Need a Council story? Just make it up
It seemed like a relatively straightforward task for Newbytes trainee journalist Abanob Saad, but it resulted in extraordinary behaviour from some of Brisbane City Council’s “media advisors”.
Saad’s job was to research and write a news story about the BCC’s recent installation of speakers and Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in Fortitude Valley and the Brisbane CBD.
Abanob Saad is one of about two dozen trainee journalists studying at Brisbane’s private journalism college, Jschool, publisher of Newsbytes.
As well as conducting other research, Saad compiled the following five simple questions for the BCC’s media unit:
Why were speakers installed?
Are they being monitored 24/7 and by how many staff?
Are there examples of the system having foiled a crime or caught someone doing something illegal?
What is the cost of the program?
The Council’s media unit sent Saad an old press release that did not address any of the questions.
He asked the questions again. There followed several days of email and phone requests to speak directly to the councillor responsible for the CCTV installations.
His requests were refused.
But in one telephone conversation with a media advisor Saad claims he asked to speak directly to Lord Mayor Graham Quirk because the old press release contained comments from him.
The advisor, Saad claims, told him to “make it up” that he actually interviewed Cr Quirk and to “use the quotes in the press release as if he said it”.
Jschool’s study program requires trainees to report accurately and fairly, without bias, and to adhere to the industry’s code of ethics.
As Newsbytes chief-of-staff, I spoke to the BCC’s media manager Nick Kennedy about the constant fob-off of trainee journalists and the unprofessional behaviour of BCC media staff.
Kennedy told me to “shut up” and hung up the phone.
Saad’s questions remain unanswered.
During the past 15 years that I have had professional contact with Cr Graham Quirk, I have found him unfailingly approachable, courteous, professional and very supportive of beginning journalists.
Although always “busy” some BCC media staff have assisted trainee journalists in a timely and courteous manner.
But this latest unsavoury exchange between Newsbytes journalists and the BCC media unit beholds Cr Quirk to ask his media manager some questions about his and his staff’s professional conduct.
You were right Quirk was approachable. WAS
This looks like a beat-up that itself fails as a piece of journalism, because BCC has not been given right of reply on the key allegation – that the trainee reporter was told to “make it up”.
Instead, a much broader, claim about the “constant fob off” of trainee journalists apparently was put to the media manager.
When the trainee reporter failed to have the contacts, charm or skills to secure an interview with anyone in BCC on this topic (ie without going through the media unit), he could have as a last resort, accurately written “xxxx, Cr Quirk said in a statement on (date)”.
The media release provided would have given useful background and it would have been negligent of the reporter not to have obtained official, on-the-record information like this before writing this story (or framing questions, so as not to waste the time of BCC staff, and potentially the Lord Mayor, seeking information that is already on the public record.)
The J-School tutors maybe should spend more time educating their students on the importance of phone manner, and some of the personal skills required to obtain information.
One of my university lecturers many years ago – now one of Australia’s most senior and respected journalists – told us (something like) : “No-one has to talk to you – as a journalist you have no more rights to information than the average person. It’s up to you to work out ways to get people to talk to you and give you information.” I have never forgotten that.
I have seen interns spend entire days on the phone cold calling businesses trying to get someone to be interviewed for a story, and seen how what they are missing is any phone manner or ability to sell themselves or their story, or any skill in creating a compelling desire for people to help them out.
Experience teaches there are many ways of getting people to provide information, but ringing up media units (or worse – emailing them) and demanding interviews and information as a right is not one of them.
Perhaps J-School should spend more time teaching some of these techniques, rather than getting all self-righteous that BCC staff are not available to be at the beck-and-call of their inexperienced students.
They should also be teaching the value of building up contacts. Graham Quirk’s mobile number is in my contact book, as it would be for many journalists in Brisbane, I imagine. There’s a time and place for going through a media unit – other times you just go straight to the source. You always have that option when the media unit won’t play ball.
The rise of big media units in organisations like BCC really is based on a need to rely less on external media and more on developing their own newsletters, websites and materials for communicating directly with “stakeholders” (the journalist in me shudders at using that word!). Many journalists seem to think the purpose of these units is to spoon-feed them information, sources and stories when they don’t want to do their own leg work.
I am not connected in any way with BCC (apart from being a ratepayer), and wish J-School all the best in its endeavours educating the next generation of journalists.
Disclosure – I was a student at JSchool, and Desley Bartlett was my lecturer, in 2010.
What an appalling comment by Ms Cameron.
This looks like a beat-up that itself fails as a piece of journalism, because BCC has not been given right of reply on the key allegation – that the trainee reporter was told to “make it up”.
The article states that Ms Bartlett spoke to media manager Nick Kennedy about the “constant fob-off of trainee journalists and the unprofessional behaviour of BCC media staff”
“When the trainee reporter failed to have the contacts, charm or skills to secure an interview with anyone in BCC on this topic (ie without going through the media unit), he could have as a last resort, accurately written “xxxx, Cr Quirk said in a statement on (date)””
The media release provided would have given useful background and it would have been negligent of the reporter not to have obtained official, on-the-record information like this before writing this story (or framing questions, so as not to waste the time of BCC staff, and potentially the Lord Mayor, seeking information that is already on the public record.)
How does anyone who has not read it know what background, if any, the news release provided? It’s entirely possible that the release was full of self-congratulatory rhetoric with no substance whatsoever, published in the hope that no real analysis other than a lazy reprint of the release would be the result. Is Ms Cameron seriously stating that the answers to the questions asked were in the media release? Does Ms Cameron say that the five questions asked and unanswered are a waste of time?”
“The J-School tutors maybe should spend more time educating their students on the importance of phone manner, and some of the personal skills required to obtain information”
What nonsense. The J-School tutors should keep on teaching students that the public has a right to know what public institutions are up to and that when information is refused it is an affront to democracy.
One of my university lecturers many years ago – now one of Australia’s most senior and respected journalists – told us (something like) : “No-one has to talk to you – as a journalist you have no more rights to information than the average person. It’s up to you to work out ways to get people to talk to you and give you information.” I have never forgotten that.
Perhaps in an age where journalists are less trusted than CEOs, taxi drivers and sex workers, a ‘most senior and respected journalist’ is part of the problem of journalists cozying up to powerful figures and reprinting their gossip as analysis. That’s the way most journalists get information out of powerful people, but it damages the whole spinal cord of journalism and makes journalists creatures of the rich men who already run the country. It’s a very good thing that J-School’s philosophy is different.
I have seen interns spend entire days on the phone cold calling businesses trying to get someone to be interviewed for a story, and seen how what they are missing is any phone manner or ability to sell themselves or their story, or any skill in creating a compelling desire for people to help them out.
Does Ms Cameron seriously suggest that a nicer phone manner would get more information out of media units whose entire purpose is to massage information for the benefit of their employers? I would put my phone manner up against anyone in Australia; my voice flows like honey over the phone and yet I will (and have been) fobbed off when looking for facts from organisations that don’t want to give them. For Ms Cameron to suggest that the problem is politeness, rather than powerful people deliberately making it hard to hide facts that the public has a right to know, means she is complicit in a media system that has failed and is failing the Australian people.
Experience teaches there are many ways of getting people to provide information, but ringing up media units (or worse – emailing them) and demanding interviews and information as a right is not one of them.
What are these media units for then? Why do we, as ratepayers (and even renters, and customers in shops, end up paying the rates that are passed onto them by property owners) tolerate large media units who demand journalists make up things as the price of future access?
Perhaps J-School should spend more time teaching some of these techniques, rather than getting all self-righteous that BCC staff are not available to be at the beck-and-call of their inexperienced students.
Or perhaps J-School’s owner and lecturers should continue in what seems to me to be their belief that tenacity, and passion for the truth, rather than “technique”, is what makes a good journalist.
They should also be teaching the value of building up contacts. Graham Quirk’s mobile number is in my contact book, as it would be for many journalists in Brisbane, I imagine. There’s a time and place for going through a media unit – other times you just go straight to the source. You always have that option when the media unit won’t play ball.
Now Ms Cameron goes from being merely complicit in systems of power to making absolutely laughable comments. The whole point of a media unit is to keep politicians that aren’t part of the favoured few sheltered from the questions of nosy journalists. You might as well tell asylum-seekers that they should be learning the value of not being imprisoned by the Australian Government. The media-management system is desperately trying to keep media stories that powerful people want in the media. The lesson constantly put out is that if you don’t play on their terms, you simply won’t get access. Perhaps Ms Cameron thinks that doing the “churnalism” of reprinting media releases is a good and worthwhile thing to do to get access. I disagree, in fact I think it’s damaging our entire democracy.
The rise of big media units in organisations like BCC really is based on a need to rely less on external media and more on developing their own newsletters, websites and materials for communicating directly with “stakeholders” (the journalist in me shudders at using that word!). Many journalists seem to think the purpose of these units is to spoon-feed them information, sources and stories when they don’t want to do their own leg work.
Where else does Ms Cameron suggest the information requested be got from? What “leg-work” would provide answers to questions like “Are there examples of the system having foiled a crime or caught someone doing something illegal?” and “What is the cost of the program?” Ms Cameron is probably unaware that when a student journalist at J-School last year did the “legwork” of visiting a councillor’s office to chase up comment on a story after being fobbed off by the media unit, the councillor’s staff called security on them. But how could she possibly be unaware that the Council puts barriers in the way of journalists seeking information, and why does she sneer at the journalism teacher brave enough to expose this sort of behaviour, instead of asking what makes it possible and how it could possibly be justified?
I am not connected in any way with BCC (apart from being a ratepayer), and wish J-School all the best in its endeavours educating the next generation of journalists.
I profoundly hope that J-School will continue to teach trainee journalists that public figures who hide behind media units are doing the wrong thing, and will continue to expose this and other poor behaviour by those who should be answering to us, the people.
What astonishing insight Ms Cameron has.
How extraordinary Fiona Cameron takes such umbrage at a trainee journalist just trying to learn the craft. Don’t know how many years it is since Ms Cameron had the good fortune to be instructed under such fine peers of the trade as she cites, but compassion and tolerance for L-plate reporters has escaped her. Her talk about phone manner, media units being too busy creating web networks, not doing trainees jobs for them all indicate someone who has surely either been too long out of the real world of curious news gathering, or lost perspective.
The story was about cc cameras, for God’s sake! Five questions. How hard can that be for the council to deal with?
It was not some major, sensitive issue that needed intricate council handling or careful massage, was it?
So what if the young journalist-to-be lacked phone manner finesse! Dealing with difficult and busy media offficers is a learned on-the-job skill and meeting rudeness and obstruction can be intimidating for anyone. Perhaps this trainee does not have English as a first language or an ethnic name or accent that is difficult to take in, and this also put him on the back foot with officialdom?
Surely it would behove these “mature” media officers as public servants and human beings to show this “proper” phone manner by example.
Ms Cameron’s ideas about rights to information ( “nobody has to talk to you”) may be the case in personal interest stories and talking to private citizens. Ratepayers/taxpayers and people seeking information from government bodies on their behalf ( ie journalists) certainly do have a right to seek answers about how their money is spent.”
I feel for young people learning the craft of journalism and all its aspects of gaining confidence in speaking to people, building networks, learning discernment, separating verbal wheat from chaff, because today so many parts of the job where this took place are diminished as they must become the techno reporters who must file on multi platforms.
There just are not enough hours in the day for them to chew the fat with older journalists who have gone before, or to go on “real” face to face story assignments. So for them, email and phone is the news gathering norm and they have less chance to become moulded and polished in the good old hard knocks way.
Disclosure: I work for News Queensland, I live in the state seat of Ashgrove and am actively supporting the Keep Kate campaign, I used to work with Desley at UQ, and I have also worked with Fiona and Julie.
The most arrogant journalist I have worked with at The Courier-Mail got a job at BCC, working for the former Lord Mayor who has arrogantly decided he should be Premier and that I and the fellow voters of Ashgrove should hand over the seat to him. I mention this only because I believe the BCC has been developing a culture of arrogance that probably goes back to Jim Soorley but certainly went up a notch under Newman. I don’t know Quirk but from what others say it sounds as though he has become more arrogant since taking over the lord mayoralty, probably because of the surroundings in which he finds himself. After all, just look at the way the BCC majority has treated Nicole Johnston, one of their own.
Journalism students can be a pain for busy people, often taking longer to do an interview than experienced journos would, and there is even less chance than normal that any resultant story will see the light of day, especially in a publication where a significant number of people will see it.
But that is not the point. We live in a responsible democracy, and that means our politicians — federal, state and local — are responsible to the people they represent. The media facilitates this discourse, and a refusal to talk to the media, at whatever level, is a refusal to engage with the voters to whom the politicians are responsible.
I commend Fiona for taking the time to give such a thoughtful response, and agree with some points she makes. But overall I find myself in the other camp on this issue.
Julie, I do not in any way take umbrage at trainee journalists trying to learn their craft. I object to their tutors teaching that a non-cooperative media unit is any way a block to a story (and then themselves beating up a story when a media unit is a bit unhelpful.) Puh-lease!
I have worked with plenty of experienced, high-level, award-winning reporters who pride themselves on never going near media units (why alert the spinners when you’re on to a good yarn?) unless they absolutely must.
I would just like trainee reporters to know that media units are useful to journalists sometimes, but you shouldn’t rely on them or be beholden to them, and you must develop your own ways of getting information through other channels. You cannot regard a media unit’s non-cooperation as even the slightest blip on the road to getting your story.
Abanob Saad obviously knows this and did an excellent job with the piece on security cameras. He essentially did what I am advocating and got a whole lot of information from a range of other sources.
The angle on BCC refusing to answer questions also is valid, and Desley Bartlett maybe could have been developed it into a more powerful story, rather than just writing it as an attack on the BCC media unit. Eg if she had got answers to even some of the five questions elsewhere; if she had got a few people in the security industry to make an educated/informed guesses about the cost of installing and monitoring the security cameras, and got confirmation from the police that the cameras had not assisted in any arrests, it would have been another great story.
Then, (hypothetically speaking) if she had gone back to BCC with that information, they would have jumped – eg “sources are telling us these cameras have cost $X million and have not yet assisted in any arrests”. If BCC chooses not to comment then, their silence becomes damning, and the story has real legs rather than just being a tiff between a journalist and a media unit.
In a comment separate from this particular story (or even J-School techniques, because I don’t know what they teach on this), it is unfortunate that with shrinking resources in journalism, young journalists are being encouraged to outsource a lot of their legwork / research / setting up interviews / TV pre-production to PRs. I have seen this from both sides of the fence.
Also, I wasn’t suggesting earlier that the reporter needed a better phone manner in dealing with the media unit. I meant that journalists need to develop good phone skills so they can quickly develop the trust and rapport required to get other (non PR people) to talk to them.
It’s like Sunday lunch with the family :-)
I really enjoy the ability we now have to engage in and then read this kind of (animated) forum among experienced local professionals and most of them with j-education experience too!
Have to say “thanks” to Prof Henningham and J-School for providing the forum, and to Fiona, Geoff and Julie for adding their wisdom to the page! And lest this comment sound faintly patronising (it’s not meant that way), without such discussions and wisdom, journalism here will really be on a slipperly slope to where News of the World ended up. God help journalism if that happens …
I’m disappointed but not surprised to hear the arrogance of media officers within the Brisbane City Council.
I had the same problem with Cr Quirk almost exactly twelve months ago. My solution was to sit outside his office and wait. At one point I was ‘assigned’ (for lack of a better word) a security guard whilst sitting in a public space.
What you need to remember, Mr and Mrs media officers, is that you represent an elected official – elected by the people, for the people.
I do remember something in the council produced City of Brisbane Act (2010) about community engagement. Oh, here it is:
“The principles that apply to community engagement uphold:
1) transparent and effective processes, and decision-making in the public interest; and
2) democratic representation, social inclusion and meaningful community engagement.”
and the link: http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/prdc/groups/corpwebcontent/documents/documents/038565.pdf
I think “meaningful community engagement” means responding when someone asks a question. Whether they be at Channel Ten, the ABC, Courier Mail, or Mr Blogs down the street.
As for expecting a trainee journalist to have a contact book with Cr Quirk’s mobile in it, ridiculous.
Personally, I feel an opportunity was missed here. If a BCC media adviser told the journalism student to “make it up” then that’s exactly what he should of done (hey, he had the green light from a BCC source here). The purpose of the CCTV is to track zombies during the impending undead apocalypse. The purpose of the speakers is to warn survivors of zombie movements and to give handy verbal advice, like the double-tap rule, etc. This information approved by the BCC’s media unit, for direct consumption by its “stakeholders.”