PR Spin: The Elephant in the Room

Budget cuts to Australia’s news media industry have meant the emergence of a cut-and-paste culture across Australian newsrooms.

This cutting and pasting has come to epitomise an emergent symbiotic relationship between the PR and Journalism industries, arising as a consequence of the financial belt-tightening that has been occurring across the Australian broadcast industry.

This relationship has been summed up by Jane Johnston as,

"... a strategic ritual (Tuchman 1972), a dance (Gans 1979), a tug of war (Gans 1979), a parent–child relationship (Tiffen 1989), a shared snake-pit (Hoggart, in Franklin 2003), and a poacher and gamekeeper (Johnston 2013)."

One of the main differences between the two industries is where their duties converge. The PR industry functions as a representative of an interest (eg. business, corporation, public figure etc) while the journalism industry, ideally, keeps its focus on providing accurate and unbiased reporting for the good of the public.

 While both industries coexist, and have done for generations, their relationship has changed with the evolution of the media within the last few decades.

It was found in a 2010 study conducted by Crikey and the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, that just under 55% of content produced by Australian broadcast avenues was derived from PR material.

According to UK investigative journalist, Nick Davies, who uses the term 'churnalism' to describe the churning out of PR material by journalists, suggests,

"If you take away time from reporters, you are taking away their most important working asset. So they can't do their jobs properly any more... They've become instead passive processors of second-hand information"

This quote was an excerpt from a longer interview Nick Davies participated in on the ABC's 7:30 Report.

In this week's seminar presentation, an interesting and thought-provoking question was asked by Rose Dougherty. She posed to the class the question (to the effect of):

Is the relationship between the PR and journalists a dangerous one for the future integrity of reporting?

To this I would answer, yes. If we are to rely on information barely filtered or edited given to us by unbiased sources, we should be worried about the integrity of our news.

I would like to pose to any readers of this blog:

If this relationship is so dangerous for the Australian (and global) people, how can we change the standards of reporting without impinging on the freedom of the press?

References:

Journalism vs. PR (via George Orwell) [Image]. Retrieved from

http://prquote.tumblr.com/

Tanner, S. & Richardson, N. (Eds.). (2013). Journalism Research and Investigation in a Digital World. Australia and Newzealand: Oxford University Press.

Johnston, J. (2013). Working with the PR Industry. In Tanner, S. & Richardson, N. (Eds.). (2013). Journalism Research and Investigation in a Digital World. Australia and Newzealand: Oxford University Press.

7:30 Report, broadcast television program, ABC, 27 August

The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowing in the Wind

What is a whistleblower, what does a whistleblower do and what do do our Australian laws do for whistleblowers?

Whistleblowing, by its definition, is undertaken for the good of the public. According to Suelette Dreyfus, it provides a vital system for the democratic regulation of the public sector. Dreyfus says that,

“Whistleblowing provides one system to reveal… serious wrongdoing. Done properly, it creates a method of improving integrity in government. Importantly it also prevents a small problem turning into a full-scale catastrophe.”

Blowing the whistle on corruption or some other form of malpractice that poses harm to the public environment is risky business for the whistleblower. Doing so can and often will result in reprisal, including being fired, defamed, blacklisted, attacked or, in some rare cases, killed.

Transparency International suggests that strengthening whistleblower protection at law is an international imperative. They recently stated that,

“(Whistleblowing) can endanger lives and livelihoods, which is why strong whistleblower protection laws are indispensable. If no one is going to protect you for doing the right thing, why expose yourself…?”

Up until July this year, whistleblower protection by law operated on a state-by-state basis with no uniformity on a Commonwealth level.

Under this system, Australia was ranked 26^th on the 2013 Free Press Index by Reporters Without Borders. According to Gerry Georgatos, an investigative journalist and WikiLeaks Party Senate Candidate, this low ranking was indicative of a “muzzled press" due to "inadequate shield laws for journalists and a repugnant lack of adequate whistleblower protections.”

This position had a significant impact on those who witnessed wrongdoing in public and private sectors across the country.

Before the Public Interest Disclosure Act was signed into law in July, figures produced by Public Service Commissioner Stephen Sedgwick showed that approximately 20,000 federal public servants had witnessed serious internal misconduct over the last 12 months.

Less than half of those witnesses made internal reports and of those who reported, 55 percent said they were not satisfied with the reaction.

These figures give us a bit of an idea of the scale of the problem with current whistleblower protection laws.

After years of deliberation, discussion and inquiry at a parliamentary level, the federal government introduced whistleblower protection legislation to the Parliament. In July this year, the Public Interests Disclosure Bill, the first national law of its kind in the world, was enacted.

This is a solid first step in the unification and strengthening of Australia’s whistleblower protection and, according to AJ Brown, fills one of the largest holes in our federal public integrity system.

Despite providing landmark changes for the Australian whistleblower, the Act still lacks some crucial measures for protection. Suelette Dreyfus highlights that the Act does not protect people from blowing the whistle on the conduct of minsters (including the prime minister) or in regards to intelligence matters.

Appleby, Bannister and Olijynk also point out that the Act requires external disclosures to be of public interest in order for the whistleblower to get protection. This means the whistleblower must make a risky judgment call as to the nature of their disclosure.

Another major shortfall of the whistleblower legislation is its lack of protective coverage for the corporate, unincorporated and charitable sectors, which remain largely unprotected.

Regardless of these shortcomings, this new legislation provides a great base from which further developments in the protection of whistleblowers will stem.

Whistleblowing is a core freedom of expression issue. It is critical we properly protect whistleblowers brave enough to step forward. It is not possible to ensure that everyone elected to or employed by government is angelic. But with good whistleblowing laws we can ensure that our collective better angels are watching out for the integrity of our public institutions.

This YouTube video provides a fantastic American perspective on the place and function of whistleblowers in a democracy.

References:

Appleby, G., Bannister, J. & Olijynk, A. (2013, June). New whistleblower bill exposes old inadequacy. The Age: Comment. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2013, from http://www.theage.com.au/comment/new-whistleblower-bill-exposes-old-inadequacy-20130625-2ov2j.html

Appleby, G. (2013, July 30). Whistleblower protection: the larger, more difficult, conversation. Inside Story. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2013, from http://inside.org.au/whistleblower-protection-the-larger-more-difficult-conversation/

Brown, A. J., (2013, June). Whistleblowing law now an acid test for federal politicians. The Conversation. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2013, from http://theconversation.com/whistleblowing-law-now-an-acid-test-for-federal-politicians-15373

CleanGovBiz. (2012). Whistleblower protection: encouraging reporting. Retrieved Sept. 9, 2013, from http://www.oecd.org/cleangovbiz/toolkit/50042935.pdf

Dreyfus, S., (2013, April). Keeping us honest: Protecting whistleblowers. The Conversation. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2013, from http://theconversation.com/keeping-us-honest-protecting-whistleblowers-13131

Dreyfus, S., Lederman, R., Brown, A. J., Milton, S., Miceli, M. P., Bosua, R., Clausen, A. & Schanzle, J. (2013). Human Sources: The Journalist and the Whistle-blower in the Digital Era. In Tanner, S. & Richardson, N. (Eds.), Journalistm Research and Investigation in a Digital World (pp. 48-61). Oxford University Press.

Georgatos, G. (2013). No truly free press with our inadequate shield laws, whistleblower protections. Independent Media Centre Australia. Retrieved Sept, 8, 2013, from http://indymedia.org.au/2013/08/26/no-truly-free-press-with-our-inadequate-shield-laws-whistleblower-protections

O’Grady, S. (2013). Law expert welcomes whistleblowing bill. Griffith University. Retrieved Sept. 9, 2013, from https://app.griffith.edu.au/news/2013/03/25/law-expert-welcomes-whistleblowing-bill/

Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth)

Tanner, S. & Richardson, N. (Eds.). (2013). Journalism Research and Investigation in a Digital World. Australia and Newzealand: Oxford University Press.

TheAustralianCollaboration. (2013). Democracy in Australia – Protection of Whistleblowers. Retrieved Sept. 9, 2013, from http://www.australiancollaboration.com.au/pdf/Democracy/Protection-of-whistleblowers.pdf

Towell, N. (2013, August). Public servant leakers still face prosecution despite new whistleblower laws. The Age - National. Retrieved Sept. 9, 2013, from http://www.theage.com.au/national/public-service/public-servant-leakers-still-face-prosecution-despite-new-whistleblower-laws-20130809-2rlxa.html

Williams, R. (2013, August). The price of speaking out: Laws governing private sector whistleblowers are full of gaps. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2013, from http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-price-of-speaking-out-20130809-2rngk.html

Images

Whistleblower knives [Image]. (2013). Retrieved from

http://airobserver.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/john-goss-sophie-growcoot-christian

fletcher-has-the-time-of-ryanair-whistleblowers-finally-come/

'Blow here’ [Image]. (2013). Retrieved from http://blog.ucsusa.org/new-threats-to-whistleblowers-185

‘You did the right thing’ [Image]. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.research.vt.edu/resmag/sciencecol/whistleblower.html

‘Whistleblower picks up steam’ [Image]. (2013). Retrieved from http://defensetech.org/2006/09/18/whistleblower-picks-up-steam

Whistleblower law [Image]. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.hornsbylaw.com/atlanta-whistleblower-lawyer

Yellow whistleblower [Image]. (2013). Retrieve from http://parliamentflagpost.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/historic-new-whistleblower-protection.html