PR in politics - it’s time for journalists to make their minds up
Published November 21st, 2005 in GeneralI know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? - Dirty Harry
Public Relations’ place in politics came up a number of times last week in Ireland. The main reason for this was the PR gaffe made by Willie O’Dea whose image appeared in every national title pointing a gun down the barrel of a lens. Critics rounded on the Minister for Defence for a lack of sensitivity in light of the recent gangland killings.
The Sunday Tribune ran a piece yesterday that got some feedback from the PR community. The main opinion to come through from Public Relations consultants was that most of the people involved in politics aren’t media trained, and as a result are susceptible to making blunders like O’Dea.
However the Tribune’s sister publication, the Irish Independent, ran a piece during the week criticising the amount of money being paid to PR consultants and in-house communications specialists by the Irish government.
Personally speaking I think that journalists need to do a bit of growing up. You can’t criticise people for a lack of PR skills and then complain when they go out to hire someone to help improve them.
People with PR skills are needed in government! Government ministers have to run the country. Do you think that they should spend their time trying to cut down hospital waiting lists or spend an hour writing a press release? Time is the world’s most valuable commodity, a point sorely missed by critics of PR in government.
Journalists should be free to criticise PR practitioners if they’re trying to spin figures, but they have absolutely no right to complain about people whose job revolves around providing them with information they require. It’s a bit like giving out about your taxes being spent on employing a postman to deliver your mail when it could put another bed in a hospital. If you want to receive letters then the resources need to be in place to provide that service.
So would journalists please make their minds up. It seems to me that the real reason they keep playing this broken record is because sometimes they need to fill column inches!
Technorati Tags: Ireland, Irish Independent, Piaras Kelly, Politics, PR, Willie O’Dea, Sunday Tribune
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I think you’ve justed missed a bigger point there. If it’s true that the government hires PR practitioners (as the Indo says) AND O’Dea made this mistake - then the issue is not whether PR people are being paid too much, or that ministers have no PR training - but rather, what is God’s name ARE the goverment PR people doing if they let things like this happen?
I dunno if PR could have helped. Like most employer-employee relationships, you need a bit of give and take. What O’Dea done was so plain right dumb, no PR person could possibly of imagined he’d be that stupid. If your a personal trainer you need the person training to work just as hard when your not there, as when you are. PR and improving your skills should be no different.
Sorry for the late reply. Not all ministers have external PR advisors. I think only four consultancies currently advising various departments.
Bertie Ahern has three media advisors, but obviously Willie O’Dea doesn’t. He would have a press secretary, but just look at media savy Ahern is compared to O’Dea.
Stuart Bruce has a good follow-up post on the matter and is in a much better position to comment since he’s a PR blogger and a Labour councillor: http://www.20six.co.uk/stuartbruce/archive/2005/11/21/26p4e95utxkd.htm His opinion is “If the media could be trusted to report stories truthfully and without bias (spin) then the politicians wouldn’t need to resort to it.”
“Journalists should be free to criticise PR practitioners if they’re trying to spin figures, but they have absolutely no right to complain about people whose job revolves around providing them with information they require.”
The problem with the above argument is that the person trying to ’spin’ the figures and providing information is often the same person. Journalists dislike PR people because we make their job harder. In politics, PR people tend to protect ministers from making the kind of mistake Willie O’Dea made, so the Tribune was right in saying that he was poorly looked after, and needed better advice on what he should do. Don’t forget the two killings in Dublin a day or two before the article and the 4 serious firearm incidents in Limerick the week before the image as well.
However, the Indo criticized the amount spent on PR advisors probably because PR people make their job harder, making sure that incidents like the Willie O’Dea picture are too few and far between. PR people are a barrier to journalists getting access to the politicians and to the stories they want to run.
The problem is that the journalists will always have the last word, and no matter how reasonsable the individual PR people are, they are still a barrier to access which the journalists resent and have free reign to attack. It’s not fair, but jounalists don’t have to be.
“You can’t criticise people for a lack of PR skills and then complain when they go out to hire someone to help improve them.”
Ah but “they” didn’t. The Trib said one, the Indo the other. They may be sister newspapers, but would you criticise two sisters for having slightly differing/opposing/conflicting opinions? Of course you wouldn’t.
That was a very PR-like way to tackle the subject Piaras.
Sorry Piaras, I’m unpersuaded.
1. The PR people said that people who don’t use PR will make mistakes like this.
-Well, I refer you to Mandy Rice-Davis on that one.
2. A different paper complained about the overspend on PR consultants.
-Not a direct contradiction of the Tribune. Overpend, by definition, is spending beyond that which is required.
3. Government Ministers have to run the country and don’t have time to draft press releases etc.
-No, but they don’t need time for that. They have a Civil Service. PR consultants are an expensive duplication of already paid-for services.
4. Without PR we wouldn’t know what the Government was doing.
-Without PR we might know what the Government was doing.
Adam - I’m talking about journalists in general, rather than publications specficaly. Kudos on the very PR way to tackle the subject
Simon - I don’t think that government ministers need PR consultancies, I would say that due to demands that the media place on them, they should be media trained.
Or looking at point three, civil servants that write their releases and handle other communications services should be media trained. I don’t normally praise the PRII, but they regularly run one day course that they could avail of. I have to constantly educate myselves, I think the same should be required for them.
Wouldn’t say that without PR we wouldn’t know what government was doing, but with advice they could be doing it better, i.e. offering RSS feeds, etc.