2009 Press Gallery Survey
As I did last year. I conducted a survey of MPs on the press gallery. This year I extended it to press secretaries also, and am very pleased with the 70 responses I got. Many thanks to those who responded.
The first initial data is below. This is the raw data. I will also blog next week results for each party (National, Labour, other) and a weighted average to take account of more National MPs than Labour MPs responding.
Respondents were asked to anonymously rate each media organisation and full-time gallery journalist from 0 to 10. The results for journos will be next week also.
I want to stress that this is not an impartial poll on the gallery. It is a poll of the subjects of the articles the gallery write about. Hence a low rating may indicate a media outlet or journalist has written very good stories that happen to damage that party or MP, and a high rating may indicate they are seen as a soft touch.
There are also some differences by medium, Print media will always tend to rate higher (in my opinion) than TV as they have a greater ability to cover more details in a story.
So basically I am saying don’t regard these ratings as some neutral indicator of who is good or bad. Those judgements can be left to individuals. Also do not assume these ratings are my personal opinions. They certainly are not.
Now the data:
The mean is pretty self-evident, and they are ranked in order of highest to lowest. I am not surprised NZPA and Newsroom rate at the top, as they both concentrate more on information, rather than analysis. They are not into selling copies of papers – but into supplying information.
It is interesting that Maori TV rates so highly.
The median is the mid point value. Normally close to the mean.
The mode is the most common score given for that outlet.
The minimum and maximum and range (difference between the two) show how diverse the opinion is petty much every outlet. There is no group-think. Most outlets had some MPs give very low scores and some very high scores.
The S.D. is the standard deviation and again gives some idea as to how varied the ratings were. Radio NZ had the highest standard deviation, or variation.
December 18th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
As I did last year. I conducted a survey of MPs on the press gallery. This year I extended it to press secretaries also, and am very pleased with the 70 responses I got.
David, you need to elucidate to make the above table meaningful.
Were there 70 respondents in total, or 70 press secretaries, plus MPs?
If so, how many MPs (ie what are the total respondent numbers in the table)?
Many thanks and seasons greetings.
[DPF: 46 MPs and 24 Press Secs]
December 18th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be 70 press secretaries in parliament… So probably 70 all up.
December 18th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
“David, you need to elucidate to make the above table meaningful.”
Exactly, what were the question(s).
December 18th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be 70 press secretaries in parliament… So probably 70 all up.
There were certainly close to 70 press secretaries in Parliament when I last worked there (in 2007) — many more press secretaries than there were press gallery journalists, which seriously worried me, especially as all the gallery journalists simply chased the same story of the day, no longer doing the footwork that might tell the public what was really going on.
Most ministers had at least two press secretaries, some three or more. Very few had only one. Additionally every party in parliament has its own press secretaries.
There are 28 in the present ministry, so even if they only average two per minister, that is 56 press secretaries!!!
David, if your 70 includes MPs and press secretaries, can you give us the total number asked to respond (ie, the 122 MPs plus the number of press secretaries).
[DPF: It was sent to all 122 MPs and around 35 press/comms people. In some cases I sent it it to one person in a party and asked them to pass it onto other comms staff as I don't have the full list of comms staff for all parties]
December 18th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
“all the gallery journalists simply chased the same story of the day, no longer doing the footwork that might tell the public what was really going on”
Er, poneke, Muldoon used to complain about exactly that, were you there before or after him, and what if anything, has ever changed before or after he said that – in terms of insight, accuracy, non-regurgitation of press-release feel-good propaganda? Has it ever been different?
Do journalists just think we’re stupid and we won’t notice?
December 18th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Er, poneke, Muldoon used to complain about exactly that, were you there before or after him, and what if anything, has ever changed before or after he said that
I was there during his time, and then during Clark’s time, while also reporting politics in between though not based in Parliament.
I always endeavoured to find the stories the pack weren’t chasing, which did not endear me to many politicians. After I revealed Bill Birch had been massaging some figures, he called me to his office and asked why he should ever speak to me again. I told him I had simply given the public the facts without the massage and would continue to do so. We remained on very good terms for the rest of his career.
When I revealed that John Banks kept morgue photos of murder victims in his filing cabinet (he’d pulled them out to show me) he didn’t speak to me for years — hanging up any time I got through to him. But after I exposed the campaign that was claiming Tania Witika was not responsible for Delcelia’s death, even Banks began liking what I wrote.
The point I was making about the pack is that today, because the number of gallery journalists is so reduced, and because all news editors want the same story in the endless news cycle, there is no longer anyone digging out the stories that people like me used to dig out. Everyone is chasing the same story now.
If you go one after another to the websites of Stuff, the Herald, RNZ, TVNZ, TV3, Radio Live and Newstalk ZB, they all have the same stories up. When any one of them puts up something new, the others have the same story up within minutes.
Almost all of what is published is facile rubbish, crime, violence, celebrity tattle, pap.
That is a very worrying development as while the crime and celebrity crap has always been with us, there used to be significantly more of the digging behind the scenes.
[DPF: I think I am filing more OIA requests that most journos. Every few days large boxes or bags of documents are arriving at my place!]
December 18th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
“Almost all of what is published is facile rubbish, crime, violence, celebrity tattle, pap. That is a very worrying development as while the crime and celebrity crap has always been with us, there used to be significantly more of the digging behind the scenes.”
I agree poneke and thanks for exposing those issues you spoke of above. What then is the solution to this endless fascination with pap that becomes worse with every passing moment?
Perhaps we could take it to the GD thread?
December 18th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
My wife (who is a gallery journalist) estimated that there are about 40 journalists working in the gallery on a daily basis; the national party has just under forty press secretaries and of course the other parties have their own comms staff. So the gallery journos are easily outnumbered.
December 18th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
My wife (who is a gallery journalist)
She’ll be chuffed to see how well nzpa shines
The Fairfax result is pretty lamentable though.
December 18th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
“What then is the solution to this endless fascination with pap that becomes worse with every passing moment?”
Stop dumbing down general education standards, perhaps?
December 18th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Er, poneke, Muldoon used to complain about exactly that, were you there before or after him, and what if anything, has ever changed before or after he said that – in terms of insight, accuracy, non-regurgitation of press-release feel-good propaganda? Has it ever been different?
Yes.
You raise some good points which I have reflected on over dinner.
In Muldoon’s day, we had a more intmate democracy. Muldoon and most of his ministers were, like those before them, in the phone book, and anyone could phone them. Muldoon many times answered his own phone to me and doubtless anyone else who called him.
Journalists could get immediate access to MPs and ministers either by phoning them or just turning up in their office.
This carried on into the Lange government.
The big change happened in January 1988, when Lange pulled the plug on Douglas’s Flat Tax package. This led to what became known to journalists as “the battle of the press secretaries.” The press secretaries on both sides in the Lange-Douglas split waged war on each other. Many times, I and many other journalists got briefings from the press secretaries of one camp or another who gave intimate details of what was happening.
Ross Vintner was Lange’s one. Bevan Burgess was Douglas’s. They briefed me and many other journalists on a daily basis in what was total war reported as such in the media.
The political damage this caused brought down the government in the end.
After this, ministers and their press secretaries were increasingly brought under the central control of the prime minister’s chief press secretary, to ensure that ministers increasingly spoke with just one voice.
It led to today’s situation of centralised “key lines” (yes that is what they are called) distributed centrally to all ministerial press secretaries and ministers each day, and to press secretaries becoming the blockaders of journalists actually being able to speak to ministers any more… let alone get “off record” briefings of what was really going on, the way Vinter and Burgess used to deliver.
Much of this is also because of the tabloidisation of the media and the 24-hour endless news cycle where news is published online by the minute rather than on the hour on radio or at 6pm on TV or in the paper once a day. The demand by the fewer and less experienced journalists for ever increasing instant headlines has caused a bunker mentality in the government machine, where it becomes increasingly harder to learn what any minister actually thinks, as they all just trot out the approved key lines.
This is happening in Australia and Britain too and doubtless elsewhere but I have only been able to study Australia and Britain in the same depth.
I must write a learned, footnoted article about all this and finally get my MA.
December 19th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Journalists could get immediate access to MPs and ministers either by phoning them or just turning up in their office.
This carried on into the Lange government.
I can’t describe better this aspect of former access to our politicians than a Saturday I needed to interview Lange when he was PM for the next day’s Sunday Star (of which I was poltical editor) so I went to his house in Mangere. He’d just had a family lunch and I helped him and Naomi to wash the dishes and then I conducted the interview as he drove us at very high speed to the airport where he had to catch a plane to somewhere.
This was how journalists related to MPs and even prime ministers until the late 1980s. We could just turn up at their house and help them wash and dry the dishes.
Now we only learn about prime ministers speeding as leaks. No way would any journalist today be in a car driven by a prime minister at such frightening speeds. Let alone wash their dishes.
December 19th, 2009 at 8:54 am
“Respondents were asked to anonymously rate each media organisation and full-time gallery journalist from 0 to 10.”
I don’t get it. Rate on what?? What was the basis for a negative/ positive??
I would have thought there was some key factor that had to be considered. But no such factor is apparent.
Can I suggest a few?
How do you rate these organisations and journalists on the issue of truth versus political partisanship? (Redbaiter’s rating- Zero. Basis- Partisan reporting on global warming, George Bush, Sarah Palin, Climategate and so many other issues)
How do you rate these organisations and journalists on the issue of investigative reporting versus lame submission to press release propaganda? (Zero. Basis- Enthusiastic participants in AGW scam over twenty year period)
How do you rate these organisations and journalists on courage? (Zero. Basis- cowardly submission to racists and the politically correct edicts of Progressives)
How do you rate these organisations and journalists on traditional objective reporting versus gushing political advocacy? (Zero. Basis- Reporting always slanted to suggest Progressives good- Conservatives bad.)
Just a few examples. I can think of many more.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:13 am
How do you rate Redbaiter’s views on it? Zero. Basis – speaks for itself.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Oh look, the resident commie fungus rises to the defence of its media comrades. How surprising.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Redbaiter (8162) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Oh look, the resident commie fungus rises to the defence of its media comrades. How surprising.
So says the resident nazi fungus who always rises to the defence of his media comrades, FOX and Glen “I’m just sayin’ ” Beck and the whore of Babylon Palin. How surprising.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I wasn’t defending anyone.
As usual you accuse others of what you do – political partisanship, lame, lack of courage, gushing political advocacy. All you omitted was repeating your wish to hang them from lamp posts, but you tend to threaten generally rather than directly.