One experienced public relations practitioner was offended by my post “More Tips from the Newsroom” suggesting that breakfasts and lunches are not efficient ways of sharing information as they waste time. The offense was, I believe, primarily because of my suggestion that the food is seen as a way to entice journalists to attend the functions. I really did not intend to suggest that this is the case for all practitioners but I know that some people do think like this.
Here is the comment:
“As a former journalist, now a Public Relations Consultant, who has taught hundreds of people about good PR principles and media relations, I am offended by your comments.
In my book, breakfast or luncheon meetings are not about the meals, per se; but, rather a “time-based” convenience, to make the best use of journalist and client availability. However, it could be that, in the crassness of what goes for public relations today, the meal is the thing. But, it is tactless to paint such a broad band.
I am not into feeding journalists anything besides timely information;
and I have never called the newsroom to find out what happened to my story; and have taught my associates and students to refrain from making that mistake.
I have always maintained that “news” can always find its own legs…and does not have to be buffeted by enticements, or follow up calls. And, it is my hope that more of today’s PR practitioners will come to “understand” that they can “cross it,” because, in many cases they are the source. And, ultimately, media houses would have more respect for them, if they simply issued timely, quality news.”
This was my response:
“Sorry to have offended you Carmen, but I can state categorically that your position is not shared by all practitioners and business operators, and that some do believe that food is an enticement to journalists. I have heard the comments.
Secondly, for those who do not hold that view and believe, like you, that it is an efficient method of sharing information, I don’t know many journalists who would agree with that. As stated, many of us do not like breakfasts and lunches because they take way too much time and we believe that there are much quicker and efficient ways of sharing information, and therefore would much prefer a simple press briefing.
Not trying to be offensive, just practical and honest.
Again, the fact that you don’t call into media houses to enquire about your story doesn’t mean it is not done. It is done. All the time.
I would hope the professional, experienced public relations practitioners are not insulted by my posts (the first was called “Five Tips from the Newsroom), but the reason I have felt the need to write them is that we are the ones on the receiving end of all the unprofessionalism and what you call crassness that passes for public relations nowadays. I can understand why you would feel offended. However, unfortunately, all practitioners do not operate at the level of professionalism as you do. I wish they did.”
I appreciate the feedback and the opportunity to address this. What do you think? Were my comments offensive? Did they reflect reality? What would be your comment or suggestion?
1. DON’T DON’T DON’T try to use our Marketing Departments to put pressure on Editorial to carry your stories. Does it work? I guess it must, in some cases, if so many people do it. But editors will resent the hell out of you, whether the story gets carried or not, and will probably make a point of dumping your future releases in the bin as soon as they come in. This is not the way to build useful professional relationships.
2. If you want to have a press conference, please, have a press conference. Don’t have a breakfast or lunch. They take way too much time, say four hours compared to a press conference which could take about one and a half to two hours. If your story is important, it’s getting covered, food or no food. Okay, I realize that unfortunately, there are probably still some reporters who follow their bellies, but really, if your issue sucks, food won’t make any decent reporter or editor like it any better. Save yourself some money and save us the time. Juice, tea and coffee are generally fine for a two-hour event. We’re not hiking through the Blue Mountains here. Sandwiches and fruit on a side table if you really want to be hospitable. That way, those of us who want to rush off can do so, having already got the information/interviews we need.
3. Stop inviting us to cover foolishness. Newsrooms have been cutting staff, and on any given day, there’s much more going on than we’ll ever be able to cover. In addition, there’s work being done on original stories and features. Many of the events we are invited to cover are just not newsworthy, although the discussion of what is newsworthy has been evolving as I said in my post on the Yendi story and my post on newsworthiness and social media. If your clients insist on media coverage for the launch of Pretty Calendars Week, tell them the truth – reporters are unlikely to come. Take a photo, write a release, send it in and hope for the best. And since we’re on the subject of releases…..
4. Learn how to write one! Teach yourself how to write, brush up on your grammar and have someone proofread what you are sending out. Do I really have to say that badly-written releases are a big turn-off and instantly tell us you are not professional? And just as importantly, learn how to write for news. Again, do you really want to hope that an editor will have the patience (a quality in short supply) to comb through paragraphs and paragraphs of dense text to try to figure out if there is a nugget of news in there somewhere?
5. Don’t call to complain about the angle a reporter took in covering your press conference or event. Well, you can call, but first understand that if you want to control the message, you shouldn’t have a press conference. Send a release and hope for the best.
What do you think of these points and is there anything you’d add?
I received several very interesting and thoughtful responses to my post “Is the Yendi Story “News?” and wanted to share them with you and continue the conversation about what makes a story newsworthy. It’s a question which members of the public often ask, baffled about the content of a newscast or stories on the main pages of a newspaper.
“The Yendi story satisfies #4. She is, for all intents and purposes a celebrity – prominent individual in our Jamaican community. So it is news. Yet the particular story is only ‘soft’ news. Should we give attention to soft news? I would say depends on where in the paper you put it. Front page – that would be absolutely scandalous; yet those whose aim is to sell newspapers will trump a political story for a soft news story because the ‘business model’ of the media industry and the revenue agenda would be chief determinant in this scenario.”
The problem, of course, is that these criteria are applied subjectively by editors.
Hillary Profita, formerly of CBS (the home of 60 Minutes) pointed this out in a 2006 article on the company’s websitein the context of a discussion about the role that race and class play in leading US news outlets to cover stories like the disappearance of Natalee Holloway (white, middle-class, teenager), while ignoring that of Marion Fye, (36 years old, a single mother of five children, unemployed and African American).
Natalee Holloway (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
She suggested that an indicator of the public’s rejection of the criteria applied by editors could be
“…the fact that more are veering toward the Internet to get news, where to a greater degree the news judgement is one’s own.”
She also echoes the sentiment I expressed about how editors and newsroom people decide what is newsworthy in noting that:
“…editors claim to know (what is newsworthy) when they see it. Unfortunately, in my view, that decision seems to boil down to what those of us in newsrooms, and not readers, care about.
And there’s the problem. What draws the interest of people in the news business (what they like to read and write about) often bears little relationship to what people who live in communities like Marion Fye’s care about. In that sense, what newspapers deem “newsworthy” is not actually information that is most relevant in terms of its potential effect on readers’ and viewers’ lives, but what is most out of the ordinary.”
It was in that vein that I had disagreed with Hume’s analysis by stating that:
“The story satisfies no. 1 – proximity – she is a celebrity, but she is ours, she is Jamaican, we all watched her become runner-up in Miss Universe and many people have been following her career. People feel close to her.
It also satisfies no. 5 – human interest. It is also unusual, no. 7 – of course, not in the sense of a woman becoming pregnant for a man, but the surrounding circumstances, the announcement on FB, the reactions and huge response, combined to make the way this story unfolded unusual – that fueled the story still more.
Relevance – no. 3 – I don’t know who determines what is relevant – if people are interested in someone or something, news about that person or thing will always be relevant.
…timeliness – again, she broke the news, the reactions started then she fueled it with the interview, and all this was being reported as it happened.”
Keriann took the discussion further by placing the story squarely within the framework of the social media age.
“It most certainly satisfied news value no.6 as well – conflict. The responses illustrated a conflict of values in the society. The country was clearly divided among those who thought the circumstances were no big deal and those who disapproved, and each side was vociferous about its position. That conflict matters, because each society (especially developing ones) must determine the value systems that will inform policies, laws, etc.
Unusual is also being defined too narrowly as a news value. It does not only address the sensational (man bites dog). It describes that which is unexpected. And the reactions have made it clear that Yendi was not expected to make the choices she did. If she was, there would not have been any heavy interest in her announcement or the aforementioned conflict.
Your argument about timeliness and the age of her pregnancy is also flawed. The stories of the intense reaction were carried within hours of the intense reaction. And it’s the reactions which made the story big. Also, if we’re discussing the pregnancy itself as a story (which it was for entertainment segments), then the age of the pregnancy doesn’t matter. It’s when the public discovers it, that it matters. The birth of former US presidential candidate John Edwards’ love child did not become news until well after the child was born.Should American media have ignored the story because they didn’t know about it as soon as his lover was pregnant? In cases when pregnancies are news, they do not become news when the parents become aware. They become news when the public does.
All journalism students will be familiar with your list of news values because it was developed to provide a means of helping media practitioners determine which stories will be of public interest. The closer an editor or journalist followed those principles, the more s/he was guaranteed public interest, which is the ultimate aim. It’s a shortcut to the right decision because naturally, editors cannot pick up the phone and call every potential news consumer everyday or conduct a focus group before choosing stories. So s/he unconsciously applies the news value test to stories everyday, hoping s/he made the right call. o The level of interest in her story will tell her whether s/he applied the principles well. Overtime, if a news source keeps making the wrong decisions, it will be penalised with low ratings in the market.
Photo - Wikimedia Commons
But here’s the clincher: in the age of social media when a story immediately goes viral, the public interest is already apparent! When there is already public interest, your system for determining public interest doesn’t need to be dissected because the end result (which the system was set up to determine) has already been achieved. It’s like working an equation backwards. You must get the same result or your inputs were wrong.”
Thanks to all who have commented and Hume and Keriann in particular for their thoughtful and considered respones. I’d love your comments as well. Is the migration to social media an indicator that traditional media are ignoring the interests of the public? Do newsrooms need to rethink how they apply the criteria of what constitutes a newsworthy story? And as Keriann suggests, if a story goes viral on social media, does that make the list redundant?
Of course not, traditionalists say. How can that be news? Well, it certainly doesn’t fit into the politics-economy-crime triumvirate with which we like to bombard our listeners and viewers. Forget the fact that people are interested in a much wider range of issues such as health, diet and nutrition, consumer affairs, and yes, entertainment.
God forbid we cover and talk about what people are interested in. No, to make the bulletin, it must be about the Net International Reserves, the International Monetary Fund, five people gunned down somewhere or a cass-cass in one of the political parties (which many people give not one hoot about – I actually think that most of the people interested in the happenings within the political parties are the politicians, their die hard supporters and we reporters).
I’m not saying Yendi’s pregnancy should have led the newscast. Please. But most major newscasts entirely ignore anything in the entertainment arena which doesn’t involve ground-breakings and speeches by government Ministers.
Many of us in media have very straight-laced, hide-bound and yes, out-of-date
notions about what constitutes the “news” and what we should be talking about on current affairs programmes. The issues of interest to the lives of most people are often ignored.
Case in point – I once had a huge argument in the newsroom because I wanted to interview the author of a book about marriage and divorce from a Christian perspective. The book in question is called “The Man I Married is Not My Husband, the Woman I Married is Not My Wife.” It was written by a priest who spent years doing marriage counselling. My colleagues couldn’t see how that issue was relevant to a current affairs discussion programme. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, it’s relevant to people’s lives. By definition for me, that makes it current.
(Disclosure: I have a personal connection with the author. Having said that, the book is a fascinating read, and it’s in local bookstores. Go look for it! )
Entertainment is big business and entertainers have millions of fans. Vision 2030 states that:
“Cultural and creative industries represent one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy, representing up to 7% of the world’s GDP with growth forecast at 10% per annum, driven in part by the convergence of media and the digital economy.”
The document further states:
“…while Jamaican music accounts for an estimated 3% of world music sales, amounting to US$1 billion in 2003, the country itself received only 25% of this sum or some US$250 million.”
Tell me, how is anything to do with an industry like that NOT big news?
Wikimedia load spike on June 25, 2009, following news of Michael Jackson’s death (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Beeb, the BBC, surely one of the most conservative news-gathering organisations in the world, led several newscasts with the death of Michael Jackson, and covered his doctor’s trial extensively. Were there no wars or famines anywhere else in the world? Yes, but on the day Michael Jackson died, no one (slight exaggeration perhaps!) was interested in anything else. There was no bigger story. The BBC, and everybody else, HAD to acknowledge that.
60 Minutes is one of the most respected news magazine programmes in the world. They cover entertainment issues and interview celebrities. ALL THE TIME. It is their treatment of the issues that sets them apart from the National Enquirer. Examples of recent stories they’ve dealt with – interviews with Adele and young country star Taylor Swift.
People no longer have to wait for RJR and JBC, once the only game in town, to deliver the news we want to give them, when we want to give it to them. No, the advance of technology has democratized media, and the public can now get, and indeed demands, real-time news delivery on issues in which they are passionately interested. Not all of us understand that yet.
Image via CrunchBase
Many reporters – and people who don’t participate – see social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as a waste of time. Can you waste hours on Twitter and FB? Of course. But with 800 million active users on Facebook and 500 million users on Twitter, are we really going to ignore the power of those new media? That is where people are talking to each other, and sharing information. That is where you can gauge WHAT people are talking to each other about, especially in the case of Twitter.
Which takes us back to Yendi. She chose to announce her pregnancy on FB.The news spread quickly, and the newspapers reported it on their websites. Was that a bad decision? Was that violating the standards of journalism? Let’s go back to the basics of journalism. What are the elements of a story? Who, what, where, when, why and how. The issue here is the “who.”
I checked her social media stats. Yendi has over 15,000 followers on Twitter, and over 144,000 likes on FB. Granted she’s still a baby compared to Lady Gaga who has over 23,000,000 followers on Twitter and over 50,000,000 likes on FB. Still, Yendi’s numbers are nothing to sneeze at.
Image via CrunchBase
So there is a sizeable community of people interested in her and in news about her. So, yes, whether I personally care anything about Yendi or not, any news editor and producer must understand that stories about her are legitimate news stories.
Now, news of her pregnancy would normally be slotted into the entertainment news segments. But the reaction to the announcement was not normal. The explosion of comment led to the issue “trending” on Twitter, meaning it was one of the top issues being discussed. That is huge, and THAT catapulted the story out of the entertainment news niche.
A range of issues has emerged from the discussions and chatter – the concern about people seen as role models having children out of wedlock, the color issue, the class issue, the Rasta issue and more. There are many issues that can be treated in a thoughtful way, that would take the discussion beyond veranda suss and still hold the interest of people interested in the story.
Everywhere I went, this was what people were discussing. They were reading the posts on the internet and watching Yendi’s interview. Make sure you understand that even the people saying everybody should leave Yendi alone WERE STILL TALKING ABOUT THE STORY!
Should we ignore the clear interest in this issue and focus exclusively on the Net International Reserves et al? Sure , we can do that. But don’t be surprised if one day we wake up to find that we are talking to nobody but ourselves.
Apparently, anyone can be a “communications consultant” (often also known as a public relations manager). It seems to be the easiest way to give somebody a job, even if they know nothing about communications and one isn’t sure who they are consulting. After all, how difficult can it be to deal with pesky journalists and send out a few press releases? That can’t be too hard, right? Well, here are a few tips, born out of frustration
.
1. DON’T call a newsroom 15 minutes before news time to ask if we’re covering some function or the other. I don’t care if your workday ends at 5. Ours doesn’t, and the last hour before news time is the busiest time of the day. NOBODY has time to deal with non-essential calls (especially from people whose job titles suggest they should know better).
2. DON’T promise more than you can deliver. This is especially true of PR people dealing with overseas guests. They promise you an interview, then can’t deliver. ALL THE TIME.
3. DON’T ask me for a list of the questions I am going to ask in a live interview. An interview is just that, an interview, not a rehearsed piece.
4. DO act as if you actually understand the concept of deadlines. Yes, that issue of time again. It’s actually a big thing with us.
If I need a comment or a guest for a newscast or programme TODAY, calling me back tomorrow won’t help. Calling me ten minutes before the programme usually won’t help either. By that time, I would have found another guest. Dead air isn’t an option. Of course, the answer will sometimes be no. Just respond!
5. DO educate yourself about the programme and host before calling to ask for an interview. Don’t call me and then start asking who is the host, or what kind of programme it is.
“i’m being painted as this evil ‘D.J. by day, don by night’ murderer who is society’s number one cause of crime and violence. The police is using the media to slaughter me and as such i don’t think i will get a fair trial. They are using the media to form public opinion of me that is so contradictory to the person that I really am. They (police) have tried my case in the public & found me guilty.”
I therefore thought it would be interesting to revisit the Privy Council case which dealt with this issue and which attorney-at-law Clyde Williams highlighted recently in a discussion with me on Beyond the Headlines.
In that case, Grant and Others v Director of Public Prosecutions(1980) 30 WIR 246, the courts decided that the pre-trial publicity did not rise to the level that demonstrated that the accused would be unable to get a fair trial despite what the Privy Council called “the campaign in the Gleaner newspapers against the appellants.” The Court of Appeal said that it was not enough to show, as the Courts agreed had been done, that there had been “adverse publicity… likely to have a prejudicial effect on the minds of potential jurors.”
Instead, what has to be shown is that “the prejudice is so widespread and so indelibly impressed on the minds of potential jurors that it is unlikely that a jury unaffected by it can be obtained.”
This is such a high bar, that we are unlikely to see any accused persons reach it any time soon.
How bad was the publicity and what did the courts say?
The case was brought by persons accused of murder and conspiracy in the notorious case which came to be known as the Green Bay killings. NB – The case also dealt with a procedural point which I am not examining here.
Background
In the early hours of Thursday 5th January 1978, there was an operation by the Army at Green Bay (the army firing range) in the parish of St Catherine and five persons were killed.
The allegations were that these five persons and others had been lured to their death at Green Bay by members of the Military Intelligence Unit of the Jamaica Defence Force, but that some of them escaped and made the matter public.
Coroner’s Inquest
The jury at a coroner’s inquest concluded that the deceased died of gun-shot wounds, and had been murdered; but said they could determine by whom.
Charges
The DPP charged five persons with conspiracy to murder, two of them and another five persons were also charged with the murders.
These people stated that after the inquest, they became the target of “massive pre-trial publicity and prejudice” in the public media in general and, in particular, in the Daily Gleaner and Star newspapers.
They sought to establish, among other things, that they would therefore be unable to get a “fair hearing” as was their right under section 20 (1) of the Constitution which states that anyone charged with a criminal offence must:
“be afforded a fair hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial court established by law…’
Supreme Court
The applicants had first applied to the Full Court which dismissed their application.
This was despite a statement by Chief Justice Smith that the:
“evidence presented overwhelmingly establishes that there has been pre-trial publicity, of the widest dissemination, which is calculated to create widespread prejudice of the gravest kind against the [appellants] in respect of their trial, which is pending..”
Court of Appeal
The Court of Appeal also dismissed their appeal.
The Court of Appeal had referred to the English case of Attorney-General v Times Newspapers Ltd ([1973] 3 All ER 54. [1974] AC 273) where Lord Reid, while noting the need to balance conflicting interests, stated that
‘There has long been and there still is in this country a strong and generally-held feeling that trial by newspaper is wrong and should be prevented…”
The Publicity
The Court of Appeal referred to the material presented to it including the following:
Gleaner Headline
A headline in the Daily Gleaner on Tuesday 23rd May 1978 read ‘It was murder at Green Bay, says jury’ and which the appellants said would “lead the ignorant, the unsophisticated and even ordinary members of the public unaware of legal niceties, to form the view that the appellants had been tried and found guilty of murder by a jury of their peers in criminal proceedings.”
Even though the Court of Appeal acknowledged that in the body of the report, it was correctly stated that the jury did not name the murderers, the Court said that
“it set the stage so to speak.”
The Court stated, however, that the particular report could not, in itself, be regarded as prejudicing the appellants’ case since the jury, in effect, had reached that verdict.
Carl Stone Poll
The Court, in its judgment delivered by Justice Carberry, then referred to a poll carried out by Dr. Carl Stone and which it called:
“an item that was surely one of the most astonishing ever in the fields of journalism and the reporting and covering of criminal proceedings…”
Dr. Stone had sworn an affidavit in which he stated that a minimum of 75 per cent of all persons interviewed were aware of the Green Bay affair, and 57 per cent had formed advance opinions in relation to the army personnel involved.
The Court said that the poll would confirm the view of the majority, unsettle the minority and persuade the uncommitted.
Sunday Gleaner article
The Sunday Gleaner of May 28th, 1978 published an article headed ‘Green Bay: what made them do it?’ which, according to the Court, proceeded on:
“the assumption of guilt of cold-blooded murder on the part of the appellants, who had already been indicted by the evidence, to dismiss any possible defence as a ‘farrago of lies and fairy tales’ which ‘would fail to fool an imbecile child’ and to address itself to a discussion of the evidence and speculation as to what inspired the Jamaica Defence Force to involve itself in cold-blooded murder? In the comment that followed, readers were invited to conclude that this was a plot to kill gunmen allegedly belonging to the opposition so as to further the military career of those involved, to discredit the Opposition and to lay the foundation for further atrocities of a like nature.”
Number of Articles
Counsel for one of the appellants reported that there were some seventeen similar articles in the space of a little over one month. After the appellants had been arrested, an additional 80-odd articles were published.
Why dismiss the appeal?
So why did the Court of Appeal rule against the appellants?
Justice Carberry said the Court had weighed the following factors:
- the seriousness of the prejudice, and its likely effect on the jury;
- the interest of society in the enforcement of the law and
- the availability of methods which could minimise the prejudice, but which had not yet been tried, namely:
a challenge to the jury
change of venue and
postponements.
The Justices of Appeal maintained that they were …
“not, however, satisfied that the likelihood is that the minds of such potential jurors would be so indelibly prejudiced that the means available to a trial court (in particular, the challenge of jurors and the warning by the trial judge to jurors to put aside prejudice) would be ineffective to ensure a fair hearing by an impartial tribunal.’
I’ve quoted extensively from the Court of Appeal judgment because the judges at the Privy Council clearly found it highly persuasive.
In delivering the ruling of the Privy Council, Lord Diplock quoted Justice White who said in the Supreme Court (1979) 29 WIR at pp 275, 276) that :
“…it is previous and premature to suggest that the pre-trial publicity will have had such an effect that a judge and a jury of twelve persons cannot be found in Jamaica to give careful and objective audition to the evidence, and earnestly and conscientiously to deliberate the issues that will be raised thereby, and so give a true verdict according to the evidence. I reject any such notion as untenable, and as displaying a most regrettable lack of confidence in, and respect for, the institutions established to this end.’
Lord Diplock also quoted Justice Carberry in the Court of Appeal who said that the appellants had to show:
“that there is likely to be a failure to afford them a fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal. It is not sufficient for them to establish (as they have done) that there has been adverse publicity which is likely to have a prejudicial effect on the minds of potential jurors. They must go further, and establish that the prejudice is so widespread and so indelibly impressed on the minds of potential jurors that it is unlikely that a jury unaffected by it can be obtained. We are not satisfied that they have established this, having regard to the common law remedial measures which we indicated arc available to a trial court.’
The common law remedial measures being referred to were:
- change of venue to a different parish from that in which the deceased lived;
- postponing the trial to allow potential jurors to forget the adverse publicity and
- the exercise of the judge’s discretion to allow each juror to be questioned as to his freedom from bias despite the pre-trial publicity.
Having referred to these statements in the Courts below, Lord Diplock stated that:
“The judiciary in Jamaica have wide and up-to-date experience of juries in criminal cases. In face of their opinion that, despite the prejudicial pretrial publicity that had taken place, it had not been shown that it would be impossible to impanel an impartial jury, their Lordships, lacking that experience, would hesitate long and anxiously before being persuaded to the contrary.”
The Privy Council stated that, along with the ruling of the Court of Appeal they considered the fact that counsel for the appellents had declined to argue that it would be impossible to find an impartial Jamaican jury, both of which led the Privy Council to rule that it was “quite unarguable” that the appellants’ constitutional rights “have been, were being or are likely to be, contravened.”
Post Script: A jury was selected for the conspiracy trial after potential jurors had been questioned by the judge and counsel. All five persons charged were discharged, and the DPP then entered a nolle prosequi in the murder cases since the evidence presented in the first trial would essentially be the same as that which would be presented in the murder cases.
Comment: This judgment and the outcome of the case suggest that we may never see a Jamaican court finding that adverse pre-trial publicity would render a trial unfair. To say that the Kartel case thus far doesn’t even come close is an understatement of massive proportions.
