If a paper’s reporters can’t get the answers they need from a source to stand up a news story - it usually goes on the spike. So why is one editor taking up precious space in her paper to publish her reporters’ unanswered questions?
Anna Fifield asks a pointed question of readers in the Dom Post, accusing public service of "obstruction and obfuscation." Photo: photo / RNZ Mediawatch
The Dominion Post has been preoccupied lately with the Convoy 2022 occupation in the capital - at which many of the protesters have accused the government of hiding the truth about Covid.
At the same time, the paper’s running its own campaign about the public service stonewalling legitimate requests for information on matters of public interest.
Every Saturday under the banner Things We Didn't Learn This Week - the Dominion Post lists questions it put to public agencies which didn’t get answered fully - or at all.
The editor - Anna Fifield - kicked this off earlier this month in a piece provocatively headlined: When did our public service get so arrogant?
She said open government "appears to be on the wane here" and blamed the growth in what she called the “communications industrial complex.”
“Vast battalions of people work to deflect and avoid -- or answer only in the most oblique manner possible,” said Fifield, who took the job last year after working at big media names overseas including the Washington Post.
“We journalists are vastly outnumbered by spin doctors,” she complained.
It’s not a new grievance.
Anna Fifield’s journalists know many of the spin doctors she wrote about - because many are former colleagues enticed out of the newsrooms by bigger pay packets over the years.
Their inside knowledge of the media is their key asset - but how do they actually obstruct her reporters?
Reporters' questions go through the communications professionals, said Fifield - rather than relevant experts of public officials.
She said replies are almost always only via email with “insufficient answers written in bureaucratese.”
And in the background, there’s longrunning anger about the way under successive governments have used - or misused - the Official Information Act.
But is it really any worse here than in any of the other countries she’s worked?
“Maybe I hold my own country to a higher standard . . . but having spent 20 years overseas, I've been really surprised at how entrenched these spin doctor gatekeepers have become - and how obstructive they are compared to other places where I've worked like the UK, the US, Japan, South Korea,” she told Mediawatch.
“When I was at the White House during the Obama administration it was really standard for a group of reporters to have an hour with people who were in charge of healthcare and other reforms. They would explain things to you and you could ask stupid questions,” she said
“I think that kind of background briefing is really beneficial both to the authorities and to the media - because we can't explain things to the broader public if we don't understand them ourselves. So I've been really dismayed that there's no willingness in the public servants to engage in that way,” Fifield said.
Photo: supplied
“The lack of transparency that we have encountered - whether it's from MPI or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Waka Kotahi - it seems to be pervasive across government,” she said.
“(Questions have) go through the communications team. You have to send in your questions and you'll get an email response back. There's no opportunity for back and forth,” she said
Even media companies sometimes operate like this, sometimes offering only statements attributable only to “a spokesperson”.
“Every single time we are saying to the communications people ‘Okay, well who do we attribute this to? Somebody needs to put their name to this, because it's your job and you need to be transparent and accountable’,” Fifield told Mediawatch.
Amping up the blame game?
"People who work in government might say the media are partly to blame for this, because too often they have turned their demand for accountability into “who can we blame?,” open government advocates Andrew Ecclestone and Simon Wright argued in a rebuttal of Fifield's criticism re-published by Stuff this weekend.
"The OIA . . . has been used by them mainly to hammer nails of blame into people and organisations when outcomes failed to match over-optimistic forecasts,' they wrote.
Can she blame public servants and their communications people for trying to shield individuals from the media?
“Look, I readily admit that the media in New Zealand - and Stuff - has not covered itself in glory (in the past). There has been a history of clickbait and ‘gotcha’ stories, but we are really trying hard to move past that," she told Mediawatch.
Currently Fifield’s Dominion Post is running a campaign on the delays to the Transmission Gully road. There are many reasons behind the delays and cost overruns - and many people involved. But any officials who do put their name to their comments - as she demands - might find all the blame sheeted home to them.
“Journalists are not out to get public servants, I think that they're looking for proper answers and to be able to hold the public service accountable for spending taxpayers’ money and for what they do on behalf of the public,” she said.
Anna Fifield Photo: Supplied
While reporters struggle to get public servants and agencies on the record, there is a small industry in conferences about getting messages across to the public - and some public servants journalists take part in them.
At the end of next month there’s one called 'Social Media for Government' which will discuss ‘optimising your social media strategy to tackle misinformation and engage communities’
A company called Public Spectrum runs that over three days at Wellington's Intercontinental Hotel. (When Mediawatch requested the schedule and information online, an Australian organiser called soon after, wanting to know precisely what our interest was. He promised to send the info, but we didn’t get it . . .)
At the same time in the capital, BrightStar is running at two-day gathering called Communicating for New Zealand - all about “enhancing government and public service communication and engagement.”
At that one, a communication manager for the Three Waters Reform project in Hamilton will join the chief political reporter at Newstalk ZB - Jason Walls - to discuss 'Collaborating with the media for mutual benefit'.
“This sort of training is not new. I would hope that they were using it to encourage them to be more forthcoming and to answer difficult questions. But I have a sneaky suspicion that that's not what they are teaching them,” said Fifield.
“Social media” enables them to go directly to people. . . . but a lot of people want us to be asking those questions rather than just hearing the spin,’ she said.
