Media Facilitation 101 #nlpoli

The Thursday morning post of Liberal leadership campaign videos included a technical note that explained why the videos in it didn’t fit with the formatting here at SRBP.

The reason for the problem – as the post noted – is that the people who posted the videos at youtube put some limitations on the embedding code.  This simple point apparently escaped a couple of readers who spent some time lecturing about how your humble e-scribbler could scale the youtube videos or edit the code.

*sigh*

The Johnny Cab Minister (repost from The Persuasion Business)

This post originally appeared February 27, 2008 at The Persuasion Business:

Johnny Cab is a clever character in the 1990 movie Total Recall.  It's an automated taxi, voiced by veteran character actor Robert Picardo. You may recall him as the doctor on Star Trek: Voyager or as the witch Meg Mucklebones in the cult-hit Legend.

Taxis in the movie are entirely controlled by on-board computers.  To give them some semblance of normalcy, Johnny Cabs have robot drivers consisting of just a head and torso.  The computer is programmed with stock taxi driver lines like "Please state your destination" or "Helluva day."  If you don't ask a question to answer one that fits into the programming, the Johnny Cab will fall back on one of its stock lines.

You hear the same sort of thing with some people being interviewed by news media. Either they've had no media training, bad media training or the good training they had never took. No matter what the question, they refer back to their talking points or scripted lines. That's all the say.

Talking points are a standard feature of interview preparation.  A media relations officer will give three or four major points or ideas for the person being interviewed to make.  There should be some background or detail to expand on the point.  no set of talking points will ever be complete but good preparation means that someone being interviewed can make the points they want and nothing should be asked that comes as a surprise.

If the media person is doing his or her job, they already know the subject inside and out.  He can anticipate questions and provide sensible answers that convey meaningful information. The person being interviewed should also have more information;  he or she should be knowledgeable about the subject. If they aren't the interview will be incredible and the whole idea is to present credible, believable information from someone who knows what he or she is talking about.

After all, a media interview is a stock part of the persuasion business.  You want to gain support - not from the interviewer but from the audience -  and the way to do that is to present information in a way that people can relate to and understand.

A couple of times over the past week or so, provincial environment minister Charlene Johnson has wound up sounding like a Johnny Cab Minister.

In an interview with CBC's Ted Blades, Johnson was asked repeatedly over the course of a seven minute interview why her department didn't conduct regular structural inspections of 125 bridges over which thousands of people on the island pass ever week. She really never answered the question.  She fell back on her talking points, referring to a single bridge closure in 2006, or referring to her department's reliance on public complaints to know when a bridge needed some expert attention.

Now it's not like Blades was asking a bizarre or overly aggressive question.  Johnson herself said that public safety was paramount, that a human life was very important.  Blades' question gave Johnson a chance to give a concrete example or a convincing statement of how her department would put that sentiment into action.  After all, actions speak louder than words in the persuasion business.

Johnson could have easily said that the report from Transport Canada had caused her to re-examine the policy.  She and her officials would now work with the public works department and incorporate her hundred odd bridges into the others inspected annually by another department.

Her talking point  - her aide memoire - would have been something like this:  "Public safety is extremely important. It's so important that even though we had thought our policy was working, it isn't.  Now we'll be doing regular inspections."

And if hit with the question again or asked how they might have thought no inspections was a good idea, her response would be:  "You know, we all make decisions that make sense at the time but experience shows something else. So now we are inspecting these bridges and we'll do regular inspections by civil engineers to make sure the bridges are safe.  Public safety is that important."

But that's not what she had and, even though she is a cabinet minister responsible for running a department, she couldn't stray from the confines of her programming.  As a result,she sounded incredible, insincere, or at the very least laughable.

She did much the same thing in an interview on Wednesday with Chris O'Neill-Yates on the collapse of a paper recycling program in St. John's for want of $100,000 a year in operating cash.  A request to the provincial recycling agency was turned down even though, as CBC had earlier reported, the Multi-materials Stewardship Board had a surplus of $2.0 million last year.

Johnson couldn't commit to reconsidering the policy of not funding operating grants, even though she is the environment minister and recycling is a key part of government's waste diversion policy.  Nope.  better to send it to the dump, supposedly, as Johnson had earlier said when confronted with the issue.
And when asked about possibly reviewing the mandate of the decade-old recycling organization, Johnson talked about the board's "wonderful" work and the need to give news media a briefing on what "wonderful" work they were doing.

Yes.

Wonderful work.

Even though, as a result of an old policy, a recycling project has collapsed and tons of recyclables are now going to the dump instead of to the recycler where they are supposed to go as part of the government's waste diversion, management and reduction policy.

It doesn't make sense.

But it was in the talking points.

And when you are a Johnny Cab Minister, the programmed talking points are all you've got.

-srbp-

How to win without news media – Part 2

A month or so ago, some of you may have read the post called “How to win without news media” and the story of Texas governor Rick Perry and his rather curious media relations strategy.

Undoubtedly, the smart alecks out there caught on to the real story:  Perry didn’t win without conventional news media. Perry used them as an integral part of his media strategy. Perry did media interviews.  Local news media throughout Texas  carried his news releases and other media events.  After all how could they not cover any candidate for the state’s highest elected office?

The secret to Perry’s success lay in part in how he used the media. Perry used his polling to tell him the attitude he needed to take toward conventional news media in order to strike a chord with voters across the state.

The answer was to ignore them, for the most part and kick at them every once in a while.  Most certainly, Perry never kowtowed to them or showed any sort of deference to the conventional media.  And when newspaper editors, long used to being courted, got wind of his attitude and took up their pens against him, Perry profited by their anger.

Rick Perry capitalised on a thread of animosity toward news media that runs through a swath of the North American population and cuts across a wide range of demographics like age, income and education. 

It tends to be concentrated in the Republican or Conservative bits of the population, though. Sarah Palin plays on the anti-media theme, as have a number of successful Republican politicians in the United States over the past few decades.  Palin likes to talk about the media’s negative slant or their dark and sinister side. 

Conservatives north of the 49th also use the media as a convenient prop, much like their southern cousins.  And that’s really what the media is:  a prop.

Old media hands like Bob Wakeham [audio link] can live in the past all the want. Danny Williams’ rant at the news media last November, all 12 minutes of it, was not an effort to get the heretics to conform.  Rather, Williams was just reciting another part of the catechism that binds his own followers together.  They love Danny and loathe the media and having that outside enemy helps unite them in the greater cause. 

There’s a bit more to it than that, as well.   There’s no accident that Williams singled out the CBC for his ire the other night. Aside from the visceral hatred many ideological conservatives feel toward the Ceeb, the Mother Corp is to some local Conservatives what the New York Times is to southerners:  it symbolises the smarmy, elitists who suppress the Conservatives’ truth.  And let’s not forget the big part of it for these Conservatives:  the CBC is not local.   It is the Canadian broadcaster.

There’s not a shred of reality in the anti-media belief system, of course.  The Ceeb’s been as good an outlet as any local news media for spreading the Williams’ mythology. In that respect, they are the electronic version of the newspaper supposedly run from Quebec that, in fact, tended to favour Williams and the Conservatives more often than not over the past seven years.

But for all that, some people cling to their hatred of the Ceeb so intensely that last spring they laid siege to the Corporation’s Parkway bunker last spring for something that the Ceeb reporters didn’t do.  NTV broke the story of the Premier’s heart surgery. Yet, the cultists attacked the CBC and, to a lesser extent, the Telegram.

November’s rant was by no means the first such Williams tirade against the news media.  In fact, it was a regular feature of his fund-raising speech starting in 2006. He’s launched into the same sort of tirade at other times, as well, claiming that he’d have been able to do so much more if only pesky people wouldn’t bother him;  bother him, that is with requests for information about what government is doing.

And, of course, Liberals were always a favourite source of Williams ire.  They were the ones who supposedly gave away all the province’s resources, for instance.  There’s a bit more to this whole thread, however, than just a Tory rant.  Consider, for example, the vicious rhetoric Williams employed in a June 2001 in a speech he delivered to Nova Scotia Conservatives:

The more that I see, the more nauseous and angry that I get. The way that our people and our region have been treated by one arrogant federal Liberal government after another is disgusting. The legacy that the late Prime Minister Trudeau and Jean Chrétien will leave in Atlantic Canada is one of dependence on Mother Ottawa, which has been orchestrated for political motives for the sole purpose of maintaining power. No wonder the West is alienated and Québec has threatened separation. Canadians - and Atlantic Canadians, in particular - realize the importance of dignity and self-respect while Ottawa prefers that we negotiate from a position of weakness on our hands and knees.

Yes, friends, conservatives love to use liberals – with initial capital letters or not – and the media for good measure as scapegoats.  That’s a subtext to all this by the way:  things would be better except for these identifiable groups who conservatives, like Danny Williams, can blame for stuff.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, though, scapegoating is a much more deeply ingrained part of the local political culture than one might imagine.  The most obvious one is something  called Quebec.  All Danny Williams ever had to do was say that Quebeckers were behind it and everyone accepted the idea, without questions. 

No Lower Churchill deal?  Quebec is blocking it.  Ask a question about problems with the Lower Churchill?  Get ready to be labelled a Quebec-lover, code for race traitor.

Lest you think these are peculiar examples, consider the Western Star editorial last spring after the people of the province found out that the provincial government had buggered up the AbitibiBowater expropriation rather badly.

Blame the people who did it?  Heavens, no.

It’s time they admitted their shortcomings in the process.

It’s the duty of the opposition to challenge the government on legislation it brings before the house, and make sure these kinds of potentially expensive hiccups don’t make it into law.

They were asleep at the switch in this matter — there’s now way around it.

They dozed in their seats, didn’t ask enough questions ... and let the bad legislation become the law of the land.

It should be a lesson for all concerned.

Our system works best when the tough questions are asked ... not when  government gets a free pass.

Liberals got the blame not only for the mess but for not questioning it in the beginning.

And what about the sorry state of House of Assembly, sitting for a scant eight days of a fall sitting this year?  The Star’s sister newspaper opted to highlight last week the supposedly weak opposition, the Liberal opposition who, the editorialist claims, have had a whole year to do better than make a single mistake.  And for good measure, the Telegram repeats the same foolishness the Star did, blaming the Liberals for things done by the government:

Governments and their ministers are paid by taxpayers to govern the province.

Opposition members are paid to thoughtfully and thoroughly examine the decisions of the government — not for opposition’s sake alone, but to try to help the province keep from falling into errors like accidentally expropriated paper mills and hydroelectric deals without escalator clauses. It’s a serious job with serious responsibilities.

Get some game. Earn the pay

Danny Williams’ political success came in part from his skilled use of messages that resonated with his audiences.  Blaming Liberals and the news media for everything is a case in point, but you have to add in the notion of scapegoating to truly appreciate the power of his messaging and the extent to which patterns of thought are so thoroughly accepted in some segments of the population in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Danny Williams, like Rick Perry, couldn’t win without news media.  The difference was in how each politician used them.

- srbp -

The Same and the Different

Bob Wakeham may find this irritating or revealing but, contrary to Wakeham’s conclusion, there is nothing ironic in Danny Williams’ letters to the CBC ombudsman complaining that CBC producer Peter Gullage is biased.

First, here’s Wakeham’s comment from his Saturday column:

The irony in all this is that Williams has absolutely no need to stoop to this thin-skinned foolishness, turning molehills into mountains, and portraying himself as a mannequin for diapers.

The premier is still immensely popular, has done more things right than wrong, and should keep his disgust with journalists like Gullage (and commentators like me) buried.

Perhaps it’s part of the addictive power trip.

Now here’s a definition of irony:

Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.

There is nothing about Williams’ action in the Gullage complaint that is different from what occurred before.  So if one expected Williams not to moan, whine, bitch and complain, then one has not found irony, but blindness on the part of the observer.

Williams’ relentless negativity is legendary.

His capacity to slag off anyone, friend or foe, is equally legendary.  Take friend George Baker, for example, who has nothing but Bill Rowe-like praise for the powerful Premier and his amazing awesomeness.  The senator was not immune to Williams’ wild accusations, as labradore recently noted:

What about George Baker who got muzzled after they bought him off? What happened to him?

George Baker:  bought, i.e. corrupt as in bribed into silence.

Nothing could be further from the truth – to borrow one of Williams’ ironic phrases - and at the same time, nothing could be closer to Williams’ hyperbolic ranting.*

Nor is this the result of the supposedly usual addictive power trip that seduces Premiers. Wakeham tells a story about Clyde Wells complaining  - legitimately - about Wakeham’s crowd, the ombudsman ruling and Wakeham ignoring.

Yes, folks, Bob’s balls are legendary, at least in his own mind even if, as it turns out, his memory isn’t.  There was another episode in which the Ceeb buggered up a story about expenses.  They thought that the amounts to be spent went up when -  in fact – the administrative rules had changed on how much entertainment needed** pre-approval from treasury board.

That’s as arcane an issue as it gets but it was also a highly contentious one at a time when the government is hurting for cash and laying off workers.  And, in the case of the Ceeb, the story was totally wrong in the implication that cabinet ministers and senior executives were whining and dining better than ever before.  They aired a nice correction to that once the ombudsman ruled.

The lesson there is not what Bob would like us to focus on. The story here is not of sameness but of differences.

For starters, the complaints to which Wakeham refers were ones where the issue was about specific incidents and actions by Wakeham’s crowd with specific details anyone could look at and judge.  The complaint was not about Bob Wakeham but Williams’ bitch about Gullage seems to be characteristically personal in all its dimensions.

Then, the complaints to the ombudsman followed a series of calls and letters (no e-mail in those days) trying to resolve the disagreement in that way.  One gets the sense the Gullage episode was basically a letter straight to the Big Gun.

Then, it was all perfectly normal stuff in the dance between politicians and government on the one side and news media on the other;  pretty much indistinguishable from what happens between reporters and other people being reported on.  No screams  - necessarily - of “your mother wears army boots” or “you don’t have the balls for it”.  Just disagreement, heated or otherwise. Not personal; just business.

And the most important distinction of all:  it wasn’t Wells, if memory serves, who penned the missives and made the phone calls. He knew to leave decisions to the people he hired to do specific jobs.  He had staff and in particular senior staff who were seasoned enough and capable enough to talk him out of doing the sorts of things that Williams is now famous for.  Refuse to let him do the things that would damage his reputation in the community.

As much as something got up Wells’ nose, he – and they – appreciated that becoming the butt of jokes, even if confined to the newsroom, diminished not him but his entire administration and the people in it. Once you’ve become a mannequin for diapers, to borrow Wakeham’s phrase, it really doesn’t matter that you’ve “done more things right than wrong”.

They knew that if Wells spent huge chunks of his time and all that emotional energy chasing after every little thing, there’d be crap-loads of work that simply didn’t happen.  There’d be projects delayed by years with all the cost over-runs  - wasted public money - associated with the sluggishness.  Legislation would get lost in the bureaucracy.  Other laws would be passed but not enacted.  Staff appointments would be delayed and at times there’d be an enormous turn-over in a short period.

And that was at a time when government wasn’t run, in detail, from the Premier’s own office.

Wakeham’s basically out to lunch on this one:  Williams behaviour in going after Gullage is exactly what anyone who has watched the man for more than five minutes would expect.  Everything about the episode is typical.

It isn’t confined to people of Gullage’s stature.  Judges are a favourite target, usually because Williams has lost yet another legal case. Even a letter from Ordinary Joe to the Gulf News or some other of the weekly organs across the province can net an unhappy call from the Old Man.

At some point, mainstreamers like Wakeham will start noticing there’s much more to this than an addictive power trip:  If Hisself is writing letters and making phone calls about this trivial stuff, what is it that he isn’t doing?

-srbp-