THEY can refuse to do interviews or answer questions. They can decide mammoth events, such as September 11, 2001, are in fact “a good day to bury bad news”. In extreme cases, governments pull advertising from newspapers.
But recently a new tactic emerged, with the federal government answering a reporter’s questions via press release, thus disseminating her story to rivals and killing off her chance of a scoop.
The office of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy pulled this stunt three times last week in response to questions from The Australian.
Journalists were aghast at the breach of trust.
Wednesday saw a spectacular upping of the ante. The Australian’s associate editor, Cameron Stewart, sent a series of questions to the Defence Department about an expensive crisis engulfing the nation’s largest defence project, the $8 billion Air Warfare Destroyer project.
After frantic meetings, Defence Minister Stephen Smith responded, not directly to Stewart, but by dashing into parliament to give an update of the troubled project during question time, thereby denying Stewart a scoop he had laboured to get.
Communications strategist and former Liberal adviser Ian Kortlang said the strategy was “unprecedented”. “It’s very clumsy and it’s very dumb of the government to manipulate or expose or have favourites within the media because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that you’ll get picked on,” Mr Kortlang said.
“If someone’s monstering you (in the media) you might over a beer say (they’ve) had a bad hair day. You sure as shit don’t put it on paper. It shows (the media outlet is) hurting them.”
Long-term Labor strategist Bruce Hawker said the new tactic could only be temporary. “When a newspaper gets into the business of running a campaign against a government they can expect a response. My sense of this is after a period of time things will calm down.”
You might think that this is just chest bumping between a troubled government and a powerful newspaper. But Treasury and the Reserve Bank now release FOI documents on the same day to all journalists without warning, so the hack who has submitted the request sees their exclusive evaporate instantly. Campaigners fear that journalists will come to see FOI requests as worth neither the time nor the money.
Governments might be OK with that, but journalists and the public will be all the poorer for it.
Conroy’s media adviser, Lyall Johnson, a former cricket writer for The Age, has been disseminating the press releases. He needs to learn to stand up to his boss’s baser street-fighting tactics.
Last week a reporter from this section phoned Johnson to ask him a question. He asked that the query be emailed. A moment hung in the air as the reporter asked if the reply would be press released to everyone. Johnson’s response was unusual but telling.
I’d love to reveal it here, but conversations between reporters and press secretaries are governed by long-standing conventions and not for publication. There is such a thing as trust.
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