Public Affair Nightmare

Suspicious, manipulative, investigative and intrusive. Just some of the words used by local councilors to describe what they thought of Journalists.
This January, I worked in PR department at Leicestershire County Council, as part of work experience for my course. On the first day, Media Relations Officer, Mel Atkinson, invited me along to a press training day at Charnwood Borough Council. The aim of the training was to help council officers to be more prepared for the media.
The training addressed issues such as ‘predicting the news’, ‘being prepared for crisis’ and ‘communication is better than no communication’.

If council officers were to take a couple of hours to look at any projects, issues or trends that are occurring, they would be able to forecast potential media interest. This would allow them to be more prepared for spontaneous phone calls from their local reporter and so they would know when to bite their bottom lip if they need to.
It is also important for the councilor not to get too ‘chatty’. There have been cases where a member would fall into conversation with the journalist and accidently let slip information that would be front page news the next day.

As a journalist, it was interesting to witness the attitudes from the council officers towards their local reporters. One member questioned why a journalist would not leave him alone, even though there was no progress on the issue being questioned. He commented on their persistence and how he felt obliged to respond in case the journalist reported on him negatively. This lead to some inaccuracy in the information he provided.

The advice given was to ALWAYS COMMENT. No matter what. Even it is just council jargon, it is still communication. Having a positive relationship with the local media is the best way for a council to operate. The public want honest information, and although not always the case, the media is the most objective form of communication they can digest.
Ex-Journalists working in governmental PR departments is only a positive change. Having been the receiver of information, a media relations officer who has worked as a journalist, would be an expert on predicting stories, giving information the public actually care about and monitoring quotes which could be potentially damaging.