First and foremost I want to set these blog posts into some context.
I posted previously about The Met's use of staged or managed events at the second student demo as part of its communications strategy and suggetsed I might write a follow-up post to examine some of the Met's more conventional PR tactics to shape media coverage and public opinion.
Also, as part of my PhD I'm planning on using my blog as a way of keeping notes and sharing thoughts that will come in useful as my research progresses. These posts are part of that iterative process.
In addition to the above, these posts will also hopefully serve as a handy - if modest and incomplete - reference guide for journalists to help them undertand and decode some of the communications tactics employed by the Met and thus potentially improve the depth of questioning and breadth of coverage.
Part 1 - How 'framing' media stories is used for effective political policing
In US academic, Robert Entman's, book on the way issues or stories are 'framed' (that is how relevant information is gathered and edited into 'news') by the media he asserts that by establishing the terms of a potential story, strategic actors (in our case, the Met) can command and control the way the subsequent news is perceived and - more importantly - how it continues to influence future stories.
Specifically, in Projections of Power (2004) he outlines what Curran (2002) calls the "definitional power" of the media:
"A dominant frame [i.e an official way of interpreting information] in early news coverage of an event can acticat and sprad congruinet thoughts and feelings in individuals' knowledge [...] that guides responses to all future reports. First impressions may be difficult to dislodge." p.7 [my emphasis]
This theory can be used to explain the PR tactics adopted by the Met even before a demonstration takes place who you will often find issuing a briefing to 'define' the direction of the media narrative.
This happened ahead of the most recent student demonstration on 9th December where Commander Bob Broadhurst, the head of the Met's public order branch, told media they were expecting the student demonstration to be violent.
It also happened ahead of the 2009 G20 protests in London when weeks before planned demos Superintendent David Hartshorn, who then headed the Met's public order branch, exclusively told The Guardian the Met was: "preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions."
With hindsight these examples offer a useful opportunity to interpret the way they potentially shaped public perception of events.
Take the recent student demo as our first case study: telling the media they were execting violence firstly activates in the public's mind that the demonstration is goin to be violent. Whether it ever turns out to be or not this perception and mindet towards demonstrators is established. Secondly, it acts to legitimise police violence because, as the Met has aldready confirmed in advance, it was expecting violence so any brutality on its part must be a response.
This technique neatly reverses cause an effect of violent public order situations and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Met.
The ' helped significantly by the news management technique of 'embedding' journalists within forces to help ensure the event is interpreted from a specific perspective - despite the best aims of 'objective' reporting.
Another 'set piece' in the police's PR toolkit to help 'frame' news from within protests or public order situations is the use - and reporting - of injuries.
**Before I go any further, please note: I am not excusing or valorising any kind of violent behaviour or resultant injury to anyone. I am trying to explore and explian how injuries that happen within tense situations can be used to establish a particular perception in the media.**
The reporting of injuries can be used both qualitatively to reinforce the notion of 'violent demonstrators' and 'police as victims' and also quantitively to show how much of a battle the police won/lost (depending on the public's wider perceptions post-event).
As an example of the first tactic see this quote from a police spokesperson from Nottinghamshire police during the demonstration at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009:
"Throughout the day officers have been assaulted but police remain in control of the site. We have one officer who sustained head injuries at the protest. He was airlifted to Derbyshire Royal Infirmary where he is being treated. His wife has been made aware but we have no update on his condition.
"One protester also received treatment on site by police officers and was taken away by ambulance. His condition is unknown."
It would later transpire that the office didn't sustain a head injury - which, of course, was good news.
What is noticable is the formal and melodramatic reporting for the injured police officer (e.g. "his wife has been informed") that's clearly missing from comments about the injured protester - along with a more complete total of injured protestors which was much higher than 'one'.
Now, this may seem rather extreme: exploiting injuries to shape media covergae, but wider context and examples will hopefully illustrate the point further.
The injured officer airlifted to hospital was actually treated by a medic that was protesting on the day. From tweets at the time and emails I've seen subsequently it would appear that at the time the officer was being treated it was apparent that he was unlikely to be suffering from head injuries, as the hospital or police later confirmed.
The Guardian - as I understand it - was party to the development in the story, but of course by then it was old news and the public's perception had been set.
A further - and by now, infamous - example of the quantitative use of police injuries in PR is Kingsnorth Climate Camp.
During the 2008 Climate Camp gathering police used extreme measures to intimidate protestors, such as sleep deprivation and excessive stop and search activity. In addition, police revealed to the media and Parliament that a total of 70 officers had been injured during the police operation.
It wasn't until a FoI request from the Liberal Democrats that it became apparent not a single injury was sustained from protestors; rather records showed injujuries were mostly toothache, diarrhoea, cut fingers and "possible bee stings".
I won't labour the point, but you get the idea that by the time the reality of the situation has unravelled it's old news and the public perception has been crystalised.
For a good overview of examples of this, specifically related to climate change and climate justice campaigning, see Kevin Smith's post for the Guardian's CiF blog.
The next post in this series will look at post-demonstration tactics, the use of language and perhaps look at some of the additional reasons for the effectiveness of police PR and media management, e.g. the formalised news production processes and cultural values of the media.
Bibliography:
Curran, J. (2002). Media & Power. Routledge.
Entman, R. (2004). Projections of Power. University of Chicago Press.
George
I am moved by your candid argument to respond - and we should acknowledge the Guardian for giving you the space - and yet for the first time in many threads I am, frankly, quite perplexed by the commercial paradox you identify.
There are some alternatives, but none of them are entirely satisfactory or perhaps commercially practical. Some are not consistent with the ethical requirements you describe and with which I broadly agree. But in the first place, let us enjoy for a moment the irony of taking money from the airlines, the automotive industry and their ilk, in order to sponsor an MSN outlet that consistently criticises them and pays for people like you to do so. It does sweeten the pill a little, but perhaps not enough.
Some suggestions then - not so much as things I think can be done, but as catalysts that might lead to constructive discussion and better solutions than I can offer:
1) Recent news suggests that some quality MSN websites will attempt to institute subscriptions. If the Guardian moved in that direction but limited advertising according to content that met published ethical standards, it would make subscription more meaningful. I would pay to support a news site that placed ethical behaviour at the core of its business model, because that is exactly what I find is virtually absent from commercial concerns, and much to our detriment both as consumers and members of society.
2) Try such a scheme as an alternative site and trial it for a reduced sub in the first year. If it took off, move the enterprise in that direction and reward those early supporters with a discount on the second year - or something.
3) Ban only the ads that meet the ethical standard. This is not a moral exercise but a commercial one, but where virtue is rewarded. Ethical standards should be applied to products or services, not companies per se, and when certain products enjoy more ad space than their counterparts, their importance to the companies that produce them shifts in their favour, simply because they sell more. Advertising usually targets the consumer, attempting to modify their behaviour; here advertising could target the companies and do the same. It is in the boardroom that this message needs to be understood - the market is changing and ethical behaviour will be rewarded by consumers. (And when it's all hat and no cattle, you have new fodder for the column).
4) Develop more flexible price strategies and find more innovative ways to deliver the adverts. Perhaps a rate card with weighted price bands depending on gross revenue, where smaller and more ethical concerns can also take some space in the paper or the site, thus increasing opportunities for ad sales. I suggest this because I think taking the ethical stance will cost the Guardian some revenue. Quite how much it loses is in part dependant on the ad sales team, because there is also a strong marketing advantage in the ethical stance, especially if the Guardian is the first to adopt is. Very newsworthy, and worth trumpeting in any ad campaign. It must also be true that properly exploited, there may be some additional market share to be gained through it, so it's not all downside.
5) Keep discussing the option of going completely digital. I'm sure this is discussed and the Guardian management understand this much better than I, but there are important implications for the environment as well as the economics. It must include a subscription, but that has benefits since it would probably be annual or semi-annual, which is more reliable income than variable sales of print copies. (I'd like to see the management's thoughts on this. Things change, as the Guardian demonstrates with this very site. Where are they now on this?)
Prudence would dictate money will be lost, so the Guardian must ask the same question it does over page 3 girls: what is it prepared to do in service of Mammon rather than its founders like Scott? Tits are out of bounds, yet they would bring in more money, as would the sex trade ads, but the Guardian has taken a moral stance at the expense of profit. Morality cannot be parcelled out or striated by expediency. Either the Guardian is wholly responsible and doesn't want to assist in destroying civilisation, or it may as well start looking for busty women and brainless men to leer at them, since that readership will always put their hands in their pockets - if you know what I mean.