G’Day. Today your say and recommended reading on the dangers of spin and how to counter it.
In response to Jack Robertson’s When spin starts to kill it’s time to kill spin, Webdiarist John Boase recommends a new British journalism website which aims to draw readers into the struggle:
“Your readers might be interested in new web site anti-spin.com, which is up in rudimentary form though still under construction. It looks promising.”
The aims:
Anti-Spin.com is a not for profit organisation for those who believe that our society is being swamped by propaganda, half truth and untruth. It offers a space to dialogue on these issues. It will investigate techniques of spin and methods of sieving spin and if these methods are deficient, and why.
It aims to provide a focal point for the anti-spin movement in this country, to encourage dialogue between the media-empowered and the rest by understanding the difficulties of both sides, to seek small continuous incremental improvements, often discreetly, and without seeking credit. Occasionally high profile public campaigns may be necessary but this should be as a last resort.
Webdiarist and blogger Jozef Imrich recommends Feeling Misquoted? Weblogs, Transcripts Let the Reader Decide, an Online Journalism Review article about how readers, through the net, can keep journos and public figures honest.
Daniel Moye in Roseville, Sydney, describing himself as “a conservative dizzy from spin”, was concerned at the revelation that someone in Howard’s office had spread rumours about Andrew Wilkie’s personal life after his resignation. Daniel wrote:
Andrew Wilkie’s experience is an important comment on the functioning of Western Democracies. Spin Doctors and firewalls around Ministerial responsibility are a corrosive disease on the democratic fabric. It is not only in the most prominent political battlegrounds of the coalition of the willing but throughout democracies at all levels of government that these tactics of political opportunism and survival are undermining the foundations of our democracies.
For many conservative Australians the disturbing aspect of Spin Doctors and firewalls is that many good policies are being undermined by the unnecessary spin used to implement and defend them. Whether policies stand or fall appears to be more reliant on the success or not of the spin than the merits of the policy. Firewalls play a similar role as they abrogate the responsibility of the Minister for the decisions the government makes.
The sovereign power of the people conferred upon politicians require that they be held responsible and accountable for their actions. Jack Robertson described several solutions to enhance the transparency surrounding the Ministers of our government and all have varying degrees of merit. All should be included in an attack on this unelected coterie of advisers, but more importantly Ministers should be held directly accountable for the actions of their advisers.
I do not claim to be all- knowing on this subject, and would be interested to know the answers to the following questions:
Isn’t the higher echelon of the public service supposed to offer advice on the positive and negative implication of policies? If so, then surely the coterie of advisers are only used in a party political sense.
Have Australian politicians always used publicly funded advisers who are not members of the public bureaucracy?
Has there been a significant change in the powers of parliamentary committees to investigate Ministerial conduct? Have they been officially or unofficially detoothed?
I ask these questions because if the parliament is not a proxy for the people then we are not living in a democracy. The ballot box is NOT the ONLY vehicle for the public holding politicians accountable – in fact one of the parliament’s major functions is to represent the public interest between election periods. Politicians have failed to see the trees for the forest – their political opponents represent the collective will of a large proportion of any given electorate and Parliamentary committees have a right to hold Ministers accountable on an ongoing basis.
Whether or not you believe that the War on Iraq was justified, transparency and accountability in our democracy appears to be at a low ebb. John Howard, Bob Carr and all democratic leaders should be held accountable for their actions and the actions of their spin doctors.
Dan, you’re such a romantic! For the truth about our utterly compromised public service and our politicians’ completely unaccountable political advisers, see former public servant John Nethercote’s analysis of the children overboard inquiry at What servants are for. John wrote:
“For the public service, the affair demonstrates its fragility in the face of both ministers and, more perniciously, ministerial staffers. In the absence of adequate means to bring ex-ministers and ministerial staff to account, it demonstrates the vulnerability of the modern public service.”
Colin McKerlie has some more ideas on how us journos can do a better job. When I get a chance I’ll write a piece about the constraints we’re under, real and perceived. I think both Jack’s and Colin’s ideas are naive, but that’s why they’re good – they force us journos, if we’re willing, to describe the realities to readers, and even to push the boundaries we’ve come to accept we can’t cross.
Colin McKerlie
Jack Robertson’s ideas are fine, but they are based on an absolutely fatuous premise, that the media is on our side. What unmitigated crap. Murdoch journalists would not work for Murdoch if they had a shred of commitment to the public interest. If this was not proven beyond doubt by the Murdoch press coverage of the illegal invasion of Iraq, then nothing ever could be.
The idea of targeting spin doctors is fine, but they are not the problem. As Jack makes clear, all the spin doctoring in the world will have no effect on the quality of journalism if the journalists do their job. The fact that journalists publish material which comes from a single source, even the government, is typical of their shoddy standards.
When Paul Kelly reported the children overboard allegations, I wrote to him and asked him if he had an independent source on board the navy ship that picked up those refugees, because unless he did, then he could have no justifiable basis for publishing the story. I got no reply of course, but the point must be made that the government is no longer a reliable single source.
Journalists can overcome all the evils of spin doctoring just by doing their job. For broadcast journalists, this involves asking questions and getting answers, both talents which Australian broadcast journalists universally failed to demonstrate in the months before Australia went into an illegal invasion of Iraq, when our political leaders refused to tell us their plans.
Here are a few ideas for how broadcast journalists, especially those journalists who have a duty to be on our side – those on the public payroll at the ABC and SBS – can not only improve their performance, but also demonstrate to their ultimate employers that they are doing their job and are prepared to display what Robertson calls ‘fruity aggro’.
1. Show the public you can get answers to the questions you have prepared
Most current affairs programs now have websites on which they publish the transcripts of the interviews conducted with politicians. They should also publish the list of prepared questions the interviewer has taken into these interviews, so the public can see for themselves if the interviewer had the skill and determination to get answers or was fobbed off.
2. Abandon time limits for important political interviews
Politicians are trained at great expense in the techniques needed to avoid answering questions in real time interviews. One of the fundamental tactics is to know how long the interview is going to run and then talk over the interviewer long enough to avoid being put on the spot with a difficult question. If an interview is important, let it run until its done.
3. Tell the audience who you intend to interview and ask for questions
Journalists display breathtaking arrogance in their refusal to allow their audience any chance to participate in the process of questioning our elected representatives. Every night we see journalists failing to ask the important questions or failing to get them answered. Current affairs programs should tell us in advance who they are going to interview and call for ideas.
4. Interviewers and executive producers have to display some guts
What was clear during all the interviews of John Howard conducted by the ABC before the invasion of Iraq was that every interviewer was just too scared to even attempt to use any of the tactics for the elimination of bullshit suggested by Jack Robertson. We need journalists and producers who display the courage of their convictions and a commitment to truth.
5. Compel politicians to face the questions of ordinary people
Tony Blair’s appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight program was the only time anyone displayed the intelligence and courage necessary to get answers out of him during the lead up to Iraq. The reason was that the audience were ordinary people who wanted the truth and weren'[t scared of him. If the journalists can’t get the truth give ordinary people a turn.
You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and you cant improve the quality of the public broadcasters journalists without pointing out their deficiencies. If you are not prepared to publish criticism of the people who let John Howard lie to the Australian people for six months, then please say so openly in your column. People need truth more than hope, Margo.
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Web diarist Michael Strutt emailed a piece on Richard Butler’s history, in reply to his tribute to Dr Kelly which I published in Taking a stand. I don’t know the detail of Butler’s record as head of UNSCOM, but Richard gave a great little speech on the topic ‘Freedom from information’ at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. My notes are at home, but his advice on how to read the news and what questions to ask while reading it was brilliant. Former insiders who let us in on insiders games are a great asset to activists. Richard is doing a wonderful job speaking out on where this country is heading.
Richard Butler holds his title of ‘King of political spin’
by Michael Strutt
I am unsure as to whether I should see Richard Butler’s recent eulogy of David Kelly as another attempt by a pathological ‘diplomat’ to cynically spin current affairs for his own benefit or an example of unprecedented ironic self deprecation.
The sequence of events culminating in Dr Kelly’s suicide was already the most disgusting example of self serving government and media spin doctoring I have seen for some time. But to Butler it seemed to be little more than another opportunity to engage in historical revisionism of his leadership of UNSCOM.
During 1998 the efforts of UNSCOM were put under great pressure in Iraq, leading at the end of that year to Saddam Hussein shutting down our operation and throwing us out of the country.
No Richard, Saddam did not ‘throw you out of the country’. You withdrew the UNSCOM inspectors yourself upon receiving information that the US airforce was about to commence its December 1998 ‘Desert Fox’ bombings of Baghdad.
It was in this tense period that UNSCOM, and especially advisers like David Kelly who had been supplied by key Western states, came to be accused by Iraq and its supporters on the Security Council of serving the interests of their sending government rather than the UN.
This attempt to portray a recently deceased scientist as the main objection Iraqi authorities had to UNSCOM is so cynical it’s stomach turning.
UNSCOM came under fire for many reasons, but the most virulent and justified criticism was over its lack of independence and integrity due to Butler’s preparedness to make it subservient to US and Israeli intelligence agencies. It was Butler himself, not Kelly, who was criticised for using US/Israeli intelligence assets to gather information on Iraqi WMDs, in a manner that ensured that UNSCOM became an arm of those agencies. It was Butler himself who briefed the US Senate on what he had found in Iraq. And it was information supplied by Butler that was used by those setting the targets for the ‘Desert Fox’ air assault.
Perhaps the saddest irony is that Margo, apparently unwittingly, allowed a piece purporting to condemn the moral morass that spindoctors have made of the media to be used by one of the worst perpetrators to push his own self-serving agenda.
Its the short memory of the media and the preparedness of journos to overlook the lies of those they perceive as ideological allies that have allowed the likes of Butler to reduce the UK, US and Australian press to the corrupt appendage of authority they have become.
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Webdiarist Marilyn Shepherd recommends ‘Standing firm’ in The Guardian on the journalistic implications of Dr Kelly’s suicide, which I publish below. I reckon the relentless Blair pressure is about ensuring the BBC becomes more defensive and less courageous in its future reporting. Richard Alston has had enormous success with this tactic, with the ABC now a mere blancmange when it comes to news and current affairs reporting. A couple of pockets of courageous, honest journalism remain, particularly Four Corners and Lateline.
To end this entry, I’ve republished today’s Australian Financial Review news story on how the Democrats look like splitting over the cross media legislation when it returns to the Senate in early October. Imagine how the BBC would cope without any independent media seeking to expose the truth behind Blair’s spin machine? That’s what the poor old ABC will face if Howard’s anti-democratic media ‘reforms’ get through. And that’s exactly what he wants (see Governing for the big two: Can people power stop them?).
Clivia Frieden in Dee Why, Sydney, wrote today:
In recent days, I have been getting more and more angry about more and more issues: education, health care, war, Tampa etc, etc. But at least I have been able to get angry about these issues because I have been able to read about them.
If the proposed changes to media ownership laws go ahead, none of us may be informed enough to generate any anger about such issues. It seems, though, that we here in Australia are not the only worried ones – at least some people in the US are worried, too, if ‘Murdoch’s Extended Reach’ in The Nation is anything to go by. An extract:
“Murdoch is on the cusp of fulfilling a longstanding ambition that will finally give him a global network of powerful orbiting, interactive, direct broadcast satellites. Imagine a torrential downpour of dozens of Fox News Channels targeting major US cities; a super-broadband site continuously promoting the viewpoints of the Weekly Standard; and the ability to focus similar political messages simultaneously in Asia, Europe and North and South America.”
There are a few good American websites on the Bush attempt to deliver more power to Murdoch. See mediareform, democraticmedia and saveourmedia. An Australian website on Howard’s continuing attempt to deliver more power to Murdoch by abolishing cross media restrictions is under construction.
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Standing firm
The Guardian, Monday July 21, 2003
The David Kelly tragedy has thrust the BBC into the limelight as has seldom happened before. Emily Bell examines the corporations’s role in the story and how it has conducted itself in the face of enormous pressure.
Yesterday morning the BBC finished what it had started. Following a final conference call between the director-general Greg Dyke, his director of news Richard Sambrook and head of corporate affairs Sally Osman, the corporation put out a statement confirming that microbiologist David Kelly was the source for defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan’s by now infamous story broken on the Today Programme on May 29.
The BBC does not relish its role at the heart of this story. It does not want to be the organisation which brings down a government, it has had its journalistic practices endlessly scrutinised and criticised, often by a national press whose own hygiene standards are far lower than those of the corporation.
It is an open secret that long before Gilligan dropped his timebomb of a government dossier made more sexy (like many of the confusing details of this story the words “sexed up” never appeared in his original disclosure), the BBC had been under relentless pressure from Downing Street’s communications directorate over its coverage of the Iraq conflict. Privately, Sambrook and his deputy Mark Damazer had seen a daily stream of pressure and complaint about the BBC’s reporting, orchestrated by Alastair Campbell, who later described the corporation as having an “anti-war agenda”.
Any correspondent who files reports for the BBC which are off-message knows what to expect; either an abusive tirade from Campbell in person or a multipaged letter complaining to their boss of their lack of journalistic rigour, or sometimes both. Editors, journalists, Sambrook and Damazer, know that it is part of the price for attempting to conduct independent journalism. When a recent academic study showed that the BBC had in fact given more airtime to government sources in the Iraqi conflict than any other news outlet it showed up the untenable nature of Campbell’s central complaint.
It will be impossible for the BBC not to ask itself questions about its own role in the death of Dr Kelly. Should it have acted differently in relation to Gilligan’s original story? Should it have given Dr Kelly more guidance or support in terms of his role in the story once he had been outed as the “mole”? Should the BBC be running uncorroborated single-source stories at all?
Even as Sambrook was negotiating the terms of yesterday’s statement with Dr Kelly’s family, elsewhere the destructively macho spin stand-off continued unabated.
One cabinet minister was allegedly suggesting to Sunday papers that Dr Kelly’s name had reached the public domain through a leak from the BBC’s chairman, Gavyn Davies. Something which the press already knew to be untrue, as Dr Kelly’s name slipped all too easily out of the Ministry of Defence – the very government department which employed him. It was confirmed by Campbell’s office which said they were “99% certain” Dr Kelly was the BBC’s “mole”.
Former minister and communications expert Peter Mandelson was busily penning an extraordinary piece for the Observer claiming that it was the BBC’s obsession with Alastair Campbell which had caused the tragedy. More spin which prompted an unnamed minister to also remark to the Observer: “Will we never learn?”.
The journalistic questions raised by Dr Kelly’s death are as profound as the political questions. Internally the BBC did not, as the government suggested, ever waver from backing its journalist or its story. BBC news executives might have been unhappy with Gilligan in respect of an article written for the Mail on Sunday, where he arguably dropped too many details about the source of his story. This resulted in an overdue ban on BBC correspondents penning columns for the national press.
Outside this particular point, the BBC’s procedures could have been improved with hindsight, but there are few journalistic organisations which could honestly say they would have been better or even different in the same circumstances. It was impossible for the BBC to disclose its source – the free flow of information rests on the principle that sources can talk to the press with a guarantee of anonymity. The promised public inquiry may reveal more about whether Dr Kelly did unilaterally come forward or whether there was pressure from the MoD which the BBC could have alleviated. Was saying anything at all about sources in effect saying too much? This is a very difficult point for a public-service broadcaster which is expected to show greater accountability than the commercial press.
Some might raise the question whether the nature of the original Gilligan story – which was disclosed in a “two-way” discussion on Today rather than in an edited package – was tightly edited enough. Although the two-way gives the impression of casual discourse, on stories such as this it is highly unlikely that the disclosure would not have been choreographed, possibly even scripted and that the story would not have been known to the editor. The two-way is often used as a device – ironically – to add impact to a story.
The government would like to see the BBC adhere to its own suggested guidelines of sourcing stories in triplicate, although this is an “ideal” rather than a rigid rule. But to shackle the BBC in the pursuit of original journalism would be entirely wrong – so long as the editorial processes bear scrutiny.
The BBC has not as a result of its bruising encounter changed any journalistic practices or issued new guidelines to producers or editors. As it said in its statement yesterday it will co-operate fully with the public inquiry – though it will not be drawn yet into whether it should abide by the terms of the public inquiry.
As for Gilligan’s story, the detail of his discussion with Dr Kelly was known only to the two of them. Whether or not it included any discussion of Campbell may never be fully established, and nor will the issue of whether Campbell deserves the apology he so doggedly and tragically pursued.
The BBC has stood behind its story and behind its journalist in a way which is entirely consistent with the operation of a free and independent media. Whether it stood by Dr Kelly in a way that would have alleviated his personal torture we may find through the public inquiry. Andrew Gilligan, who has suffered every journalist’s worst nightmare, will be suffering further agonies, as will the civil servants at the MoD and Downing Street. Alastair Campbell, it is widely assumed, will stay only until the outcome of the public inquiry, if that.
The BBC’s public stoicism is however bound to mask a subtle, even unconscious shift in its own journalistic psyche – and how that will impact on its future coverage may take years to work through. Meanwhile Dr Kelly and his family are the only part of the story for whom the spin, the bullying and the subterfuge can never be undone.
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Democrats open media law talks
by Toni O’Loughlin
The Australian Financial Review, 22/07/2003
Tensions within the Australian Democrats over media ownership laws and the full privatisation of Telstra have intensified, raising speculation that the federal government may succeed in passing two of its most contentious bills through the Senate.
Senior Democrat sources claim the party’s media policy, along with several other policies including health, is under review.
The news comes as Democrats Senator Andrew Murray has warned his colleagues that he is considering voting for the full privatisation of Telstra, which is being opposed by Labor and the minor parties.
It is believed the Democrats’ media spokesman, Senator John Cherry, has been informally canvassing party members in an attempt to relax the party’s tough stance against the government’s media legislation, which is expected to be re-introduced to the parliament later this year.
“It was hard for the Democrats to negotiate with the government last time because the party was bound by the platform,” a senior party source said.
Senator Cherry has been canvassing “ordinary members who have an interest in [media policy] as well as state and national policy co-ordinators” to try and shift policy, the source said.
Democrats leader Senator Andrew Bartlett, who played down the review, said “it would be silly not to be talking to people”.
“I would be very surprised if he’s not, particularly as it seems to be a live issue,” he said.
However, Senator Cherry denied he had been reviewing the party’s policy.
“I’ve had no meetings with anybody on media policy,” Senator Cherry said.
Both senators said the government would have to give substantial ground if it wanted to negotiate with the Democrats, who will continue to insist that the big media players, notably Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, should be stopped from growing any bigger.
Meanwhile, a report that Senator Murray was considering breaking with the party’s policy and backing the full privatisation of Telstra after the next election has reignited speculation that he might defect and join his former Democrat colleague Meg Lees in her new Progressive Alliance Party.