A hamstrung media

Another media shibboleth is now being questioned by publishers who are growing tired of restraints placed on their news reporting capabilities by corporations, governments, and organisations through their public relations companies or media units.

The time honoured tradition of embargoes placed on news stories is now not being universally obeyed and increasingly less honoured.

Slate, owned by the Washington Post, recently reported that the World Health Organization publicly “spanked” the New York Times for breaking an embargoed study about measles.

The punishment meted out by WHO is a two-week suspension of all Times reporters from the WHO media distribution list.

Slate said:

Scientific publications, health organisations, and other groups argue that news embargos serve the public by preventing journalists from rushing to print with hastily written stories about complex subjects.

The embargo system, say its supporters, encourages more accurate reportage because it gives journalists a decent interval to analyse and report on complicated information provided by the embargoing organisation. By controlling when reporters can publish their stories, say embargo supporters, press competition shifts from who got it first to who got it best.

MediaBlab finds that such arguments as proffered by WHO are merely patronising, suggesting that journalists are not capable or working quickly and accurately. There is also an aspect of control regarding such embargoes.

According to Slate, other embargo critics, “most notably Vincent Kiernan, author of the 2006 book Embargoes Science, say that embargoes discourage journalistic competition, encourage pack journalism, deter the press from reporting aggressively on institutions, and allow institutions to control the news agenda”.

In Australia embargoes are increasingly used by public relations companies to control news and the timing of the news reports, to either guarantee the broadest coverage possible, or to control the release of information to suit companies or some sectors of the media.

For example, television broadcasters tend to issue news releases with a 5pm embargo, which effectively gives television news bulletins the opportunity to break the news: in Australia most commercial television networks air news bulletins at 6pm.

The tendency for PR companies to embargo news to try to guarantee maximum coverage is understandable - for them. It’s advantageous but not necessarily to the media outlets that are being “used”.

It does cut out the notion of competitiveness, especially if a journalist is sitting on a scoop only to be slapped with an embargo forcing him or her to wait and go to press with the rest of the pack.

And of course the issuing of an embargo is entirely arbitrary - if a company says it is embargoed, then it is embargoed and cannot be questioned. A perceived gentleman’s agreement exists.

Ultimately it’s a tussle for power. The company issuing the embargo backs it up with the threat of denying further information to any media organisation of personnel breaking the embargo.

But then on the other hand major news outlets surely also hold power and could just as easily deny coverage to the company, a case of sort of embargoing the “embarger”.

In Australia, the corporate world has an open contempt for the media and continually attempts to bring it into line. Some companies have taken the embargo one step further by actually barring journalists from investor briefings and such like.

Blue chip fund manager Perpetual has banned journalists from listening in to its investor briefing, and this follows RAMS Home Loan Group which did the same when its business started to sink because of the sub-prime meltdown in the US.

The Australian Financial Review said Perpetual “plans to post the briefing on its website at a later time, saving institutional investors the heavy scrutiny of silent journalists”. Although MediaBlab is not quite sure what “silent journalists” are?

The newly elected Australian Government, seeks to address the excessive secrecy of the previous government, by promising to be more transparent and improving Freedom of Information laws.

But politicians are quick to resort to their own form of permanent embargo - the “off-the-record” announcement. Politicians caught out by an astute journalist can quickly recover and say, “Of course, what I just told you is off the record”.

A scandal erupted over this practice in Australia earlier this year when it was revealed that a leading politician, over a dinner one evening, gave a group of Australia’s most senior journalists important information that could affect the smooth working of the government of the day.

The next day minders contacted the journalists in question to inform them that information revealed the previous evening was now deemed off the record and to their shame, the journalists clubbed together and withheld the information, denying the public valuable insight and denying their own newspapers important front page news stories.

It’s time the media took the gloves off and did what it’s supposed to do - arm the public with information that governments and corporations may not want revealed, or want revealed at a time that suits them.