- Email: [email protected]
Reporters and bureaucrats: public relations counter-strategies by public administrators in an era of media disinterest in government
Public Relations Review, 25(4):451– 463 ISSN: 0363-8111
Mordecai Lee
Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
Reporters and Bureaucrats: Public Relations CounterStrategies by Public Administrators in an Era of Media Disinterest in Government ABSTRACT: Public administration traditionally identified reporting to the public as one of the public relations duties of a government administrator in a democracy. Recent trends in media coverage of government have created new problems for managers seeking to accomplish such democratic accountability. This article summarizes reports from practitioners and prescriptionoriented academicians about emerging developments in media coverage of government and the attendant public relations counter-strategies being adopted by public administrators. Mordecai Lee is an assistant professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
PUBLIC RELATIONS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: AN OBLIGATION IN A DEMOCRACY Public managers are inherently different from business administrators because of the context of democratic and representative government Winter 1999
451
Public Relations Review
within which they operate.1 One manifestation of this difference is the accountability of government officials to elected institutions and to the sovereign source of legitimate power in a democracy, the citizenry. However, most studies about government officials and democracy tend to focus on the interaction between the media and politics, the elected side of government, and pay less attention to the non-elected side of government, public administration. For example, Jacobs and Shapiro’s call for an integrated study of political communications, public opinion, and the policy-making process omitted reference to the role of the bureaucracy.2 Nye’s review of the public’s declining confidence in government generally equated government with elected officials and only glancingly referred to public administrators.3 But, problems of media coverage of politics, elections, and elected officials have been given thorough analysis.4 The effect of media coverage on the non-elected side of government has not received sufficient parallel attention. After reviewing contemporary research in political communication, Nimmo and Swanson concluded that “even more rare are analyses of bureaucratic communication.”5 Swoboda observed that the interactions between public administration and the media are understudied.6 Public relations is the means by which an administrator interacts with the citizenry and is held accountable.7 One category within this general rubric is public reporting, which entails post hoc reporting from the agency to the public-at-large. Public reporting is a different public relations activity from administrative efforts to increase citizen participation in an agency’s decision-making process, which usually focuses on involving interested individuals (who sometimes represent attentive audiences or organized groups) in the stages leading up to a major decision by a government agency.8 Similarly, public reporting is different from the public relations emphasis on improving service to the client-customer.
TRADITIONAL PUBLIC RELATIONS APPROACHES TO DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY: PUBLIC REPORTING AND PRESS RELATIONS Some early theoreticians focused on implementing democratic accountability through direct public reporting of administrative agencies, especially annual reports by municipal administrators. “Official reports of governmental authorities submitted or made available to the public as an accounting of official conduct might be made a more effective agency for the promotion of good government and an essential foundation of popular rule.”9 Issuance of an annual report for purposes of public accountability focused mostly on municipal government.10 Some agencies experimented in the 1950s and 1960s with non-print forms of annual reports, such as slides, movies, and tapes.11 Elected officials often met these efforts with hostility.12 In the case of the Defense Department’s film version of its annual report, Congress prohibited any funding for it.13 Many public agencies continued to have legal obligations to issue annual 452
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
reports above and beyond their annual financial statements.14 However, these reports were generally not widely used for purposes of accountability to the public, but instead were usually submitted primarily to the elected bodies, such as the legislative branch of that level of government.15 The decline of the emphasis on direct public reporting was replaced with a focus on press relations as the main public relations tool for administrative accountability in a democracy.16 “The most important channel of communication between any public administrator and his clientele is the press. Likewise the most critical observer of the public administration is the press.”17 According to Pimlott, “the classical view has been that the press should be the chief medium of information on public affairs.”18 Hess noted the democratic as well as administrative rationales for agencies to deal with the media: “Press offices could be considered not only as a government subsidy or government efficiency, but as an entitlement that flows from the nature of a free society and the relationship of the state to the citizen.”19 Therefore, a public agency has a duty to maintain a public information operation whose mission is media relations. “Policy makers believe that the most obvious responsibility of the press is to inform the public about events and activities of government.”20 This responsibility is generally viewed as including a reactive role, by responding to inquiries from reporters, as well as a proactive one of initiating efforts to obtain media coverage of agency operations. However, what is a public administrator to do if the news media fails to function as an instrument of democracy?21 This article synthesizes practitioner literature, reports from the field, and prescription-oriented academic observations regarding emerging developments in media coverage of government agencies and the attendant public relations counter-strategies being adopted by public administrators.
REDEFINING THE NEWS: THE DISAPPEARING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR Traditionally, press coverage had tended to dedicate a substantial focus on government, both elected institutions and administrative agencies. Newspapers had organized their work based on institutional beats and coverage of the incrementalism of public policy and administration: What’s happening today at the courthouse? What’s happening at City Hall? This orientation automatically led to significant coverage of public administration.22 Kurtz described “the newspaper of the 1970s [as] page after page of gray type and boring stories about bureaucracy.”23 However, bureaucracies— especially regulatory agencies—are harder for the media to cover than are politicians, given their mind-numbing and tedious actions inherent in public administration.24 A recent review of reporting about the regulatory actions of the federal Environmental Protection Agency concluded that coverage occurred only when they reflected “an ‘everyday’ issue, novelty or policy Winter 1999
453
Public Relations Review
failure.”25 In general, “executive departments, from HUD to Agriculture, were too widely dispersed to cover efficiently. It was so much easier to have your star reporter standing in the White House lawn.”26 With television becoming the preeminent news medium, its technological and institutional imperatives led to a redefinition of news. For television, coverage of government and bureaucratic news inevitably necessitated stories with ‘talking heads,’ that is, a government official explaining a complicated policy matter. “Our consultants said government news is boring to viewers,” said the manager of a local TV station.27 For example, the HUD scandal was not of interest to TV because “a series of complicated ripoffs by anonymous Joe Blows is not exactly compelling material for the evening news. If a TV reporter can’t explain it in twenty seconds, forget it.”28 Television news shifted to drama, emotion, and spectacle,29 elements rarely found in public administration. A content analysis of local TV news in eight markets found that coverage of governmental affairs, once a mainstay of local television news programs, now occupies less than 15% of the news during an average program. “The scarce coverage of governmental affairs is perhaps the most disturbing news to come out of the survey,” the content analysis’s chief researcher stated.30 A 1998 study of 102 local television stations documented that government news amounted to almost 10% of all stories, far overshadowed by the 39% dedicated to crime and disasters.31 The proportions were comparable to the preceding 3 years,32 suggesting a well-ingrained stable pattern. Another factor that contributed to the shrinkage of reporting about public administration was a downgrading of coverage of state government compared to earlier newsgathering habits.33 A California-based administrator summed up the new realities of media coverage when he recounted hearing a news reporter, based in the State Capitol, “bemoan the difficulty in convincing her news director to run stories about government and public policy.”34
REDEFINING THE NEWS: THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR AS “BAD GUY” The tone of media coverage of the government has shifted from the traditional adversarial model35 to one of cynicism.36 Healthy skepticism has been replaced by automatic negativity. Another factor that contributes to the anti-public administration slant of news reporting includes the tilt of talk radio and talk TV to conservative voices that are ideologically anti-government.37 Reports from media specialists at public agencies indicate a consistent negative slant to contemporary coverage of public administration. One practitioner noted that “as bureaucrats, most of us either fear or loathe (or both!) the media. It seems they are our sworn enemies, determined to bad-mouth government at every opportunity and every turn.” The normative goal for practitioners, she suggested, is to “be able to pick up the paper or turn on the TV news without cringing.”38 A 454
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
practitioner from the public housing field wrote, “often we are criticized by the media about the failure of our agencies, our programs, and our residents.”39 Schachter described how, for the area of public administration communications, “frames of reference” are the general basis for communicating effectively about established beliefs, whether by administrators or reporters.40 Regarding public administration, reporters rely on “enduring American themes or archetypes. . . that expose government incompetence.”41 Several archetypal stories appear to recur when reporters cover public administration, including the moneywasting bureaucrat, the victim of a bureaucracy, and uncaring government.42 Some local TV stations run stories exposing wasteful government spending as part of a continuing series, often entitled “it’s your money” or “waste patrol.” In one instance, the Connecticut Department of Transportation had compromised with citizens unhappy with a proposed new bridge by increasing the bridge’s construction budget to include decorative stone facing, thus improving the esthetics of the structure. A story about that decision could have portrayed the agency in a positive light as responsive to local needs. Instead, a local TV station described the added cost as unnecessary and extravagant.43 Because TV seeks victims and heavies who can convert a public policy story into a morality play between good and evil or underdog versus Goliath,44 public administrators are usually on the losing end of such juxtapositions. “Little guy fights city hall” is an archetypal story premised on the bureaucrat as bad guy. This story line focuses on the suffering of an individual or family purportedly being victimized by a rigid and insensitive bureaucrat. These stories generally imply that the public administrator is a martinet who is rigidly applying a regulation or requirement instead of making an exception based on decency and reasonableness. Another archetypal story is the one that presents problems in a way that “implies their solution by further administration.”45 The story tends to depict a situation in a manner that suggests that this is a “problem” that the government is currently doing nothing about. The stories insinuate bureaucratic incompetence or indifference to what the authors of the stories identify as a problem. They “are generally accompanied by an implicit message about what the government should be called upon to do.”46 All these archetypal stories are “grabbers,” because they grab the emotions of the viewers and provide sentimental reactions. They are also “teasable”; that is, can be promoted before the broadcast with tidbits that are likely to lure the viewer to stay tuned. The tease of “Your tax dollars are being wasted; details at 11:00!” can be irresistible to viewers. The common theme of these archetypal story lines is that in all of them the government manager is the predetermined “heavy” or “bad guy.”
PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNTERSTRATEGIES BY PUBLIC MANAGERS What is a public administrator to do? Garnett’s overarching recommendation is that public administrators need to approach their communiWinter 1999
455
Public Relations Review
cation needs, whether internal or external, from a strategic point of view. Specifically regarding media relations, he emphasizes the need to identify goals and to pursue them with self-discipline.47 Practitioners in the field and prescriptive-oriented researchers are beginning to identify public relations counter-strategies that can be used by the public manager in response to these new communication realities. These responses focus on three areas: enhancing the policy entrepreneurship role of the public administrator, updating the media skills of public managers to adapt to new media realities, and reviving direct public reporting. Policy Entrepreneurship A new and important public relations skill for a public administrator is the ability to promote one’s policy agenda in the public realm. Leaders cannot act passively when they have identified an important problem or solution. Nor can they consider the “outside world” as beyond their responsibility, reach, or competence. Government managers, like public policy players, need to go outside their domain to obtain public recognition for the issues and responses for which they are advocating. With the demise of many traditional social and civic institutions,48 the media have become the primary venue for promoting public discourse on policy issues. “Consequently, the mass media have also become one of the most effective means of communicating ideas, disseminating information, and educating the public on public policy issues.”49 As such, the media decides what public issues are important and how they are constructed.50 This, in turn, is having an impact on the policy making process. Because “spin” defines what a problem is and implicitly controls what the solution will be, the winner in a policy debate is whoever successfully pitches the first story in the media about that issue. This means that a successful policy entrepreneur is effective at interacting with the media at the definitionsetting stage of media coverage: What is a problem that deserves media (and, therefore, public and governmental) attention? How will the “problem” be defined?51 According to Luke: How an issue is reported has significant impact on how the problem is initially characterized or framed. Once an issue has been described in one way early in the issue attention cycle, it is difficult for individuals to reframe the issue to a different perspective.52
In the realm of public policy, all players are now essentially equal, whether they are agency administrators, elected officials, advocacy groups, special interest groups and so forth. All are policy entrepreneurs who seek to influence the media’s agenda-setting decision making.53 Research in the 1980s had suggested that the efforts by public information offices of governmental agencies to influence the agenda of salient issues within the realm of the public policy debate had only a minor impact.54 However, Luke suggests that contemporary practitioners need to 456
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
be more proactive as policy entrepreneurs by using the media. “As catalysts, effective public leaders do not necessarily promote solutions; they promote problems. Thus, they are advocates for issue emergence.”55 Borquez observed that effective “policy entrepreneurs ‘shop around’ for problems to which they can link their pet solutions.”56 For example, a study of crime stories on local television news documented the “extremely limited coverage of contributing etiological factors in stories on violence. If our nation’s most popular source of news continues to report on violence primarily through crime stories isolated from their social context, the chance for widespread support for public health solutions to violence will be diminished.”57 Goddard and Riback’s examples of best practices include a public administrator who was able “to influence the story while remaining in the background” and another who succeeded in spinning a potentially damaging story in a way that led to a policy resolution of her choosing.58 To be effective, modern public administrators need act as policy entrepreneurs, especially at the problem-defining stage of the policy process. Media Relations Skills for New Media Realities New media coverage trends call for new media relations skills of public managers. When a reporter calls, the contemporary government administrator needs to become more sophisticated by being prepared and trained with skills that reflect the new realities of media coverage of public administration.59 Linsky concluded, “having policymakers who are skilled at managing the media will make for better government.”60 Administrators need to learn how to “talk” to the media on its own terms. Reporters and editors become interested in covering public policy when it can be packaged both as conflict and in a personalized way, because that approach is visual, is attention getting, and creates audience identification. In particular, TV seeks victims and heavies who convert a public policy story into a morality play between good and evil or of an underdog versus Goliath.61 Practitioners suggest several approaches. First, an agency’s message needs to be condensed so that it can be expressed in “10 words or less [sic].”62 Second, the agency needs to give its public policy positions a human face. “The easiest way to sell a story to the media is to point out the human interest aspect of your story. Anything that impacts [public housing] residents, or a resident success story for that matter, usually will grab the attention of the media.”63 Third, the agency needs to make its story as easy as possible for reporters to cover it and to understand it.64 Fourth, administrators need to communicate in multiple ways by using a variety of media.65 Fifth, public managers need to learn how to deal with the emergence of public journalism because it has the potential of being an ally, rather than an opponent, of public administration.66 Other suggestions are more traditional, including highlighting the importance of involving public affairs staff during the policymaking process instead of afterwards67 and enhancing the stature of the agency’s public information officer Winter 1999
457
Public Relations Review
(PIO). Hess suggests accomplishing this by assuring the PIO access to the top levels of the agency, enhancing the PIO’s credibility, providing professional training for PIOs, and being as responsive as possible to media inquiries.68 Direct Public Reporting The current focus on accountability in government has tended to ignore direct public reporting. Instead, it highlights either theoretical issues related to privatization69 or data collection and presentation questions, such as benchmarking and performance measurement. For example, the Center for Accountability and Performance of the American Society for Public Administration is in the midst of a multi-year program to develop more than 50 case studies, from all levels of government, on performance management in government. The American Society for Public Administration’s January 1997 Public Administration Times included a special supplement devoted to Performance Management: Perspectives for Today’s Public-Sector Manager. Another approach is known as “popular financial reporting.” It entails reformatting government accounting reports so they are more comprehensible to lay people.70 Now there is emerging a parallel focus on reinvigorating public administration’s early attention to direct public reporting. According to Behn, “this is perhaps the least objectionable form of public-manager leadership.” He argues that government administrators need to “explain to the public in general—not just to their own stakeholder organizations—what they are attempting to accomplish, why they are attempting to do so, what they have actually achieved in the past month, quarter, year, and decade.”71 How an administrator reports to the public is as important as what is reported. Public reporting is an activity that can be performed by communicating directly with the public, instead of being dependent on the media as an intermediary. Administrators are seeking new ways to accomplish public accountability outside the channels of the news media. Schachter urges reviving the focus on public reporting that had been promoted by the Bureaus of Municipal Research at the beginning of the century. She suggests that local government should issue annual reports comparable to corporate annual reports and deliver them directly to the citizens. Her recommendation is to have a three-tier public reporting approach: a city report, agency reports, and bureau reports.72 The focus on the content of public reporting needs to be complemented with a focus on the methods used to distribute such reports. Administrators are being urged to use new on-line technologies, which offer unprecedented options for direct contact with the public, such as web pages, virtual town hall meetings, electronic newsletters, citizen chat rooms, e-mail, and so forth.73 Another opportunity recommended by a practitioner is regular programming by public administrators on either the free community public access channel or the local government channel on local cable systems.74 Finally, a practitioner publication noted the benefits of using informational kiosks shared by several units of government to 458
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
provide timely information direct to the public and the users of government services.75 An international summary of the practices by senior government officials of “first world” democracies observed an increase in the proactive dissemination of information to the public. “An important off-shoot might be to undermine the information-filtering power of the media by diversifying the sources of government information supplied to the citizens,” the report noted.76
CONCLUSION Although the media coverage of the government has been diminishing and assuming a greater negative tone, in a democracy there is no change in the public relations obligation of the public administrator to keep the public informed. Public administration practitioners and practice-oriented academics have begun to identify public relations counter-strategies that permit managers to adapt to these media developments and to continue pursuing their democratic responsibilities.
NOTES 1. 2.
3. 4.
5.
6.
7.
8. 9. 10.
John J. Kirlin, “The Big Questions of Public Administration in a Democracy,” Public Administration Review 56 (1996), pp. 416 – 423. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Toward the Integrated Study of Political Communications. Public Opinion, and the Policy-making Process,” PS: Political Science & Politics 29 (1996), pp. 10 –13. Joseph S. Nye Jr., “The Media and Declining Confidence in Government,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 2 (1997), pp. 4 –9. Herbert J. Gans, “What Can Journalists Actually Do for American Democracy?” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3 (1998), pp. 6 –12; and Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: A. Knopf, 1993). Dan D. Nimmo and David L. Swanson,. “The Field of Political Communication: Beyond the Voter Persuasion Paradigm,” in David L. Swanson and Dan D. Nimmo (eds.), New Directions in Political Communication: A Resource Book (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990), p. 28. Dale P. Swoboda, “Accuracy and Accountability in Reporting Local Government Budget Agencies: Evidence from the Newsroom and From Newsmakers,” Public Budgeting & Finance 15 (1995), p. 89. Hans Reimer, “Public Relations in a Democracy,” in The Public Relations of Local Governments: Papers Presented at the World Conference of Local Governments (The Hague: M. Nijhoff for the International Union of Local Authorities, 1962), pp. 7–13. Cheryl Simrell King and Camilla Stivers (eds.), Government is Us: Public Administration in an Anti-Government Era (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). Herman C. Beyle,. Government Reporting in Chicago (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1928), pp. 6 –7. Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s first published writings were about direct municipal
Winter 1999
459
Public Relations Review
11.
12. 13.
14.
15. 16.
17.
18. 19. 20. 21.
22. 23. 24. 25.
460
reporting. See Herbert A. Simon, “Municipal Reporting,” Municipal Year Book: 1938 (Chicago, IL: International City Manager’s Association, 1938), pp. 47–51; and Clarence E. Ridley and Herbert A. Simon, “Trends in Municipal Reporting,” Public Opinion Quarterly 2 (1938), pp. 465– 468. See also O. W. Campbell, “San Diego’s 1951 Annual Report,” Public Administration Review 13 (1953), pp. 30 –32; and Wylie Kilpatrick, “Reporting Municipal Government,” in Albert Lepawsky (ed.), Administration: The Art and Science of Organization and Management (New York: Knopf, 1949), pp. 552–553. Abe S. Rosen,. “Public Relations Activities and Means,” in The Public Relations of Local Governments: Papers Presented at the World Conference of Local Governments (The Hague, M. Nijhoff for the International Union of Local Authorities, 1962), pp. 34 –37. John D. Millet, Management in the Public Service: The Quest for Effective Performance (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1954), pp. 142–143. Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, US Congress, Department of Defense Appropriation Bill, 1971 (House Report 91–1570), (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970). William H. Gilbert, “Special Reports and Events, ” in William H. Gilbert (ed.), Public Relations in Local Government (Washington, DC: International City Management Association, 1975), p. 166. Hindy Lauer Schachter, Public Agency Communication: Theory and Practice (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983), p. 195. William O. Chittick, State Department, Press, and Pressure Groups: A Role Analysis (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1970); Dan D. Nimmo, Newsgathering in Washington (New York, NY: Atherton, 1964); and Leon V. Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Lexington, MA: D. C. Health, 1973). L. Perry Cookingham, “The Public Administrator and the Press: Their Responsibility in Democratic Government,” in Robert B. Highsaw and Don L. Bowen (eds.), Communication in Public Administration (University, AL: University of Alabama Bureau of Public Administration, 1965), p. 67. J. A. R. Pimlott, Public Relations and American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1951), p. 97. Stephen Hess, The Government/Press Connection: Press Officers and Their Offices (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984), p. 115. Delmer D. Dunn, Public Officials and the Press (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley 1969), p. 60. Thomas E. Patterson, “Time and News: The Media’s Limitations as an Instrument of Democracy,” International Political Science Review 19 (1998), pp. 55– 67; and Thomas E. Patterson, “Bad News, Bad Governance,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 546 (1996), pp. 97–108. Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980), p. 49. Howard Kurtz, Media Circus: The Trouble with America’s Newspapers (New York: Times Books, 1993), p. 341. William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 107. Cary Coglianese and Margaret Howard, “Getting the Message Out: Regulatory Policy and the Press,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3 (1998), p. 48. Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
26. 27.
28. 29.
30.
31.
32.
33. 34. 35. 36.
37. 38.
39. 40. 41.
42.
Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. xxiii. Stephen Hess, News & Newsmaking (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996), p. 122. See also Carl Sessions Stepp, “Of the People, By the People, Bore the People,” Washington Journalism Review 14 (1992), pp.22–26; and Phyllis Kaniss, Making Local News (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 122. Kurtz, Media Circus, op. cit., p. 38. Dan D. Nimmo and James E. Combs, Mediated Political Realities, 2nd ed., (New York, NY: Longman, 1990), pp. 25–30; J. Herbert Altschull, Agents of Power: The Media and Public Policy, 2nd ed., (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1995), pp. 123–133; W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion, 3rd ed., (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1996) and Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., Shanto Iyengar, Adam Simon, and Oliver Wright, “Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary World of Local News,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 1 (1996), pp. 6 –23. University of Miami, FL, “National Survey Finds Crime Dominates Local TV News,” News Release, May 6, 1997. See also Mark Fitzgerald, “Local TV News Lacks Substance,” Editor & Publisher 130 (1997), pp. 8 –9. Paul Klite, Robert A. Bardwell, and Jason Salzman, Not in the Public Interest: A Snapshot of Local TV News in America 3/11/98 (Denver, CO: Rocky Mountain Media Watch, 1998). Paul D. Klite, Robert A. Bardwell, and Jason Salzman, “Local TV News: Getting Away with Murder,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 2 (1997), pp. 102–113. Charles Layton and Mary Walton, “Missing the Story at the Statehouse,” American Journalism Review 20 (1998), pp. 42–57. James M. Grant, “View from the Hinterlands,” Public Administration Times 21 (August, 1998), p. 1. William L. Rivers, The Adversaries: Politics and the Press (Boston, MA: Beacon 1971). Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Christopher Harper, And That’s the Way It Will Be: News and Information in a Digital World (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 29. Howard Kurtz, Hot Air: All Talk, All the Time (New York: Times Books 1996.). Stephanie Denning, “Toward an End to Fear and Loathing of the News: Making the Media Work for You,” The Agenda: Newsletter of the Section on Health & Human Services Administration of the American Society for Public Administration 4 (Summer 1997), p. 4. Sandra Upshur Arnette, “Improving Your Agency’s Image,” Journal of Housing and Community Development 52 (1995), p. 38. Hindy Lauer Schachter, op. cit., pp. 65– 66. Taegan D. Goddard and Christopher Riback, You Won—Now What? How Americans Can Make Democracy Work from City Hall to the White House (New York, NY: Scribner 1998), p. 191. This discussion is partly based on comments from practitioners during several presentations of earlier versions of this paper, including at the American Society for Public Administration’s 1998 annual national conference and its 1997 Midwest Region conference. The section is also partly based on the author’s participantobservation as a media spokesperson (1990 –1997) and as a newsmaker (1976 –1989) in a medium-sized media market in the Midwest.
Winter 1999
461
Public Relations Review
43. 44.
61. 62.
Goddard and Riback, op. cit., p. 171. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, The Interplay of Influence: News, Advertising, Politics, and the Mass Media, 3rd ed, (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1992). Graham Knight and Bruce Curtis, “The Publicity of State Subjects,” in David L. Paletz (ed.), Political Communication Research: Approaches, Studies, Assessments (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987), p. 59. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, “Attention, Boundary Effects, and LargeScale Policy Change in Air Transportation Policy,” in David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb (eds.), The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1994), p. 53. James L. Garnett, Communicating for Results in Government: A Strategic Approach for Public Managers (San Francisco. CA: Jossey-Bass 1992), pp. 186 –194. Robert D. Putnam, “Democracy in America at Century’s End,” in Axel Hadenius (ed.), Democracy’s Victory and Crisis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 27–70. Sherry J. Fontaine, “Using the Mass Media as an Instructional Tool in a Public Affairs Course,” Journal of Public Affairs Education 4 (1998), p. 287. Julio Borquez, “Newsmaking and Policymaking: Steps Toward a Dialogue,” in Robert J. Spitzer (ed.), Media and Public Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), p. 34.; and Joseph P. Viteritti, “The Environmental Context of Communication: Public Sector Organizations” in James L. Garnett and Alexander Kousmin (eds.), Handbook of Administrative Communication (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1997), pp. 87– 88. David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb, “Problem Definition: An Emerging Perspective,” in David A Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb (eds.), The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda (Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press, 1994), pp. 17–21. Jeffrey S. Luke, Catalytic Leadership: Strategies for an Interconnected World (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1998), p. 62. Nancy C. Roberts and Paula J. King, Transforming Public Policy: Dynamics of Policy Entrepreneurship and Innovation (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1996). Judith V. S. Turk, Information Subsidies and Media Content: A Study of Public Relations Influence on the News (Columbia. SC: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, 1986). Jeffrey S. Luke, op. cit., p. 41. Julio Borquez, op. cit., p. 33. Lori Dorfman, Katie Woodruff, Vivian Chavez, and Lawrence Wallack, “Youth and Violence on Local Television News in California,” American Journal of Public Health 87 (1997), pp. 1311–1317. Goddard and Riback, op. cit., pp. 188, 179 –180. Steven Cohen and William Eimicke, The New Effective Public Manager: Achieving Success in a Changing Government (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass 1995), pp. 221– 231; and William L. Waugh Jr. and Edith Kelly Manns, “Communication Skills and Outcome Assessment in Public Administration Education” in Peter J. Bergerson (ed.), Teaching Public Policy: Theory, Research, and Practice (New York: Greenwood, 1991), pp. 135–143. Martin Linsky, Impact: How the Press Affects Federal Policymaking (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986), p. 203. Jamieson and Campbell, op cit. Denning, op. cit.
462
Vol. 25, No. 4
45.
46.
47. 48.
49. 50.
51.
52. 53. 54.
55. 56. 57.
58. 59.
60.
Reporters and Bureaucrats
63. 64. 65. 66.
67. 68. 69.
70.
71. 72.
73.
74.
75. 76.
Arnette, op cit., p. 39. Goddard and Riback, op cit., pp. 187–189. Barry S. Levy, “Communicating Public Health: A ‘Top 10⬘ List,” The Nation’s Health 27 (January 1997.), p. 2. Sherry Cartwright, “The Role of the Media in Public Administration,” Public Administration Times 20 (September 1997), pp. 11–12; Arthur Charity, “Public Journalism for the People,” National Civic Review 85 (1996), pp. 7–13; and Anthony J. Eksterowicz, Robert Roberts, and Adrian Clark, “Public Journalism and Public Knowledge,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3 (1998), pp. 74 –95. Linsky, op cit., pp. 124 –127. Stephen Hess, The Government/Press Connection: Press Officers and Their Offices, op. cit., pp. 18 –37. Robert S. Gilmour and Laura S. Jensen, “Reinventing Government Accountability: Public Functions. Privatization and the Meaning of ‘State Action’,” Public Administration Review 58 (1998), pp. 247–257. Gregory S. Allison, “GFOA’s Popular Reporting Awards Program: Revised and Improved,” Government Finance Review 11 (June 1995), pp. 36 –37; and Harry Hatry, Craig Gerhart, and Martha Marshall, “Eleven Ways to Make Performance Measurement More Useful to Public Managers,” Public Management 76 (1994), pp. 15–18. Robert D. Behn, “What Right Do Public Managers Have to Lead?” Public Administration Review 58 (1998), pp. 209 –224. Hindy Lauer Schachter, Reinventing Government or Reinventing Ourselves: The Role of Citizen Owners in Making a Better Government (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 84 – 89. James L. Garnett, “Epilogue: Directions and Agendas for Administrative Communication,” in James L. Garnett and Alexander Kousmin (eds.), Handbook of Administrative Communication (New York, NY: Marcel Dekker, 1997), p. 752.; and Goddard and Riback, op cit., pp. 205–211. William A. Miller, “A How-To on Developing Your Own Internationally Oriented TV Program: Taking the ASPA Message to the Viewer,” paper presented to the American Society for Public Administration in Seattle, May 1998. “Government Kiosks: Issues of Funds and Turf,” Government Finance Review 10 (December 1994), p. 5. Sally Washington, Consultation and Communications: Integrating Multiple Interests into Policy, Managing Media Relations (Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1997), p. 35.
Winter 1999
463
Mordecai Lee
Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
Reporters and Bureaucrats: Public Relations CounterStrategies by Public Administrators in an Era of Media Disinterest in Government ABSTRACT: Public administration traditionally identified reporting to the public as one of the public relations duties of a government administrator in a democracy. Recent trends in media coverage of government have created new problems for managers seeking to accomplish such democratic accountability. This article summarizes reports from practitioners and prescriptionoriented academicians about emerging developments in media coverage of government and the attendant public relations counter-strategies being adopted by public administrators. Mordecai Lee is an assistant professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
PUBLIC RELATIONS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: AN OBLIGATION IN A DEMOCRACY Public managers are inherently different from business administrators because of the context of democratic and representative government Winter 1999
451
Public Relations Review
within which they operate.1 One manifestation of this difference is the accountability of government officials to elected institutions and to the sovereign source of legitimate power in a democracy, the citizenry. However, most studies about government officials and democracy tend to focus on the interaction between the media and politics, the elected side of government, and pay less attention to the non-elected side of government, public administration. For example, Jacobs and Shapiro’s call for an integrated study of political communications, public opinion, and the policy-making process omitted reference to the role of the bureaucracy.2 Nye’s review of the public’s declining confidence in government generally equated government with elected officials and only glancingly referred to public administrators.3 But, problems of media coverage of politics, elections, and elected officials have been given thorough analysis.4 The effect of media coverage on the non-elected side of government has not received sufficient parallel attention. After reviewing contemporary research in political communication, Nimmo and Swanson concluded that “even more rare are analyses of bureaucratic communication.”5 Swoboda observed that the interactions between public administration and the media are understudied.6 Public relations is the means by which an administrator interacts with the citizenry and is held accountable.7 One category within this general rubric is public reporting, which entails post hoc reporting from the agency to the public-at-large. Public reporting is a different public relations activity from administrative efforts to increase citizen participation in an agency’s decision-making process, which usually focuses on involving interested individuals (who sometimes represent attentive audiences or organized groups) in the stages leading up to a major decision by a government agency.8 Similarly, public reporting is different from the public relations emphasis on improving service to the client-customer.
TRADITIONAL PUBLIC RELATIONS APPROACHES TO DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY: PUBLIC REPORTING AND PRESS RELATIONS Some early theoreticians focused on implementing democratic accountability through direct public reporting of administrative agencies, especially annual reports by municipal administrators. “Official reports of governmental authorities submitted or made available to the public as an accounting of official conduct might be made a more effective agency for the promotion of good government and an essential foundation of popular rule.”9 Issuance of an annual report for purposes of public accountability focused mostly on municipal government.10 Some agencies experimented in the 1950s and 1960s with non-print forms of annual reports, such as slides, movies, and tapes.11 Elected officials often met these efforts with hostility.12 In the case of the Defense Department’s film version of its annual report, Congress prohibited any funding for it.13 Many public agencies continued to have legal obligations to issue annual 452
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
reports above and beyond their annual financial statements.14 However, these reports were generally not widely used for purposes of accountability to the public, but instead were usually submitted primarily to the elected bodies, such as the legislative branch of that level of government.15 The decline of the emphasis on direct public reporting was replaced with a focus on press relations as the main public relations tool for administrative accountability in a democracy.16 “The most important channel of communication between any public administrator and his clientele is the press. Likewise the most critical observer of the public administration is the press.”17 According to Pimlott, “the classical view has been that the press should be the chief medium of information on public affairs.”18 Hess noted the democratic as well as administrative rationales for agencies to deal with the media: “Press offices could be considered not only as a government subsidy or government efficiency, but as an entitlement that flows from the nature of a free society and the relationship of the state to the citizen.”19 Therefore, a public agency has a duty to maintain a public information operation whose mission is media relations. “Policy makers believe that the most obvious responsibility of the press is to inform the public about events and activities of government.”20 This responsibility is generally viewed as including a reactive role, by responding to inquiries from reporters, as well as a proactive one of initiating efforts to obtain media coverage of agency operations. However, what is a public administrator to do if the news media fails to function as an instrument of democracy?21 This article synthesizes practitioner literature, reports from the field, and prescription-oriented academic observations regarding emerging developments in media coverage of government agencies and the attendant public relations counter-strategies being adopted by public administrators.
REDEFINING THE NEWS: THE DISAPPEARING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR Traditionally, press coverage had tended to dedicate a substantial focus on government, both elected institutions and administrative agencies. Newspapers had organized their work based on institutional beats and coverage of the incrementalism of public policy and administration: What’s happening today at the courthouse? What’s happening at City Hall? This orientation automatically led to significant coverage of public administration.22 Kurtz described “the newspaper of the 1970s [as] page after page of gray type and boring stories about bureaucracy.”23 However, bureaucracies— especially regulatory agencies—are harder for the media to cover than are politicians, given their mind-numbing and tedious actions inherent in public administration.24 A recent review of reporting about the regulatory actions of the federal Environmental Protection Agency concluded that coverage occurred only when they reflected “an ‘everyday’ issue, novelty or policy Winter 1999
453
Public Relations Review
failure.”25 In general, “executive departments, from HUD to Agriculture, were too widely dispersed to cover efficiently. It was so much easier to have your star reporter standing in the White House lawn.”26 With television becoming the preeminent news medium, its technological and institutional imperatives led to a redefinition of news. For television, coverage of government and bureaucratic news inevitably necessitated stories with ‘talking heads,’ that is, a government official explaining a complicated policy matter. “Our consultants said government news is boring to viewers,” said the manager of a local TV station.27 For example, the HUD scandal was not of interest to TV because “a series of complicated ripoffs by anonymous Joe Blows is not exactly compelling material for the evening news. If a TV reporter can’t explain it in twenty seconds, forget it.”28 Television news shifted to drama, emotion, and spectacle,29 elements rarely found in public administration. A content analysis of local TV news in eight markets found that coverage of governmental affairs, once a mainstay of local television news programs, now occupies less than 15% of the news during an average program. “The scarce coverage of governmental affairs is perhaps the most disturbing news to come out of the survey,” the content analysis’s chief researcher stated.30 A 1998 study of 102 local television stations documented that government news amounted to almost 10% of all stories, far overshadowed by the 39% dedicated to crime and disasters.31 The proportions were comparable to the preceding 3 years,32 suggesting a well-ingrained stable pattern. Another factor that contributed to the shrinkage of reporting about public administration was a downgrading of coverage of state government compared to earlier newsgathering habits.33 A California-based administrator summed up the new realities of media coverage when he recounted hearing a news reporter, based in the State Capitol, “bemoan the difficulty in convincing her news director to run stories about government and public policy.”34
REDEFINING THE NEWS: THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR AS “BAD GUY” The tone of media coverage of the government has shifted from the traditional adversarial model35 to one of cynicism.36 Healthy skepticism has been replaced by automatic negativity. Another factor that contributes to the anti-public administration slant of news reporting includes the tilt of talk radio and talk TV to conservative voices that are ideologically anti-government.37 Reports from media specialists at public agencies indicate a consistent negative slant to contemporary coverage of public administration. One practitioner noted that “as bureaucrats, most of us either fear or loathe (or both!) the media. It seems they are our sworn enemies, determined to bad-mouth government at every opportunity and every turn.” The normative goal for practitioners, she suggested, is to “be able to pick up the paper or turn on the TV news without cringing.”38 A 454
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
practitioner from the public housing field wrote, “often we are criticized by the media about the failure of our agencies, our programs, and our residents.”39 Schachter described how, for the area of public administration communications, “frames of reference” are the general basis for communicating effectively about established beliefs, whether by administrators or reporters.40 Regarding public administration, reporters rely on “enduring American themes or archetypes. . . that expose government incompetence.”41 Several archetypal stories appear to recur when reporters cover public administration, including the moneywasting bureaucrat, the victim of a bureaucracy, and uncaring government.42 Some local TV stations run stories exposing wasteful government spending as part of a continuing series, often entitled “it’s your money” or “waste patrol.” In one instance, the Connecticut Department of Transportation had compromised with citizens unhappy with a proposed new bridge by increasing the bridge’s construction budget to include decorative stone facing, thus improving the esthetics of the structure. A story about that decision could have portrayed the agency in a positive light as responsive to local needs. Instead, a local TV station described the added cost as unnecessary and extravagant.43 Because TV seeks victims and heavies who can convert a public policy story into a morality play between good and evil or underdog versus Goliath,44 public administrators are usually on the losing end of such juxtapositions. “Little guy fights city hall” is an archetypal story premised on the bureaucrat as bad guy. This story line focuses on the suffering of an individual or family purportedly being victimized by a rigid and insensitive bureaucrat. These stories generally imply that the public administrator is a martinet who is rigidly applying a regulation or requirement instead of making an exception based on decency and reasonableness. Another archetypal story is the one that presents problems in a way that “implies their solution by further administration.”45 The story tends to depict a situation in a manner that suggests that this is a “problem” that the government is currently doing nothing about. The stories insinuate bureaucratic incompetence or indifference to what the authors of the stories identify as a problem. They “are generally accompanied by an implicit message about what the government should be called upon to do.”46 All these archetypal stories are “grabbers,” because they grab the emotions of the viewers and provide sentimental reactions. They are also “teasable”; that is, can be promoted before the broadcast with tidbits that are likely to lure the viewer to stay tuned. The tease of “Your tax dollars are being wasted; details at 11:00!” can be irresistible to viewers. The common theme of these archetypal story lines is that in all of them the government manager is the predetermined “heavy” or “bad guy.”
PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNTERSTRATEGIES BY PUBLIC MANAGERS What is a public administrator to do? Garnett’s overarching recommendation is that public administrators need to approach their communiWinter 1999
455
Public Relations Review
cation needs, whether internal or external, from a strategic point of view. Specifically regarding media relations, he emphasizes the need to identify goals and to pursue them with self-discipline.47 Practitioners in the field and prescriptive-oriented researchers are beginning to identify public relations counter-strategies that can be used by the public manager in response to these new communication realities. These responses focus on three areas: enhancing the policy entrepreneurship role of the public administrator, updating the media skills of public managers to adapt to new media realities, and reviving direct public reporting. Policy Entrepreneurship A new and important public relations skill for a public administrator is the ability to promote one’s policy agenda in the public realm. Leaders cannot act passively when they have identified an important problem or solution. Nor can they consider the “outside world” as beyond their responsibility, reach, or competence. Government managers, like public policy players, need to go outside their domain to obtain public recognition for the issues and responses for which they are advocating. With the demise of many traditional social and civic institutions,48 the media have become the primary venue for promoting public discourse on policy issues. “Consequently, the mass media have also become one of the most effective means of communicating ideas, disseminating information, and educating the public on public policy issues.”49 As such, the media decides what public issues are important and how they are constructed.50 This, in turn, is having an impact on the policy making process. Because “spin” defines what a problem is and implicitly controls what the solution will be, the winner in a policy debate is whoever successfully pitches the first story in the media about that issue. This means that a successful policy entrepreneur is effective at interacting with the media at the definitionsetting stage of media coverage: What is a problem that deserves media (and, therefore, public and governmental) attention? How will the “problem” be defined?51 According to Luke: How an issue is reported has significant impact on how the problem is initially characterized or framed. Once an issue has been described in one way early in the issue attention cycle, it is difficult for individuals to reframe the issue to a different perspective.52
In the realm of public policy, all players are now essentially equal, whether they are agency administrators, elected officials, advocacy groups, special interest groups and so forth. All are policy entrepreneurs who seek to influence the media’s agenda-setting decision making.53 Research in the 1980s had suggested that the efforts by public information offices of governmental agencies to influence the agenda of salient issues within the realm of the public policy debate had only a minor impact.54 However, Luke suggests that contemporary practitioners need to 456
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
be more proactive as policy entrepreneurs by using the media. “As catalysts, effective public leaders do not necessarily promote solutions; they promote problems. Thus, they are advocates for issue emergence.”55 Borquez observed that effective “policy entrepreneurs ‘shop around’ for problems to which they can link their pet solutions.”56 For example, a study of crime stories on local television news documented the “extremely limited coverage of contributing etiological factors in stories on violence. If our nation’s most popular source of news continues to report on violence primarily through crime stories isolated from their social context, the chance for widespread support for public health solutions to violence will be diminished.”57 Goddard and Riback’s examples of best practices include a public administrator who was able “to influence the story while remaining in the background” and another who succeeded in spinning a potentially damaging story in a way that led to a policy resolution of her choosing.58 To be effective, modern public administrators need act as policy entrepreneurs, especially at the problem-defining stage of the policy process. Media Relations Skills for New Media Realities New media coverage trends call for new media relations skills of public managers. When a reporter calls, the contemporary government administrator needs to become more sophisticated by being prepared and trained with skills that reflect the new realities of media coverage of public administration.59 Linsky concluded, “having policymakers who are skilled at managing the media will make for better government.”60 Administrators need to learn how to “talk” to the media on its own terms. Reporters and editors become interested in covering public policy when it can be packaged both as conflict and in a personalized way, because that approach is visual, is attention getting, and creates audience identification. In particular, TV seeks victims and heavies who convert a public policy story into a morality play between good and evil or of an underdog versus Goliath.61 Practitioners suggest several approaches. First, an agency’s message needs to be condensed so that it can be expressed in “10 words or less [sic].”62 Second, the agency needs to give its public policy positions a human face. “The easiest way to sell a story to the media is to point out the human interest aspect of your story. Anything that impacts [public housing] residents, or a resident success story for that matter, usually will grab the attention of the media.”63 Third, the agency needs to make its story as easy as possible for reporters to cover it and to understand it.64 Fourth, administrators need to communicate in multiple ways by using a variety of media.65 Fifth, public managers need to learn how to deal with the emergence of public journalism because it has the potential of being an ally, rather than an opponent, of public administration.66 Other suggestions are more traditional, including highlighting the importance of involving public affairs staff during the policymaking process instead of afterwards67 and enhancing the stature of the agency’s public information officer Winter 1999
457
Public Relations Review
(PIO). Hess suggests accomplishing this by assuring the PIO access to the top levels of the agency, enhancing the PIO’s credibility, providing professional training for PIOs, and being as responsive as possible to media inquiries.68 Direct Public Reporting The current focus on accountability in government has tended to ignore direct public reporting. Instead, it highlights either theoretical issues related to privatization69 or data collection and presentation questions, such as benchmarking and performance measurement. For example, the Center for Accountability and Performance of the American Society for Public Administration is in the midst of a multi-year program to develop more than 50 case studies, from all levels of government, on performance management in government. The American Society for Public Administration’s January 1997 Public Administration Times included a special supplement devoted to Performance Management: Perspectives for Today’s Public-Sector Manager. Another approach is known as “popular financial reporting.” It entails reformatting government accounting reports so they are more comprehensible to lay people.70 Now there is emerging a parallel focus on reinvigorating public administration’s early attention to direct public reporting. According to Behn, “this is perhaps the least objectionable form of public-manager leadership.” He argues that government administrators need to “explain to the public in general—not just to their own stakeholder organizations—what they are attempting to accomplish, why they are attempting to do so, what they have actually achieved in the past month, quarter, year, and decade.”71 How an administrator reports to the public is as important as what is reported. Public reporting is an activity that can be performed by communicating directly with the public, instead of being dependent on the media as an intermediary. Administrators are seeking new ways to accomplish public accountability outside the channels of the news media. Schachter urges reviving the focus on public reporting that had been promoted by the Bureaus of Municipal Research at the beginning of the century. She suggests that local government should issue annual reports comparable to corporate annual reports and deliver them directly to the citizens. Her recommendation is to have a three-tier public reporting approach: a city report, agency reports, and bureau reports.72 The focus on the content of public reporting needs to be complemented with a focus on the methods used to distribute such reports. Administrators are being urged to use new on-line technologies, which offer unprecedented options for direct contact with the public, such as web pages, virtual town hall meetings, electronic newsletters, citizen chat rooms, e-mail, and so forth.73 Another opportunity recommended by a practitioner is regular programming by public administrators on either the free community public access channel or the local government channel on local cable systems.74 Finally, a practitioner publication noted the benefits of using informational kiosks shared by several units of government to 458
Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
provide timely information direct to the public and the users of government services.75 An international summary of the practices by senior government officials of “first world” democracies observed an increase in the proactive dissemination of information to the public. “An important off-shoot might be to undermine the information-filtering power of the media by diversifying the sources of government information supplied to the citizens,” the report noted.76
CONCLUSION Although the media coverage of the government has been diminishing and assuming a greater negative tone, in a democracy there is no change in the public relations obligation of the public administrator to keep the public informed. Public administration practitioners and practice-oriented academics have begun to identify public relations counter-strategies that permit managers to adapt to these media developments and to continue pursuing their democratic responsibilities.
NOTES 1. 2.
3. 4.
5.
6.
7.
8. 9. 10.
John J. Kirlin, “The Big Questions of Public Administration in a Democracy,” Public Administration Review 56 (1996), pp. 416 – 423. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Toward the Integrated Study of Political Communications. Public Opinion, and the Policy-making Process,” PS: Political Science & Politics 29 (1996), pp. 10 –13. Joseph S. Nye Jr., “The Media and Declining Confidence in Government,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 2 (1997), pp. 4 –9. Herbert J. Gans, “What Can Journalists Actually Do for American Democracy?” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3 (1998), pp. 6 –12; and Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: A. Knopf, 1993). Dan D. Nimmo and David L. Swanson,. “The Field of Political Communication: Beyond the Voter Persuasion Paradigm,” in David L. Swanson and Dan D. Nimmo (eds.), New Directions in Political Communication: A Resource Book (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990), p. 28. Dale P. Swoboda, “Accuracy and Accountability in Reporting Local Government Budget Agencies: Evidence from the Newsroom and From Newsmakers,” Public Budgeting & Finance 15 (1995), p. 89. Hans Reimer, “Public Relations in a Democracy,” in The Public Relations of Local Governments: Papers Presented at the World Conference of Local Governments (The Hague: M. Nijhoff for the International Union of Local Authorities, 1962), pp. 7–13. Cheryl Simrell King and Camilla Stivers (eds.), Government is Us: Public Administration in an Anti-Government Era (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). Herman C. Beyle,. Government Reporting in Chicago (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1928), pp. 6 –7. Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s first published writings were about direct municipal
Winter 1999
459
Public Relations Review
11.
12. 13.
14.
15. 16.
17.
18. 19. 20. 21.
22. 23. 24. 25.
460
reporting. See Herbert A. Simon, “Municipal Reporting,” Municipal Year Book: 1938 (Chicago, IL: International City Manager’s Association, 1938), pp. 47–51; and Clarence E. Ridley and Herbert A. Simon, “Trends in Municipal Reporting,” Public Opinion Quarterly 2 (1938), pp. 465– 468. See also O. W. Campbell, “San Diego’s 1951 Annual Report,” Public Administration Review 13 (1953), pp. 30 –32; and Wylie Kilpatrick, “Reporting Municipal Government,” in Albert Lepawsky (ed.), Administration: The Art and Science of Organization and Management (New York: Knopf, 1949), pp. 552–553. Abe S. Rosen,. “Public Relations Activities and Means,” in The Public Relations of Local Governments: Papers Presented at the World Conference of Local Governments (The Hague, M. Nijhoff for the International Union of Local Authorities, 1962), pp. 34 –37. John D. Millet, Management in the Public Service: The Quest for Effective Performance (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1954), pp. 142–143. Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, US Congress, Department of Defense Appropriation Bill, 1971 (House Report 91–1570), (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970). William H. Gilbert, “Special Reports and Events, ” in William H. Gilbert (ed.), Public Relations in Local Government (Washington, DC: International City Management Association, 1975), p. 166. Hindy Lauer Schachter, Public Agency Communication: Theory and Practice (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983), p. 195. William O. Chittick, State Department, Press, and Pressure Groups: A Role Analysis (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1970); Dan D. Nimmo, Newsgathering in Washington (New York, NY: Atherton, 1964); and Leon V. Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Lexington, MA: D. C. Health, 1973). L. Perry Cookingham, “The Public Administrator and the Press: Their Responsibility in Democratic Government,” in Robert B. Highsaw and Don L. Bowen (eds.), Communication in Public Administration (University, AL: University of Alabama Bureau of Public Administration, 1965), p. 67. J. A. R. Pimlott, Public Relations and American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1951), p. 97. Stephen Hess, The Government/Press Connection: Press Officers and Their Offices (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984), p. 115. Delmer D. Dunn, Public Officials and the Press (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley 1969), p. 60. Thomas E. Patterson, “Time and News: The Media’s Limitations as an Instrument of Democracy,” International Political Science Review 19 (1998), pp. 55– 67; and Thomas E. Patterson, “Bad News, Bad Governance,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 546 (1996), pp. 97–108. Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980), p. 49. Howard Kurtz, Media Circus: The Trouble with America’s Newspapers (New York: Times Books, 1993), p. 341. William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 107. Cary Coglianese and Margaret Howard, “Getting the Message Out: Regulatory Policy and the Press,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3 (1998), p. 48. Vol. 25, No. 4
Reporters and Bureaucrats
26. 27.
28. 29.
30.
31.
32.
33. 34. 35. 36.
37. 38.
39. 40. 41.
42.
Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. xxiii. Stephen Hess, News & Newsmaking (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996), p. 122. See also Carl Sessions Stepp, “Of the People, By the People, Bore the People,” Washington Journalism Review 14 (1992), pp.22–26; and Phyllis Kaniss, Making Local News (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 122. Kurtz, Media Circus, op. cit., p. 38. Dan D. Nimmo and James E. Combs, Mediated Political Realities, 2nd ed., (New York, NY: Longman, 1990), pp. 25–30; J. Herbert Altschull, Agents of Power: The Media and Public Policy, 2nd ed., (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1995), pp. 123–133; W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion, 3rd ed., (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1996) and Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., Shanto Iyengar, Adam Simon, and Oliver Wright, “Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary World of Local News,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 1 (1996), pp. 6 –23. University of Miami, FL, “National Survey Finds Crime Dominates Local TV News,” News Release, May 6, 1997. See also Mark Fitzgerald, “Local TV News Lacks Substance,” Editor & Publisher 130 (1997), pp. 8 –9. Paul Klite, Robert A. Bardwell, and Jason Salzman, Not in the Public Interest: A Snapshot of Local TV News in America 3/11/98 (Denver, CO: Rocky Mountain Media Watch, 1998). Paul D. Klite, Robert A. Bardwell, and Jason Salzman, “Local TV News: Getting Away with Murder,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 2 (1997), pp. 102–113. Charles Layton and Mary Walton, “Missing the Story at the Statehouse,” American Journalism Review 20 (1998), pp. 42–57. James M. Grant, “View from the Hinterlands,” Public Administration Times 21 (August, 1998), p. 1. William L. Rivers, The Adversaries: Politics and the Press (Boston, MA: Beacon 1971). Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Christopher Harper, And That’s the Way It Will Be: News and Information in a Digital World (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 29. Howard Kurtz, Hot Air: All Talk, All the Time (New York: Times Books 1996.). Stephanie Denning, “Toward an End to Fear and Loathing of the News: Making the Media Work for You,” The Agenda: Newsletter of the Section on Health & Human Services Administration of the American Society for Public Administration 4 (Summer 1997), p. 4. Sandra Upshur Arnette, “Improving Your Agency’s Image,” Journal of Housing and Community Development 52 (1995), p. 38. Hindy Lauer Schachter, op. cit., pp. 65– 66. Taegan D. Goddard and Christopher Riback, You Won—Now What? How Americans Can Make Democracy Work from City Hall to the White House (New York, NY: Scribner 1998), p. 191. This discussion is partly based on comments from practitioners during several presentations of earlier versions of this paper, including at the American Society for Public Administration’s 1998 annual national conference and its 1997 Midwest Region conference. The section is also partly based on the author’s participantobservation as a media spokesperson (1990 –1997) and as a newsmaker (1976 –1989) in a medium-sized media market in the Midwest.
Winter 1999
461
Public Relations Review
43. 44.
61. 62.
Goddard and Riback, op. cit., p. 171. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, The Interplay of Influence: News, Advertising, Politics, and the Mass Media, 3rd ed, (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1992). Graham Knight and Bruce Curtis, “The Publicity of State Subjects,” in David L. Paletz (ed.), Political Communication Research: Approaches, Studies, Assessments (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987), p. 59. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, “Attention, Boundary Effects, and LargeScale Policy Change in Air Transportation Policy,” in David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb (eds.), The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1994), p. 53. James L. Garnett, Communicating for Results in Government: A Strategic Approach for Public Managers (San Francisco. CA: Jossey-Bass 1992), pp. 186 –194. Robert D. Putnam, “Democracy in America at Century’s End,” in Axel Hadenius (ed.), Democracy’s Victory and Crisis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 27–70. Sherry J. Fontaine, “Using the Mass Media as an Instructional Tool in a Public Affairs Course,” Journal of Public Affairs Education 4 (1998), p. 287. Julio Borquez, “Newsmaking and Policymaking: Steps Toward a Dialogue,” in Robert J. Spitzer (ed.), Media and Public Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), p. 34.; and Joseph P. Viteritti, “The Environmental Context of Communication: Public Sector Organizations” in James L. Garnett and Alexander Kousmin (eds.), Handbook of Administrative Communication (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1997), pp. 87– 88. David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb, “Problem Definition: An Emerging Perspective,” in David A Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb (eds.), The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda (Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press, 1994), pp. 17–21. Jeffrey S. Luke, Catalytic Leadership: Strategies for an Interconnected World (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1998), p. 62. Nancy C. Roberts and Paula J. King, Transforming Public Policy: Dynamics of Policy Entrepreneurship and Innovation (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1996). Judith V. S. Turk, Information Subsidies and Media Content: A Study of Public Relations Influence on the News (Columbia. SC: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, 1986). Jeffrey S. Luke, op. cit., p. 41. Julio Borquez, op. cit., p. 33. Lori Dorfman, Katie Woodruff, Vivian Chavez, and Lawrence Wallack, “Youth and Violence on Local Television News in California,” American Journal of Public Health 87 (1997), pp. 1311–1317. Goddard and Riback, op. cit., pp. 188, 179 –180. Steven Cohen and William Eimicke, The New Effective Public Manager: Achieving Success in a Changing Government (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass 1995), pp. 221– 231; and William L. Waugh Jr. and Edith Kelly Manns, “Communication Skills and Outcome Assessment in Public Administration Education” in Peter J. Bergerson (ed.), Teaching Public Policy: Theory, Research, and Practice (New York: Greenwood, 1991), pp. 135–143. Martin Linsky, Impact: How the Press Affects Federal Policymaking (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986), p. 203. Jamieson and Campbell, op cit. Denning, op. cit.
462
Vol. 25, No. 4
45.
46.
47. 48.
49. 50.
51.
52. 53. 54.
55. 56. 57.
58. 59.
60.
Reporters and Bureaucrats
63. 64. 65. 66.
67. 68. 69.
70.
71. 72.
73.
74.
75. 76.
Arnette, op cit., p. 39. Goddard and Riback, op cit., pp. 187–189. Barry S. Levy, “Communicating Public Health: A ‘Top 10⬘ List,” The Nation’s Health 27 (January 1997.), p. 2. Sherry Cartwright, “The Role of the Media in Public Administration,” Public Administration Times 20 (September 1997), pp. 11–12; Arthur Charity, “Public Journalism for the People,” National Civic Review 85 (1996), pp. 7–13; and Anthony J. Eksterowicz, Robert Roberts, and Adrian Clark, “Public Journalism and Public Knowledge,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3 (1998), pp. 74 –95. Linsky, op cit., pp. 124 –127. Stephen Hess, The Government/Press Connection: Press Officers and Their Offices, op. cit., pp. 18 –37. Robert S. Gilmour and Laura S. Jensen, “Reinventing Government Accountability: Public Functions. Privatization and the Meaning of ‘State Action’,” Public Administration Review 58 (1998), pp. 247–257. Gregory S. Allison, “GFOA’s Popular Reporting Awards Program: Revised and Improved,” Government Finance Review 11 (June 1995), pp. 36 –37; and Harry Hatry, Craig Gerhart, and Martha Marshall, “Eleven Ways to Make Performance Measurement More Useful to Public Managers,” Public Management 76 (1994), pp. 15–18. Robert D. Behn, “What Right Do Public Managers Have to Lead?” Public Administration Review 58 (1998), pp. 209 –224. Hindy Lauer Schachter, Reinventing Government or Reinventing Ourselves: The Role of Citizen Owners in Making a Better Government (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 84 – 89. James L. Garnett, “Epilogue: Directions and Agendas for Administrative Communication,” in James L. Garnett and Alexander Kousmin (eds.), Handbook of Administrative Communication (New York, NY: Marcel Dekker, 1997), p. 752.; and Goddard and Riback, op cit., pp. 205–211. William A. Miller, “A How-To on Developing Your Own Internationally Oriented TV Program: Taking the ASPA Message to the Viewer,” paper presented to the American Society for Public Administration in Seattle, May 1998. “Government Kiosks: Issues of Funds and Turf,” Government Finance Review 10 (December 1994), p. 5. Sally Washington, Consultation and Communications: Integrating Multiple Interests into Policy, Managing Media Relations (Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1997), p. 35.
Winter 1999
463