Day-later thoughts: the system as described is remarkably transactional and designed to deliver short replies, after long delay, to what will almost always be questions about complex files requiring trade-offs among competing goals and pressures. Any follow-up question will go through the same long process. So nothing resembling a conversation is possible. It's easy to imagine useful questions that would be completely stymied by this process. "You tried something like this with this other program. Why are you expecting a better outcome now?" No chance.
Finally, it's awesomely reactive. Wait for question; enlist army to find answer to question; await other question. Of course there are other channels for more productive comms: news releases, speeches, Instagram. But this system essentially assigns the press gallery and their still large audiences to the role of question generators. It's... sterile.
But journos should know the insight given to me - and others - by the late great Arthur Blakely: “Always remember that these guys aren’t there to give you information. They’re there to keep information away from you.”
This was 1973 or so, when there were far far fewer of those guys than there are today - and I suspect more reporters in the Gallery.
Art was a Gallery veteran and I was a young ignorant newcomer. His advice was to cultivate backbenchers and when possible civil servants, and whenever possible to steer clear of “press aides”.
This post made me smile. People who live by creating and selling political propaganda for their political masters are an industry????? Not my definition of an industry. The inference that they operate under an upright code of ethics and moral behaviour is Monty Python comical.
Come on - we all know that their utterances can be summed up as "rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb....."
This is a 30 year old communications playbook from The West Wing. God forbid a civil servant is allowed to talk to an interested citizen or journalist without talking points and strategy from the PMO.
Politicians need to figure out how to communicate in a world where information moves at the speed of light. You simply can't control or know everything at all times. You need to build a system where mistakes can happen and uncertainty can be expressed. Every utterance cannot be filtered through a central node. Bullshit and lies will be exposed, so don't even try them.
Day-later thoughts: the system as described is remarkably transactional and designed to deliver short replies, after long delay, to what will almost always be questions about complex files requiring trade-offs among competing goals and pressures. Any follow-up question will go through the same long process. So nothing resembling a conversation is possible. It's easy to imagine useful questions that would be completely stymied by this process. "You tried something like this with this other program. Why are you expecting a better outcome now?" No chance.
Finally, it's awesomely reactive. Wait for question; enlist army to find answer to question; await other question. Of course there are other channels for more productive comms: news releases, speeches, Instagram. But this system essentially assigns the press gallery and their still large audiences to the role of question generators. It's... sterile.
All good generalities.
But journos should know the insight given to me - and others - by the late great Arthur Blakely: “Always remember that these guys aren’t there to give you information. They’re there to keep information away from you.”
This was 1973 or so, when there were far far fewer of those guys than there are today - and I suspect more reporters in the Gallery.
Art was a Gallery veteran and I was a young ignorant newcomer. His advice was to cultivate backbenchers and when possible civil servants, and whenever possible to steer clear of “press aides”.
These guys come across as the embodiment of everything that's gone wrong with politics in this country for the last decade.
G7 was in Alberta and the only winner was the scenery of the Rockies ,….who are we to believe in?
This post made me smile. People who live by creating and selling political propaganda for their political masters are an industry????? Not my definition of an industry. The inference that they operate under an upright code of ethics and moral behaviour is Monty Python comical.
Come on - we all know that their utterances can be summed up as "rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb....."
This is a 30 year old communications playbook from The West Wing. God forbid a civil servant is allowed to talk to an interested citizen or journalist without talking points and strategy from the PMO.
Politicians need to figure out how to communicate in a world where information moves at the speed of light. You simply can't control or know everything at all times. You need to build a system where mistakes can happen and uncertainty can be expressed. Every utterance cannot be filtered through a central node. Bullshit and lies will be exposed, so don't even try them.