TONY BARRY, press secretary to Malcolm Turnbull, the federal opposition leader, walked into the Parliament House office of Network Ten news last Thursday morning and directed a storm of abuse at producer Stephen Spencer. It was not the first time that Barry, a large man, had played the bully in the Network Ten office. But on Thursday he surpassed himself.
In front of six witnesses he swore at Spencer over a story written by Spencer’s wife, Sue Dunlevy, who writes in the Sydney Daily Telegraph. As Barry shouted at him, Spencer was told the daily news conference call was awaiting him. When Spencer picked up the telephone, Barry grabbed his wrist, slammed down the phone, swore again, and pushed Spencer hard in the chest.
Barry was ordered to leave the office and political editor Paul Bongiorno immediately wrote to Malcolm Turnbull complaining about Barry’s behavior. Barry later apologised and Turnbull said he regretted the incident and was disappointed by the behavior of his staffer. The expressions of regret appear to have satisfied Bongiorno and his staff for the time being, but they leave two matters unresolved. First, Barry’s outburst was not his first act of aggression in the federal parliamentary press gallery; second, it represented the brutal extreme of strong, persistent and increasing efforts by political staffers to intimidate, manage and control Canberra’s political journalists.
So pervasive and so persistent have these efforts become that it is now often unclear how much political reporting is complete, independent and free from subtle pressures to include, exclude or soft-pedal on material deemed offensive to politicians. We are now in the age of pre-shrunk, managed, sterilised news, shaped at least in part by political staffers with absolutely no commitment to truth or fairness. Their only objective is to advance by any means the interests of their political masters and mistresses.
It is one thing for aggressive and intrusive staffers to seek to approach journalists in order to put a self-serving gloss (or “spin”) on political events and statements. It is quite another for them to assault, mislead, exclude and spy on Canberra journalists in their efforts to ensure favorable coverage on the press and on TV and radio.
Barry’s tactics were at the extreme and counterproductive end of the spectrum of news management practices in Canberra. At the other extreme, perhaps, is the unofficial/official leaking of material to journalists who are seen to be friendly, compliant or sympathetic. It is the friendly, compliant or sympathetic journalist who gets the scoops, the access to senior ministers, and the courtesy of returned telephone calls. Paul Keating used to call this having journalists “on the drip.”
Between these extremes staffers engage in a range of creative strategies for news management. Few are more ruthless and focused than the staff of prime minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd’s press secretary Lachlan Harris has earned a reputation for his aggressive attitude towards journalists, but in recent months has reportedly become more circumspect following prime ministerial “counselling.” But Rudd’s staff still have a reputation for, among other things, excluding journalists from events involving the prime minister where they fear unwelcome questions might be asked and for spying on journalists working at their desks.
Excluding journalists is easily done: staffers simply do not advise the media of the PM’s whereabouts and schedule until it is too late for them to attend. Two weeks ago, for example, the PM’s office claimed on a Saturday afternoon that it did not know whether or not Rudd would visit the Hunter Valley the following morning. Early on the Sunday (6.08 am, according to reports) the PM’s office told reporters to assemble in the Hunter Valley by 10.20 am. Delaying the notification until early on the Sunday, when reporters were away from Parliament House, made it impossible for news organisations to get staff to the venue. It was left to a lone courageous TV cameraman to ask questions. The prime minister had avoided scrutiny.
Virtually all ministers send staffers to visit reporters in the press gallery to try to find out what they are writing. Feigning innocence and a desire to cooperate, the staffers ask journalists what they are working on and whether there is anything they can do help. If the staffers learn that journalists are working on stories that might reflect unfavorably on the government they will try to distract them by offering a “better story” to them or to a rival organisation. The herd mentality of the media does the rest: most media organisations will set aside their own exclusive stories rather than risk missing “the story of the day” covered by all other outlets.
At least one senior Canberra bureau chief has found a way to counter these approaches from the prime minister’s office. The journalist tells inquiring staffers that the bureau does not need help because it has already spoken to Rudd’s chief of staff about “that thing involving the PM’s wife.” There is, of course, nothing being written about the PM’s wife, but the staffer flees on receiving this information to alert her boss about a possible problem.
But even journalists willing to risk exclusion to maintain independence are reluctant to impose hard and fast limits on the activities of political staffers in their offices. The reason: often journalists rely on them for basic information including itineraries, copies of statements and speeches, and for access to the minister. Now often called “strategic communications advisers,” these staffers have completely colonised Australian political life. They have become the necessary and entirely unaccountable conduits between senior politicians and journalists. It is hard to bypass them; their job is to keep the boss out of trouble by any means, from abuse and assault to keeping compliant reporters “on the drip.”
A favoured tactic of some staffers and their political bosses is the complaint to the errant journalist’s employer. In an age when many media organisations are run by executives with little or no experience in dealing with political intimidation, a complaint from a senior politician or staffer can be unsettling, and the result can be that some journalists are inclined to soft-pedal for fear of losing jobs, or at least having their work subjected to audits.
Particularly sensitive to these pressures are the generally excellent journalists who work for ABC television, radio and internet sites. They depend on politicians for their funding; they are under close political scrutiny. So they are targeted by a procession of staffers aggressively demanding fairness, balance, time and space.
This sort of news management is not, of course, confined to politics. Recent disclosures in the Australian about the aggressive and intrusive activities of PR flacks in a big Sydney court case over the withdrawn anti-arthritis drug Vioxx provided alarming evidence of how far spin doctors are prepared to go these days to intimidate reporters. In this case they were demanding reporters tell them how they were writing their reports, what they were featuring and what they were ignoring, and insisting that the journalists include material their employer wanted to see published.
Sadly, young journalists, political and general, often lack the professional and intellectual confidence to ignore these sorts of intrusions. Some, indeed, rely on PR flacks for guidance. Others are tempted to abandon journalism for PR because it is easier, more congenial, more secure and more lucrative to be a massager of messages rather than a teller of truth. The loser, always, is vigorous journalism. •
Media Watch’s coverage of the PM’s Hunter Valley trip and similar incidents >
