12 Aug Former CNS staffers dispute my theory of the origin of bad news releases

On the last day of July, I called out Communications Nova Scotia for not abandoning a patronizing, politically tainted, Harperesque style of news release that, I asserted, had been imposed by Premier Darrell Dexter’s office as it tightened the political reins on government communications. (I made a similar argument in a pre-election post last fall.)

Readers who once held senior positions at CNS took issue with my analysis. Jim Vibert, longtime head of CNS who now runs his own communications consultancy, wrote in response to the first piece:

[Y]our CNS reference is, on the surface, correct, but this sure isn’t the first government to try to control the message through CNS.  I spent a year (seconded) in John Hamm’s office, and when I went back to my old job at CNS, I was under steady bombardment from the political class around Hamm.  I was able to fight them off, in part because I could call the premier and he’d tell them to back off.  The current CNS leadership doesn’t have that luxury.  Interference in the government communications branch is irresistible by political appointees and, occasionally, by cabinet ministers.  I was “instructed” twice to fire communications staffers; once by a Liberal (MacLellan) cabinet minister and once by a senior political staff member in Hamm’s office.  Neither got fired, but in both cases it got testy and was touch-n-go (more for me than for the original targets, who didn’t even know they were in the crosshairs).  So the NDP isn’t unique, or even different from, or worse than, previous administrations.

One member of the political class around Hamm, Communications Director Peter Spurway, who now handles communications for Halifax Stanfield International Airport, also took issue with my comments:

I think you’re way off base on this one.

Of course governments connect the dots between their programs and the benefits of those programs the people who will benefit.

These programs are products. Imagine a company that produced a product it felt would help people, and would make them money. Would you be surprised to see them advertising and marketing the benefits of that product? Of course not. They’d be fools not to.

“Just let us know what you’re doing, and trust us to figure out whether it’s a good thing, why, and for whom.”

Are you kidding? The last people they’d want to “figure out whether it’s a good thing, why, and for whom” is a biased, jaded and rather cynical media crowd….

Some people, predominantly politicians, hurt themselves in that they willfully exaggerate the benefits of the initiative. They oversell (and far too often under-deliver). This engenders cynicism. In the medium to long run, this hurts them. And yet they do it again and again. Effective communication is plain, simple, brief and makes it very clear why the activity is beneficial.

It’s not a matter of patronizing people, it’s a matter of being plain about what you’re doing and why. If there are no benefits to the activity, why are you bothering me with media release?

Former CNS communications advisor, now playwright and journalist Ryan Van Horne backs up Vibert’s claim that the news release template I object to went back at least as far as the Hamm administration.

When I started at CNS in June 2008, the Tories were in power and I was told to start every news release with how this government announcement was going to benefit Nova Scotians.

There may not have been a template with the Tories—and I never actually saw a template imposed by the NDP before I left in March 2011—but the practice of starting press releases that way certainly continued under them. (Note: There was 2.5 years of NDP government after I left, so it’s entirely possible they did impose one, as you say.)

The NDP might have adjusted or refined this approach, but the fact that it has continued with CNS under the Liberals does not surprise me one bit. In an agency like CNS, which is more bureaucratic than political, you will see less change from government to government. Some see this as a good thing, others see it as a bad thing. The latter group would much rather see politically appointed press secretaries, the practice in most jurisdictions that I’m aware of.

I know the Liberals, especially Andrew Younger, were critical of CNS and the way the NDP used the agency, so I am curious to see how, or if, things change in the next few years.

Contrarian reader Tim Segulin, who, so for as I know, is untainted by past employment at CNS:

[P]olitical parties at their heart are proprietary organizations that package and market governments. Their most prized possession is their ‘brand’ upon which they trade at election time. Linking attractive outcomes to their time in government must be a very tempting promotional device for them. It helps to cultivate the vague notion among disengaged voters that good times happened when the [INSERT PARTY] was in power. Maybe they will come to think of the party the way they do Santa Claus?

Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, standards for which seem to be so strict these days, I should acknowledge that I served as Director of Communications for the provincial Sydney Tar Ponds Agency during the parts of the Hamm and Rodney MacDonald administrations. I reported primarily to the agency, but also to the CNS, whose officials never imposed any news release templates on me, and were unfailing supportive of plain, direct talk about cleanup options in an often hostile communications environment. Jim Vibert had left by the time I got there, but I frequently sought and got sage advice from Peter Spurway.