Commendations to Robert Pickersgill, chairman of the People's National Party, for standing his ground under hostile media interviewing. Pickersgill was being interviewed on the flagship evening news analysis programme, Beyond The Headlines (BTH), on the Joseph Hibbert alleged bribery matter on Wednesday, October 14. The host, normally a consummate media professional, with rising annoyance, kept pressing the interviewee for a 'yes' or 'no' answer to her question and not to waste time repeating an extended answer, which she found unacceptable. The interviewee stoutly refused to be drawn, held his ground, and the whole thing slid downwards into an angry spat between interviewer and interviewee.

After the break, the interviewer then went on to use media privilege to state her annoyance with the non-compliance for the yes /no answer she had demanded and proceeded to read on air email feedback supporting her position.

Since I am thoroughly enmeshed in the business of provoking 'sacred cows', like 'the people' and 'the poor' last week, I might as well bravely press on to provoke one of the most inaccessible to provocation sacred cows of all, the media. While I have the greatest regard for BTH host Dionne Jackson-Miller, that uncharacteristic and surprising faux pas exposes the penchant of the media for riding high horses at others' expense, and, it, unfortunately, provides a good point of departure for provoking the media sacred cow.

purveyors of 'truth'

Pickersgill

The world of reality, which the media say is their business to present to mass audiences, is actually a little more nuanced than the sound bite and the yes/no answer demanded of subjects placed on trial. In the particular instance of an unfolding bribery case, with all the attendant risks of libel suits, a nuanced, reserved and open-ended answer may be the most sensible and perfectly in order. In any case, it is the business of the media to establish the 'truth', of which they claim to be purveyors, by rubbing sources against each other rather than seeking to squeeze it out of a single subject or from one side of a multi-sided story.

In this regard Jamaican media are particularly lazy. But media here are held in somewhat higher regard than in North America and Europe, functioning with public collusion as something of an alternative Parliament and alternative court. Ironically, in North America and Europe, journalists, "speaking truth to power", are right next to their favourite targets, politicians, at the bottom of the ranking of public confidence in the professions!

A MORI poll in the United Kingdom is reporting that "politicians are now the group of professionals least likely to tell the truth, the public believes, while trust in business leaders has fallen to an all-time low", following the global financial crisis.

Only 13 per cent of people now trust politicians to tell the truth which means they are now the group people most mistrust, even more than last year's least-trusted personnel - journalists.

Journalists' perennially poor public image has improved, but only slightly. The percentage of people who said they trusted them to tell the truth has risen from 19 per cent to 22 per cent, but they are still third from bottom.

public trust

A Pew survey in the United States (US) released just six weeks ago reports that public trust in the US media is eroding, and increasing numbers of Americans believe news coverage is inaccurate and biased. Just 29 per cent of the sample surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press said news organisations generally get the facts straight. Sixty-three per cent said news stories are often inaccurate, up from 34 per cent in a 1985 study. Sixty per cent said the press is biased, up from 45 per cent in 1985. Just 26 per cent said that news organisations were careful that their reporting was not politically biased. Seventy-four per cent said news organisations tend to favour one side in dealing with political and social issues.

Mark you, pollsters too are facing a decline in public confidence, according to the Harris polls in the US! Bear in mind how heavily media rely on public opinion polls for news and analysis!

The media have powerful agenda-setting and framing roles. They strongly determine what the public thinks about and discusses (agenda setting) and how the public perceives the issues (framing). The sub-text of the Pickersgill interview is the pervasive media view peddled to the public of inherent corruption, evasiveness, and tendency to lie of politicians. But, as we have seen, in many countries the public thinks the same of journalists!

balanced story

Skilful interviewing seeks to extract maximum truth value from subjects without putting them on trial, and certainly without engaging in spats with them. The other sides of the story are picked up from other interviewees and from background research. And the journalist then integrates a fair and balanced story after working the sources. In the case of live electronic media interviews, audiences can, and must be trusted to, draw their own reasonable truth conclusions from the respectful, even when deeply probing, interaction of a skilful interviewer and the interviewee.

The media have no judicial functions, nor any authority to force anyone to speak to them. But too many practitioners in Jamaica adopt, in one fell swoop, the roles of arresting officer, prosecutor, judge, and jury. And too many subjects do not realise that in an interview they are not in court and are not obliged to endure hostile interviewing. Even public officials who have an obligation to provide public information can do so by a variety of means which do not have to include enduring courtroom-style media interrogation. Pickersgill apparently understood this basic point and stood his ground.

The media are generally too lazy to pursue vigorously their own business of ferreting out multiple sources and building complex and complete nuanced stories where the voice of public officials, with their own vested interests, like the media, is only one side of the story.

GRIEF REPORTING

What I call grief reporting is another sore point. Jamaican media have taken up the style of crassly broadcasting and publishing people grieving, something which is essentially a private matter. Too many Jamaicans do not understand that they have no obligation whatsoever to respond to media cameras and microphones crudely thrust into their faces as they bawl. Before bodies are even picked up, mourners are called upon to bawl their way through media interviews to be projected to mass audiences. Towards what end, beyond base titillation?

The media and politicians have more in common, besides low ratings in public confidence, than is generally understood. The late media scholar Timothy Cook introduced his book, Governing with the News: The News Media as a Political Institution, with the question, "Why don't we call journalists political actors?" Cook went on to explain that the book "will develop, clarify, and refine a new model of the reporter as a key participant in decision-making and policy-making and of the news media as a central political force in government. It seeks to fill out an empirical theory of the news media as a political institution."

Cook cites Douglas Carter, who, 40 years before, in The Fourth Branch of Government, wrote, "The reporter is the recorder of government, but he is also a participant." Cook devotes the entire Part Two of his own book to a careful elucidation of 'The Media as a Political Institution'.

tension-filled partnership

The complex, tension-filled partnership of press, politicians and public, in which holier-than-thou attitudes have no real merit, is moving from the citadels of scholarship into school curricula in many countries as youngsters are taught a variety of media literacy courses.

On the local scene, I have helped several professionals in organisations to understand and skilfully handle the media, which is much more than what it says it is.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant who may be reached at medhen@gmail.com. or columns@gleanerjm.com.