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News Creators Miss The Real News

By Robert Masters

Business and communication leaders are no strangers to the ‘gotcha’ journalism that appears to be a fundamental element of news-making (as opposed to news reporting) today.

Instead of reporting news, by seeking to create it and get climate change on the G20 agenda, the media fell into its own trap, and largely missed the main story.

The St Petersburg G20 summit of last year identified the G20’s immediate task was breaking the cycle of low growth and diminished business and consumer confidence.  There are tens of millions fewer jobs and global trade still has a way to go to return to pre-financial crisis levels.

Not small issues one could say! But they don’t make headlines in the land creative news. You need the really important issues of warships off the coast, streets in lockdown, cops on buses, people heading out of town, and you need to manufacture a conflict or embarrassment… that will satisfy today’s news creators.

Because US President Obama agreed to a pre-conference climate agreement with China, to come into effect in 15 years (2030), and he raised the issue in a public address, the news creators played their game (no doubt influenced by climate change advocates) by claiming that the whole thing had become the ‘gotcha’ moment for the Prime Minister.

Let’s not worry about the next five years, let’s look 15 years ahead and postulate on this. Forget the need for jobs, higher living standards and greater financial stability in the next few years. Don’t worry about trying to lift G20 GDP by more than 2% by 2018, which would translate to $US2 trillion in real terms in global economies, bringing 100 million more women into the work force, creating millions of jobs.

Hardly any of this was reported in the following day’s TV and radio media; let alone the item, which showed that the G20 supported strong and effective action to address climate change. (Item 19 in the final communiqué). To their credit the major newspapers did give it coverage, but continued to speculate on the policy gap between Australia and China/USA, even though Australia has not announced its final policy for the Paris COP on Climate Change in November 2015.

If serious and important news is not an agenda item for the news creators of today, business and communication leaders need to take this into account when they are dealing with issues that they believe are important.

The ‘spinning’ of news stories by the news creators must be taken into account in any media planning. There is a need to  analyse how each media outlet, including social media, is likely to treat news if the key message is not to be lost in the noise of the news creators’  ‘gotcha’ journalism.

Thumbs Up Clive Palmer!

Media relations: Feeding the Chooks, Clive Style

By John Kananghinis

At precisely 5pm on Wednesday June 25, 2014 the current “Clown Prince” of Federal Parliament gave a media relations master-class on political spin control.

As Clive Palmer strode into the press room in Parliament House with global warming Saint and former US Vice President Al Gore in tow, all watching knew they were in for an interesting few minutes.

What Clive actually said was not really that much of a surprise, but the way it was delivered showed that the former white-shoe-wearer from the Gold Coast had learnt a thing or two about media management from his old boss Joh Bjelke-Peterson who famously called his press conferences “feeding the chooks”.

How Palmer convinced Gore that PUP has an environmentally sound position is a topic for another time but the press conference and his immediate post conference media management, allowed Palmer to both control the news agenda for the next 24 hours and to avoid any media questioning without having had the time to fully prepare both key messages and specific answers.

A 5pm timing is perfect to hijack the evening news bulletins on both television and radio. It is just as prime time news shows are being finalised, allowing enough time to trump all other stories but not enough time for any meaningful analysis or comment from other sources.

Announcing at the outset that there would be no questions taken at the press conference ensured that no pesky journalist question polluted the pure message. Then by asking for all questions to be handed to his press secretary in writing Clive got full warning of any questions likely to come up.

Given that he was then unavailable due to having a very, very early dinner appointment, there was plenty of time to prepare answers before his eventual first post press conference public appearance on Lateline over 5 hours later.

As evident as it is that Clive hasn’t missed too many dinners, even he doesn’t need 5 hours for a nosh just after he’s dropped the equivalent of a news media atomic bomb.

In the meantime Al Gore, conveniently, had to fly out of the country.

The outcome was that Mr Palmer gave one of his best media performances on Lateline that night and he was front page in every newspaper and online news site in the country the next day and subsequent days thereafter.

His turning up to Parliament in his Rolls Royce and Mercedes-Benz SLS were cheap but effective stunts.

The June 25 press conference was so well managed that from now on pulling off a similar news media full sweep will likely be known as an ‘Al Gore Moment’.

It is easy to dismiss Clive Palmer as a clown and side-show act, but he and his advisors have shown consummate skill in leveraging notoriety, turning it into dominance of the news cycle and some considerable actual political influence.

It has often been said by commentators and electors alike that we need more colour and character in Australian politics. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

If you think an ‘Al Gore Moment’ (of appropriate nature and scale) could be just what your organisation needs, ICG has over three decades of experience delivering press conferences, journalist briefings and media opportunities for the benefit of our clients.

JK

would your team stand the pressure test?

Crisis training: would your team stand the pressure test?

By John Kananghinis

Our team recently undertook a live crisis simulation training exercise for a high profile multinational corporation.

Part of our role was to observe the performance under a real-life scenario and note areas for improvement.

The crisis exercise was carefully constructed to put pressure on key staff to respond and act appropriately, closely mirroring a potential operational crisis.

Even though participants knew this was an observed activity, perceived pressure very quickly started to expose issues.

In this case we uncovered both organisational process issues and skill shortcomings on the part of key operatives.

These findings formed the basis of an ongoing training and procedural change program that is being implemented across all relevant divisions.

Some of the issues will be easy for the organisation to address, some will take further training and instruction.

Most significantly for the organisation were the actions that highlighted either a lack of preparedness or lack of skill in dealing with the ‘community’, ‘media’ and ‘essential services’ scenarios.

These were planning and skill-based elements that had previously been assumed as a given for people employed in a range of roles.

Even the most experienced team can gain valuable insights from crisis simulation training.

An effective crisis training exercise allows for the identification of areas where structural and training improvements will ensure far better performance should a real crisis occur.

When conducted in a thorough and cooperative manner, such training exercises have no downside for either the company or the individuals. There are only positive outcomes in terms of lessons learned and identification of processes and skills to be improved.

Pressure testing is not to be feared – it is an essential component of ensuring that a team handles real pressure when needed.

Contact ICG to discuss how we can help prepare your team for the unexpected.

JK

Media relations and the sound of silence – is it golden?

Like it or loathe it, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has moved into government with a firm “less is more’’ policy when it comes to media relations.

He has minimised comment on issues pressing the nation and has continued to enforce the strong discipline on coalition MPs media interactions that proved so successful in the campaign.

Given the increasingly presidential nature of our political contests, in opposition and during the election campaign it was nearly impossible not to hear from Tony Abbott on almost any issue.

But once in the top job, the sound was switched off.

The most obvious example has been a move to weekly briefings on asylum seeking boat arrivals, a tactic that has significantly reduced media coverage of the issue.

The PM himself has been accused of becoming the invisible man and his media team has closely controlled the messages emanating from the senior leadership team and other government MPs.

The PM argues it is a policy of communicating matters of substance, not thought bubbles.

Conveniently it is also a tactic that seeks to present a united voice for his government.

One view is that the minimum media comment strategy will help project a brand of government that is results-driven and not headline-focused.

This stands in stark contrast to the way Labor governed in office: it was loudly criticised for saying too much and doing too little.

The accusation was a self-obsessed government of too much talk and too little successful action.

Kevin Rudd as PM even presented an image of himself as the little Aussie bleeder, tweeting a “selfie’’ of himself sporting a shaving cut.

For now, with a government in its infancy and an exhausted electorate sick of hearing about politics, the Prime Minister’s strategy may well work. He has bought himself time – without the unnecessary distractions of endless on-the-run press conferences – to get on with the job of running the country.

Of course some issues will quickly develop outside of any government’s control, as well demonstrated by the Indonesian spying kerfuffle and even in that case the government minimised comment.

But the fact remains that there is a natural time limit on a tight-lipped policy for any government – until they have to start campaigning for reelection.

Depending on how effective the opposition is, that is when, as they say in the media game, the switch gets thrown to vaudeville.

It is likely that the Prime Minister and his media advisers remember the famous front-page headline in the Herald Sun credited with helping bring down Jeff Kennett’s Victorian Government

“Kennett’s campaign order: SILENCE’’, it read.

The paper had revealed that Kennett had gagged his Ministers and MPs from discussing policy with the press and shortly after those headlines ran, Steve Bracks unexpectedly swept to power in Victoria.

One man in Australia is probably watching the Abbott strategy with more interest than most and that would be the newly minted and media savvy Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten.

Shorten’s profile and popularity were possibly never higher than when, as the National Secretary of the AWU, he took the reins to provide the media with daily briefings on the Beaconsfield mine disaster.

As Opposition Leader, as far as the media is concerned, we have yet to see him kick into high gear.

In the meantime a few grumpy journalists being weaned off the minute-by-minute briefings, almost three years from the next election, is unlikely to be enough motivation for the government to change its current media management strategy.

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