The Summit County Sheriff’s Office and Park City Police Department engaged in some mostly innocent slight of hand last week.
Asked if they were sharing information with ICE from license plate reading cameras in our area, the two agencies made a point of saying absolutely not, and we duly reported that.
But Town Lift went a little further or asked the better question. And reported that well, yes, the feds including ICE have access to the cameras and don’t need local agencies to share that. Which I think was the point in the wake of the recent arrest of a kid who graduated from Park City High School and had attended the University of Utah. He came to the United States at the age of 1, the extent of his hardcore criminality.
We followed up with some more questions and confirmed what a rival had reported. The cops didn’t lie, exactly; they aren’t actively sharing. We weren’t off the trail, entirely. We weren’t dead on, either, and for sure we didn’t get it right at all. It took another try with the communications people, asking more precisely. I’m sure the code is to tell no fibs, not directly.
Employees in position to know at another government entity I won’t name told a reporter they would be happy to talk about a newsworthy topic, but they had been instructed to run media inquiries through their agency’s communications team. We did. The communications team went to the administration. They all had a meeting. And the communications folks came back with so sorry, the employees don’t want to talk with you. Interview request declined.
Uh, huh.
A common reflex to difficult subjects is a public information officer deciding what is or isn’t “a story.” Like if they determine a story isn’t really a story, then it’s OK if they don’t answer our questions or decide not to facilitate conversation with the official who knows.
Thanks and all, but we’ll leave what is or isn’t a story to actual editors. That’s their job.
The government spokesperson’s role — at least in a democratic republic — is to answer the question or find the people who can. It isn’t to block, deny, edit, obfuscate, delay, avoid, massage, prevent, spin, complain.
Some local public information officials expressed displeasure at a commentary we ran last week from the national Society of Professional Journalists: “How public information officers have gotten in the way of transparency.”
Like, who, us?
“Over the past 25 years or so there has been a relatively rapid trend toward prohibiting staff members from communicating to journalists without reporting to some authority, often public information officers,” the piece pointed out. Communications teams to an ever greater degree determine who can talk and what they can say to a reporter.
This isn’t just some Wasatch Back shredding in the fabric of democracy, an anomaly. It’s taken on an aspect of worldwide best practices in PR, applied to public servants.
So reporters’ sometimes inconvenient or less comfortable questions wind up deflected or replied to in well-massaged statements that shouldn’t be mistaken for answers. I expect this of a development or ski company, though I’ll point out that the weaselly nature of these communications inevitably renders them far less trusted than intended.
Or lately, as in the case of the U.S. Forest Service, public officials refuse to discuss or share any information about, say, local personnel cuts that impact things like firefighting. (I do get that fear of the big boss is powerful, which is not a great thing for America.)
Apparently, the public has no inherent right to straight talk in real time from their governments. That’s the meta message. The Fourth Estate should butt out. By extension, so should the taxpayers, voters and communities these entities serve. The FU ultimately goes to them, after all.
I like to think of the journalists as white hats, if not complete saints, earnestly after the truth however the facts that can be confirmed line out. But I know this isn’t always so. I’ve been interviewed and reported on myself by reporters more after a gotcha, something sensational, a chance to stand out, and not particularly concerned with context, how one piece fits with another.
The PIOs have to deal with journalism’s black hats, too. That’s in addition to our lay inability to understand nuances as well as flat getting facts wrong, attributing quotes to the wrong source, misquoting, making assumptions in error, failing to recognize what is important and what isn’t, or overlooking their organization’s rightful due. I know our tribe can be innocently incompetent, especially under pressure. Can’t say I haven’t seen that, too.
Communication between and among humans is so messy. Certainly that includes the widely varying practice of journalism, Page Six to The Park Record, Fox and CNN in between. That’s not even getting to social media, which doesn’t even try.
Also, for all my bluster, I know that for the most part the PIOs are indeed helpful in keeping the public informed. They collect and provide accurate information about events and decisions of interest to the public that we may not otherwise get and report. They routinely assist with interviews for features, discussion of issues, and all sorts of stories.
They also can be useful for getting other sides, or fuller stories, for controversial pieces. We get a tip and they help us get to the bottom of it, including what a tipster or we didn’t think about that sheds light on an event or issue. They often are essential for making sense of something out of the gate. And good ones pay enough attention to correct painful or embarrassing errors in our finished work while we can still fix them.
I have always tended to like spokespeople, many of them former journalists, some I worked with, often friends. I listen to them and, sigh, I suppose I do mess with them in turn, too. We have to have some fun in this work, right?
But their job is not about transparency for the public. Get that out of your head, if it were ever there. These are public relations positions. They are working us, not for us, always. That’s just the way it is. It’s about getting their story or as close to how they want to be seen as possible, not so much about getting to unvarnished truth.
Unless, of course, the unvarnished truth serves their purpose, too.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.