By Carolyn S. Carlson,
Ph.D.
Kennesaw State
University
August 12, 2013
I am going to tell you about two surveys I conducted last
year that are relevant to the topic we are discussing tonight. First I surveyed
reporters who cover federal agencies in Washington, and I got 146 respondents,
for a margin of error of about 7 percent. Then I surveyed current and former
members of the National Association of Government Communicators and got 154
responses, for a margin of error of 4.3 percent.
My questions focused on the interviewing process.
ž Pre-Approval
and Routing
•
98 percent of Public Affairs Offices believe
they have a better idea than reporters about who would be the best person to
give an interview on a given topic.
•
Three-quarters of journalists report they have
to get approval from PAOs before interviewing an agency employee.
•
Seven out of 10 reporters say their requests for
interviews are forwarded to PAOs for selective routing to whomever they
suggest.
ž Prohibition
•
About half the reporters said agencies outright
prohibit them from interviewing altogether at least some of the time, and 18
percent said it happens most of the time.
•
Two-thirds of PAOs say they feel justified in
refusing to grant an interview when the agency’s security is threatened or it
might reveal damaging information.
ž Avoidance
•
Three-fourths of PAOs know that journalists
attempt to “go around” them to contact staff members directly. However, nine
out of ten say their staff knows and will refer reporter to the PAO when they
have been contacted directly .
•
More than half of the reporters admit that they
tried to circumvent the public affairs office at least some of the time.
ž Trust
•
For the majority of PAOs, there are no reporters
that they trust enough to contact staff directly without having to go through
the public affairs office. Only about a third of PAOs said they had reporters
they gave free rein to contact staff directly, mostly long-time beat reporters.
•
In contrast, 40 percent of the PAOs say there
are specific reporters they will not allow their staff to talk to at all due to
problems with their stories in the past.
•
In fact, 14 percent reported that there were
entire media outlets they prohibited staff from talking to because of problems
with their stories.
ž Monitoring
•
Two
thirds of PAOs feel it is necessary to supervise or otherwise monitor
interviews with members of their agency's staff.
•
Meanwhile, 85 percent of reporters say they get
monitored at least some of the time – it breaks down a third some of the time,
a third most of the time and 16 percent all of the time.
•
Three-fourths of PAOs said they agreed that monitoring
interviews was a good way to make sure their agency’s staff was quoted
correctly in the stories.
•
Almost 40 percent of PAOs say they use their
tapes and notes from the interviews they monitor to dispute misquotes.
•
But only
17 percent said they required reporters to review their quotes with them before
publication. Fully three-fourths of the PAOs said they did not require pre-publication review.
ž Reporters’
View On PAO Control
•
Seven out of 10 reporters agreed with the
statement: “I consider government agency controls over who I interview a form
of censorship.”
•
About 85 percent of the journalists agreed with
the statement that “The public is not getting the information it needs because
of barriers agencies are imposing on journalists’ reporting practices.”
ž PAOs’
Attitude
•
Two-thirds of PAOs “believe that controlling
media coverage of the agency is a very important part of protecting the
agency's reputation”
•
Virtually all PAOs agree their “job is to make
sure accurate, positive information from my agency is conveyed to the public”.
So that’s where the issue stands.
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