Thompson wants to examine the view that the relationship between the media and the public sphere is damaged and that this is contributing to declining levels of trust in public institutions. He does this, perversely but perhaps understandably, by looking at a public media institution, the BBC.

Quoting Tony Blair, Thompson wonders whether the British media’s ferocity is a contributing factor:

It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.
Blair’s speech to Reuters

I am sure few public sector communicators were surprised by these comments. We all have our moments with the media. As we should. Democracy thrives on scrutiny. I wouldn’t want to live and work in a society where the media didn’t –or couldn’t– look critically at the government. As Thompson says:

One of the tasks of a free press is to uncover public malfeasance. The media is right to be alert to it and to pursue and investigate any evidence that it is taking place.

He is also right when he notes later that it is under this sort of intense scrutiny that a politician (and it applies equally to institutions) is in the best position to build trust and confidence in their performance:

[...] it’s in the big and sometimes tough interviews that you really build credibility and public confidence.

Quality

However, the underlying assumption here is the quality of the journalism. And this is the issue that, for me, seems to be central to any understanding of the role of the media in the trust people have in their public institutions.

Firstly, rigorous scrutiny should always be part of an open and objective inquiry. Shrinking media ownership (and newsrooms) has meant, to this avid news consumer, a move away from studied, investigative and local stories to the production of content that is more readily syndicatable to the other parts of the media franchise. What translates in all markets? Scandal, crime and, occassionally, human interest pieces with quirky angles.

Thompson is right about the tough interviews building credibility, but how often do we actually see those sorts of exchanges? Perhaps the British media are chock full of that sort of content but in the antipodes it is a much rarer occurrence. When he talks about the BBC’s commitment to make more space for ideas about policy and policy choices just reinforces the dearth of that sort of programming here.

Influence

Secondly, trust in public institutions, and indeed in the mainstream media, is now not just dependent upon the same. The democratization of the means of publishing content has seen a flourishing of commentary and critique (much of it well informed) about the way the news is reported, packaged and delivered to us. In fact, many people now trust blogs more than conventional media as a reliable source of information.

With the increasing accessibility of alternative commentary and criticism, people are becoming more literate readers/interpreters of news and what Thompson disingenuously disparages as scepticism (the ET argument is truly specious), for me, epitomizes this profound shift away from reliance upon a single, authoritative ‘medium of record.’

Trust

How does this affect trust in public institutions? As I noted above, the media are critical to a healthy democracy; it does not follow, however, that they are necessarily the dominant part of the trust equation. This is a function of a more complex relationship with our publics, one that is primarily the result of direct experience. As I said last year, trust is:

the fundamental social and political legitimacy that we have to keep earning every day.
Online reputation management

Part of that process is media relations. A small part. Most of the work is in successfully dealing with the multitude of engagement opportunities that your organization has every day, online and off.

Closing thoughts

At 18 pages (I had to print it out, there is no way I can read 6,000 words on screen), and given he is a broadcaster, you would hope that it would be written for the ear not the eye. Alas, no. There are no concessions for the ear, nor use of rhetoric; no repetition or stories, indeed nothing as fundamental as a key message. It is both abstract and prolix. Don’t ever write a speech like this; nothing will diminish trust in government more than subjecting an audience to this sort of ordeal.

There is one other egregious error. Thompson posts the transcript to the blog with this introduction:

The full text of my speech is below and I’d be interested to know what you think about it.

That may be so, but despite 34 people (as of this post going up) sharing their thoughts, Thompson himself is absent from the conversation. If you are trying to build trust, then perhaps it might be worth your while engaging with the audience whose thoughts you are professing an interest in hearing.

Photo: SeenyaRita

What is particularly interesting about this post, from a public sector communicators perspective, is the comments that it attracted. As we move to deploy social media tools in the .govt.nz namespace, we are likely to see the same range of reaction that is displayed in microcosm on this blog post.

There are (as of today) only 28 comments on the post and I recommend that you read them all. They provide a fascinating insight into the convergence of social media and a (much-loved) public sector web environment – hence a good indication of some of what is in store for the first agencies to use these tools or channels.

Obviously, they veer from the enthusiatic:

If find these a boon, if only because I have the one set of bookmarked articles on both home and work computers and in the case of del.icio.us on my mobile phone too.
Ged

…to the outraged:

I think this is awful! At what other time has the BBC put other sites logos anywhere on their site aside from when they feature in the story? Is this a groundbreaker? They mention the New York Times and Washington Post having the same system – er, well they are commercial sites carrying paid for advertisements. The joy of the BBC is the lack of this, and I believe thats what we are paying for through the license fee.

Stop polluting our site and get them off!
Richard Turnbull

Through the gamut of, at times, emotive reactions, there are a couple of comments that really stand out as warnings for public sector organizations (aside from the above execration about advertisements). The comment about Newsvine, in particular, is a salutary one:

We at Newsvine were very disappointed to see that a button for the site was not included. Newsvine is a very high-traffic site and, if I’m not mistaken, it sends a lot of visitors to the BBC site.
Alice

Alice has a good point. Public sector organisations have to be very careful about the companies that they (are being seen to) endorse by including them on their pages. In this case, it is simply not practical to include them all, but there are tools that allow the user to choose which bookmarking service they would like to use. The final comment points to a good example.

Where decisions do need to be made about which services to include on the page, then these should be informed by pre-existing relationships. If Newsvine is sending a lot of traffic to the BBC, then in the spirit of participation, the BBC should reciprocate: that is the point of social media.

In other words, the criteria for inclusion should be similarly based on a social media-grounded assessment. How do they fit with your shared audience? It should be a complementary relationship:

My only concern is the choice of bookmarks presented – if you visit Reddit, it’s seems primarily concerned with off-beat political news. And Digg is more concerned with niche tech stories, in my opinion.

It therefore gives the impression that the BBC selected a few social book marking sites on the basis of these sites being popular, rather than because they actually have any real connection with BBC news coverage.
Brian Turner

Conclusion

Public sector communicators should not really be surprised by the range and intensity of the reactions here. It is the environment we work in. What I found interesting about these comments is two things.

One, the extremes are balanced by some very thoughtful and helpful suggestions (this could just reflect the sort of people who read the Beeb’s editorial blogs), in any event, that is extremely encouraging.

Two, there is a lesson about how you deploy social media. It is not a case of just using the technology; you need to understand how the whole (eco)system works and that, particularly in the public sector, is not an easy task.