Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

December 2, 2021 10:12 AM

In recent years Canadian news media has been saturated by PR professionals. Are they doing so to advance public discourse, or to advance their client interests?
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon (13 comments total)

Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon: "Are they doing so to advance public discourse, or to advance their client interests?"

This is a trick question, right?
posted by chavenet at 10:33 AM on December 2, 2021 [17 favorites]

"responsibility to disclose and address conflicts of interest to our audience — perceived or otherwise — falls to the lobbyists..."

This is just laughable. Disclosure should be a pre-requisite for appearing on air.
posted by thoughtful_jester at 12:13 PM on December 2, 2021 [7 favorites]

I mean, their motives are not necessarily to advance their clients interests per se. I think the likely options for motive are:

1. as part of a planned campaign on behalf of a particular client
2. to enhance their own reputation and personal brand (including to help them win more work in the future)
3. because they are genuinely committed to the positions they espouse and want to further them

Any of them are possible, but I think a combination of 2 and 3 might be more common than 1.
posted by plonkee at 12:44 PM on December 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's been said before, but I'll repeat it
Don't you feel like you've been cheated?
It's been shoved down your throats, you eat it
They say it's true, you believe it

Sorry, the Can-con joke's on me.
posted by house-goblin at 12:48 PM on December 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

Any of them are possible, but I think a combination of 2 and 3 might be more common than 1.

A salesperson is always more effective if they believe in their product. 1 & 3 are, to a large degree, the same motive.

But it's important to have context as to why or how they came to be committed to the position they espouse. People genuinely believe ridiculous things when their life and livelihood depends on it.

I don't care if someone genuinely believes that (e.g.) climate change is false if they came about that belief by working for the oil industry for 10 years.
posted by explosion at 1:19 PM on December 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

The public broadcaster replied that it takes the issue seriously, and the “responsibility to disclose and address conflicts of interest to our audience — perceived or otherwise — falls to the lobbyists after speaking with our chase producers. The process we have in place goes a long way to ensuring transparency.”

Waded through the article to find this gem at the very end.
posted by polymodus at 1:36 PM on December 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

In a typical example of the practice, former Liberal New Brunswick premier Brian Gallant appeared numerous times on CBC News Network’s flagship political show, Power & Politics, in the days leading up to this year’s federal election. Viewers of the show were not informed of Gallant’s position as a senior advisor at Navigator Ltd., one of the country’s largest corporate public relations and lobbying firms.

Seems like there was an obvious reason he was appearing on that show that had nothing to do with his role as a lobbyist.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:36 PM on December 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

For Canada's political class, the roles of elected official, party hack, pundit, regulator, lobbyist, and corporate board member are entirely interchangeable. When you leave government, some big company or corporate interest group or PR firm hires you so that they can use your connections; that's your career path. CBC and CTV invites these people onto their shows for exactly the same reason banks hire former cabinet ministers: they are the insiders, regardless of who's paying their salaries. The producers of these panel shows know exactly what they're doing, and in fact openly admit it -- they're getting informed expert opinion from (as CBC's head of public affairs says in the article) "a cross section of individuals who bring different perspectives to any given discussion."

The follow-up to that quote is the real kicker:

This range of perspectives does not appear to include civil society, or advocacy or activist groups. Such voices were largely absent from the airwaves.

That's because activists and civil society groups, generally speaking, aren't part of the political class. They aren't insiders. And in fact the government treats these groups the same way. Citizens are second-class citizens.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:47 PM on December 2, 2021 [14 favorites]

I mean, their motives are not necessarily to advance their clients interests per se.

Generally the reason they are appearing at all is because of their lobbyist position. I don't really care what they earnestly believe if the only reason they have a national TV platform to espouse it is because they are a lobbyist. Lots of people believe lots of things, but very few of them appear on TV news panels.
posted by ssg at 2:01 PM on December 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

This was to be expected, when even the J School at Northwestern changed it's name to the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications.

And the recent Defector dissection of the Cuomo disaster at MSNBC adds to my cynicism of the establishment Media.
posted by indianbadger1 at 2:24 PM on December 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

> indianbadger1: "This was to be expected, when even the J School at Northwestern changed it's name to the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications."

I recently caught a fleeting TikTok Live where a young woman was answering a question from the audience about what she was studying in college and she mentioned that she was in a journalism and PR program. I was rather suprised that there was a college program that encompassed both journalism and PR given that, well, these are supposed to be in opposition. However, a little bit of googling indicates that many schools offer public relations degrees under the umbrella of a journalism department. Which, I suppose, is just one of those things I didn't realize until recently. It still strikes me a bit weird, though. To me, it's a bit like a medical school offering a subspecialization in poisoning or assassination or biological warfare.
posted by mhum at 3:37 PM on December 2, 2021 [11 favorites]

It's not like you could complain: the head of the regulator (CRTC) is formerly VP for PR/GR at TELUS.
posted by scruss at 4:58 PM on December 2, 2021 [6 favorites]

> To me, it's a bit like a medical school offering a subspecialization in poisoning or assassination or biological warfare.

Well they effectively do - most technical knowledge is morally neutral. They just don’t advertise it in the name of the course - it’s “toxicology” not “poisoning”, “virology” not “bioweapons”, “robotics” not “lethal autonomous systems”…
posted by memetoclast at 12:27 AM on December 4, 2021 [4 favorites]