Trust in the Age of Diversity and Spin

BBC news anchor (and gameshow host) Jeremy Paxman leveled a blast last week at the BBC and television for the precipitous slide in the publics’ trust in the BBC and television. Budget cuts, he rationed, cause ‘lower quality’ that cause viewers to ‘trust’ less. He also faulted program producers’ lack of control.

It’s an easy argument, full of common sense, from the point of view of a £1 million per year newsman. It’s also an easy defense of the days of yore. The mighty media brands of the last century are riding into the sunset. It will make a great film. We’ll pay out €8 and feel all nostalgic.

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Don’t blame the independent producers
The agonized whinging from BBC critics, honorably not other broadcasters, bemoan the lost days when broadcasters produced everything they aired. That system ended sometime in the last century. That day came when one general director after another asked that very important – and so very ‘80’s – question: What business are we in?

What Gets Measured, Changes Media
Accountability and technology are driving media measurement. These are also the twin drivers of media management. Content, however, drives media consumers. Who wins?

Traffic Jams and Tangled Webs – Measuring the Web
The ad girls and the web boys are circling around each other, a generational ritual filled with promises, passion, lies and, of course, money. The web boys – interactive media, to the serious – offer fast connections, big results and promises to please. The ad girls – those with the honey-money – play hard-to-get.

If The American Society Of Newspaper Editors Are So Proud Of Their Profession Then How Come They Want To Drop The Word “Newspaper” From Their Title – What Kind Of Message Does That Send To The Public?
The American Society of Newspaper Editors held their annual conference in Washington last week. But you wouldn’t necessarily have known that because they’ve changed their logo to read “ASNE – Leading America’s Newsrooms” and they seem now to be ashamed of the word “Newspaper”, even considering switching to the word “media” instead. Shame on them for even thinking of giving up the best generic brand in journalism!

Public Flogging of BBC Nears End. Damage Phase Ensues
The UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s White Paper on the BBC set out the terms it expects from the renewal of the BBC’s Royal Charter. Little in the document differs from the previous Green Papers or the public statements of Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. Years after the Hutton Report made the BBC fair-game for flogging the punishment terms are evident. Damages – to the license fee – will be assessed this summer.

Most viewers (and readers and listeners) will not. Evidence abounds that they – the ‘masses’ – are rather enjoying the look and feel and action of the new media and its vast diversity. This genie is not going back into the bottle.

When CNN inventor Ted Turner brought news 24 hours a day, seven days a week to television audiences newspaper publishers scoffed, at first. How dare this entertainer and ad seller invade the holy ground of journalism. Turner responded saying newspapers would be dead in a decade and CNN became a global, trusted news source.

The plutocrats of publishing, now holding to their profit margins by a thread, reluctantly accepted television as a force to be reckoned with – and acquired as many TV licenses as possible. Television eclipsed newspapers, generally, as the worlds’ daily agenda-setter. Publishers, mistakenly, equated the rise of television with a decline in their power and revenue share. Correlation is not causation.

Now we hear that television will be dead in a decade. While we will never return to the days when television was “the medium that can teach,” the mobile phone has already achieved the status as the medium that can irritate. Billionaires bored buying boats notwithstanding, newspapers are functionally dead, free ones excepted. Once dragged onto the Web, newspaper sites are just one more dot on the ‘long tail.’ Terrestrial TV faces the same extinction.

People change. The most enduring human attribute is adaptability. Institutions, however, expend huge resources attempting to control that change, maintaining their power. People want their media dose – news, information, entertainment, companionship – where they want it, when they want it and how they want it. Attempts to thwart this 21st century reality will fail.

Google – and presumably many other media web portals – escapes, largely, this lack of trust. Zillions of Google’s users accept the company’s motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Wikipedia – also viewed as benign – suffered a minor humiliation when CalTech grad student Virgil Griffith built a website (Wiki Scanner) to uncover who makes all those little edits in entries. It’s not surprising in this age of spin that companies, governments and media organizations like to ‘sanitize’ information. The most embarrassing Wikipedia editing came from Australian PM John Howard’s office adding “poo dum dicky wee wee” to a martial-arts site.

As politicians and corporate heads find their own trust ratings falling below used automobile salesmen spin control becomes all-important. Former British PM Tony Blair in a farewell speech admitted spending too much time and effort spinning the media…and the people. Bush administration spin maestro Karl Rove effectively merged media control with public policy. We expect very little from inarticulate politicians, often creations of spin doctors with mandates to preserve power at any cost. Spin is up but trust is down.

As institutions fight to influence, at the very least, or control the public agenda spin becomes institutionalized. Organizations – equally in the public and private sectors – are spending more and more on PR and ‘corporate communication’ than producing products and services. Media outlets lightly, if ever, retouch a press release before posting it on a website or offering it as news. Not re-writing a press release was once a firing offense. Today, it is accepted practice, even with major news organizations. The spin doctors win. Trust, confidence and credibility are down the drain.

Brand strength is built on relevance, trust and consistency. Trust in media institutions is neither, simply, a BBC or television issue any more than trust in political institutions is a right-wing versus left wing issue. While the perception of trust is a necessary component of brand strength, the reality of building and maintaining trust is costly and time consuming.

The UK government pounded the BBC (the Hutton Inquiry) when its spin doctoring was caught out. It was feared at the time that the BBC might not survive. In truth, those fears are justified. Governments cannot tolerate independent media and will do everything in their power to make media subservient. The BBC is truly unique in the world: an independent broadcaster. That independence might not engender wholesale love or even trust, at times, but it is worthy of respect. Neither State media or much of commercial media rise to its level. The means to do so are either not important or not in the budget.

The absolute pinnacle of arrogance is the institutional assumption that 21st century audiences – the ‘masses’ – are blind followers, there to be led. Even more arrogant – and patently wrong - is the assumption that agenda-setting lies anywhere but with individuals, the heart and soul of 21st century reality. The more politicians brag (and lie) about ‘not reading the polls’ the farther they fall out of step. Media people complaining that ‘audience measurement’ is creating ‘the problem’ obviously don’t see the problem.

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam released a study recently (“E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century”) showing how social diversity lowers social trust and inhibits ‘social capital.’ The corollary for media jumps off the page: media diversity lowers, generally, the publics’ trust in media. As opinion replaces fact (i.e. Fox News) viewers attached to highly fragmented views are more attracted to media sources that compliment their favorite narrative. Mr. Paxman stated this unambiguous truth as a basis for media’s ‘crisis’: “The more television there is, the less any of it matters.” He also noted, whinging, the shift in the ‘balance of power’ between broadcaster and viewer.

Using Putnam’s study as an analogy makes even more sense when looking at studies of trust and brand strength for media organizations. In countries with low media diversity (Scandinavia, Switzerland, Poland) trust in media is high. Where diversity is high (UK, Spain, Italy) trust in media is low. “Diversity, “ writes Putnam, “seems to bring out the turtle in all of us.”

Power, the end stage of the triumvirate of human needs, equates to agenda setting. In the 21st century’s diverse media environment – as with diverse social and political environments – that power rises from individuals rather than “trickling down” like bad economic theory from power centers. Media, like any other service, must respond to ‘the buyer’ or else.

Oxford’s Doug Holt versed eloquently that dialogue between the buyer and the brand:

Today’s media is increasingly prepared to tell its listeners, viewers and readers the ‘story’ they want. Yesterday’s media can’t grasp the concept. Tomorrow’s media – and Google News is the perfect example – will ask the question.