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Campbell’s alter ego
140/Nicholas Jones
Nicholas Jones gave the opening speech at the 14th annual Public Affairs in the Public Sector conference in Canberra.
Sharing a platform with Alastair Campbell’s Australian alter ego was an un-nerving experience. His diagnosis and prescription bore striking similarities: because Australia’s news media treated politics as a game, government information officers down under could no longer regard themselves as neutral or divorced from the political fray.Modern communications had changed the face of public services around the world and this had created a problem for politicians and their media advisers in Canberra, just as it had in Westminster. Grahame Morris, former chief of staff and spinmeister to the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, painted a bleak future for public sector information officers who ignored this reality. Morris was as convinced as Tony Blair’s former media supremo that the fault lay with political journalists who saw everything through a prism of “who is winning and who is losing, who is playing the game badly or poorly.” Reporters did not report any more because they had become commentators. As a result everything which a government did was being judged politically. Ministers were in effect on trial every day of the week; their actions were analysed each evening by the broadcasters and then judgement delivered next day by the newspapers. “Information officers who think that somehow the public services can be divorced from public scrutiny and from political impact are out of touch…I don’t think there can be neutral public servants…It means that if you are in public affairs, you are obliged to throw your heart behind the government of the day…You need to find ways to re-communicate the good news of recent years; to be telling ministers about the time bombs that are ticking away; and telling them the best phrases that will capture the messages that they want to deliver.” Morris left the Howard government in 2000 and became a partner in a leading Australian public relations consultancy which was re-launched as Jackson Wells Morris. Like Campbell, he was once a journalist and keeps his hand in as a commentator by writing for his former newspaper, The Australian. His weekly column has the catchy title Beyond Spin -- a strap line that seems tailor-made for his soul mate in London. Although I have never heard Campbell go as far as Morris in suggesting that civil service information officers might end up having to sacrifice their neutrality, he has spoken with equal vigour about need for Whitehall press officers to do far more to communicate the government’s successes and then to keep reminding people where the delivery of public services has improved. After hearing Morris explain why communications staff will have to do more to support the party in power, I wondered whether this indicated that Australia, like Britain, was edging towards a presidential style of government and would follow the practice in Washington where vast swathes of public appointments change hands whenever there is a switch between Republicans and Democrats. Morris agreed that Australia had taken the first step towards having a more politicised information service but so far the Howard government had just “put a toe in the water and was still a million miles from going for a swim with the Yanks.” When it came questions about what might happen if there was a change of administration in Canberra, Morris defended the right of an incoming government to bring in new blood. “If a new minister comes in and doesn’t think the support is there from the communications staff, if there isn’t the trust, that’s hopeless, especially when changing a few individuals can bring about a stronger relationship…If John Howard loses and the new Opposition leader, Mark Latham, wins, then a whole heap of people will go. That’s life and will not change.” The mass exodus of information directors in Whitehall after Tony Blair won the 1997 general election was unprecedented in British terms. I would guess there is more than likely to be a clear out of similar proportions once the Conservatives regain power. The lesson of my trip to Canberra couldn’t have been clearer: such are the pressures imposed by the news media, that we are fast approaching the day when the governments of Britain and Australia will insist on having information services that are far more partisan than anything we have seen up to now.
Last modified: Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Previous government policy stories
Without Comment
Privatising spin
Submission to the DCMS on the Review of the BBC’s Royal Charter.
Backing the BBC
Where is liberalisation taking the British media?
DON’T BE COWED: The BBC after Hutton
GCHQ whistleblower gagged.
A Spin Free Regime for Blair?
The end of public service information
Hutton, Kelly and the BBC
What public policies are needed in the face of the marketisation of the audio visual sector?
Ignored at Our Peril
Free Press Editorial - Asset Stripping ITV
Labour & Television Policy
Spin In Retreat
Storms Ahead for the BBC
Look Back In Anger: The Carlton Granada merger
It’s still bad news
COMING SOON
Dear Editor.... CPBF writes to the Guardian
Television impartiality
Communications Bill - Peers line up for a show-down
Submission to the Government Communications Review Group by Nicholas Jones
Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom: submission to Government Communications Review Group.
The VLV 20th spring conference: 'The Communications Bill: Content or Commerce - which matters most?'
TUC Briefing on Comms Bill
Public Voice briefings on the Comms Bill
The Re-Regulation of Broadcasting, or The Mill Owners' Triumph
Communications Bill receives third reading.
Tessa Jowell speaks!
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Notices
Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
DOWNLOAD FREEPRESS NOW
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Download Freepress in PDF, ePub or mobi format. Issue 194 now available.
MEDIA FOR ALL CONFERENCE
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Papers from the Media for All Conference
MEDIA MANIFESTO
DATELINE: 26/3/10
The media’s job is to inform and entertain us but we rely on them too to tell us what our rulers and representatives are up to. In the run-up to the Iraq war the government used spin and disinformation in the media to create panic and mislead people. The truth is coming out now, but we need stronger, more independent media to be able to scrutinise governments and make informed choices.
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Previous stories
Government Policy
Without Comment
Privatising spin
Submission to the DCMS on the Review of the BBC’s Royal Charter.
Backing the BBC
Where is liberalisation taking the British media?
DON’T BE COWED: The BBC after Hutton
GCHQ whistleblower gagged.
A Spin Free Regime for Blair?
The end of public service information
Hutton, Kelly and the BBC
What public policies are needed in the face of the marketisation of the audio visual sector?
Ignored at Our Peril
Free Press Editorial - Asset Stripping ITV
Labour & Television Policy
Spin In Retreat
Storms Ahead for the BBC
Look Back In Anger: The Carlton Granada merger
It’s still bad news
COMING SOON
Dear Editor.... CPBF writes to the Guardian
Television impartiality
Communications Bill - Peers line up for a show-down
Submission to the Government Communications Review Group by Nicholas Jones
Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom: submission to Government Communications Review Group.
The VLV 20th spring conference: 'The Communications Bill: Content or Commerce - which matters most?'
TUC Briefing on Comms Bill
Public Voice briefings on the Comms Bill
The Re-Regulation of Broadcasting, or The Mill Owners' Triumph
Communications Bill receives third reading.
Tessa Jowell speaks!
