harm. The problem is whenever there is money involved in anything these days this label is too easily applied to people’s motivations. And seeing as there is money involved in EVERYTHING in the western world this myth can be dangerously applied to any proposed policy change or development in order to disrupt it.
In Mythologies Barthes argues that “myth serves a double function: it points out and it notifies , it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us,” and since myth also “postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a memory, a comparative order of facts, ideas, decisions,” every time the mythical greedy tycoon is rolled out the current usage fuses together with those of the past and the myth grows stronger and more dangerous as a result.
Is this myth a part of the reason governments seem so reluctant to provide the infrastructure we desperately require in Australia? Instead they take on the tobacco industry (an easy target unpopular with the public majority) with an idea that sounds worthwhile on the face of it but the cynic in me feels is probably action to be seen to be doing something rather than effective policy…
Let’s say the stakeholders of a major infrastructure project such as developers, planners, architects and builders decide to band together and invest in a campaign that advocates for the project. Do you believe them or are they in it for themselves?
Payton and Moody in Understanding Philanthropy (2008) define philanthropy as “Voluntary Action for the Public good.” If the companies involved in the project believed in what they were doing and felt that the benefits were for the public good or moreover voluntarily chose to pursue the project because they believed in its public worth would they be philanthropists?
If we could for a moment mentally set aside the money they are to make and consider them philanthropic how do you think messages they conveyed in the media about the projects would be received?
Perhaps it comes down to a similar debate as that between Aristotle’s and Isocrates’ notions of Ethos in rhetoric . As Marsh (2003) states “Aristotle discusses ethos only as it resides in the character projected by the speaker during the speech. In Isocratean rhetoric, however, ethos, is inseparable from the entire life of the speaker.”
Marsh, C. (2003) Antecedents of two-way symmetry in classical Greek rhetoric: the rhetoric of Isocrates. Public Relations Review 29. pp. 351-367.
Payton, R., L. & Moody, M., P. (2008) Understanding philanthropy: its meaning and mission. Bloomington. Indiana University Press.
I have a question.
Why is it that significant projects (particularly infrastructure projects that aren’t roads) seem to constantly fail to get off the ground in NSW? We have a long list – the Sydney Metro, the Fast Rail line to Melbourne, the Parramatta to Chatswood Rail link, the second airport and countless more. The money invested in planning and feasibility studies has totaled hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and now there are rumblings around the media about this as wasted money which means Governments are going to be less likely to invest even in the exploratory stage of major projects in the future. Things are looking dire…
This is a major problem for Sydney in particular. We are growing at a rate of 1,000 people a week and every day there is no action the cost of doing something down the track (no pun intended) escalates through inflation in building costs and the increased price of the property required for the land to build.
It seems to me that governments can too easily say that a project is too expensive and that the money could be better spent elsewhere. But this can be (and is being) said of ANY project and so nothing seems to be happening at all. It doesn’t help too that it is easier for journalists to see the holes in a project and report on them rather than trying to understand properly what outcomes a project is trying to achieve.
The question is, how can we break the bind this state seems to be in?
Last semester, in looking at Public Affairs I think I might have spied an answer that I would like to explore. It is the development and instigation of campaigns that aim to build and sway public opinion before turning it at government as a tool for lobbying for action.
The best example I found was done by a company called CPR – www.becausewecare.org.au. It was a campaign that helped to successfully advocate for higher wages for Aged Care nurses on behalf of the Australian Nursing Federation. 
This campaign raised awareness of the issue, got the public involved by making it easy to sign petitions and email their local MP. It worked brilliantly. Not only did the nurse receive their pay rise at the last budget but membership in the Federation grew by 7,000, which is astounding considering the current downward trend for memberships of this type.
This got me thinking. Why is it that proactive communications strategies like this are used for some things and not others. Why are they not prevalent for massive infrastructure projects for example. Why is it so easy for governments to scuttle these projects based solely on cost. Does the Because We Care campaign hint at something that could be done to say the case in the court of public opinion?
Trials in the Court of "Public" Opinion 