Sifting the grain from the PR chaff is a full-time job
The life of a modern day agri-journalist is dominated by the slew of press releases from these good people employed in public relations. Depending on their origins, the releases promote policies, people, projects and ideas that are being developed and tested before they become reality.
But recently my eye was caught by a statement away from the mainstream, and one that was in a new category – perhaps not unique, but well away from the normal.
It came from the National Sheep Association (NSA), a lobbying organisation devoted to promoting sheep sector issues. The gist of the unusual release was the Prime Minister, Theresa May had to, as the headline stated, “keep her hands-off Michael Gove”.
This stemmed from one of May’s previous versions of shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic by shuffling her Cabinet, necessitated following the speedy departure of the then Home Secretary, Amber Rudd for telling fibs in Parliament.
While I have seen hundreds of press releases urging politicians to do this or do that, the NSA comment was the first time I had seen one indicating a desire to keep a politician, in this case, the small, bespectacled politician charged with providing a future road for farming and the environment. The more I read it, the more I thought it was a little like a suburban householder asking people not to pinch his garden gnome fishing in the goldfish pond.
That was an oddity in the world of press releaseswhich usually leave the diligent agricultural press
to delve through the verbiage used by those who operate on what the hacks describe as the “dark side”.
We are well served in Scottish agriculture by those whose role is to promote their firms and organisations, although a surprising number appear to have been staring out the classroom window when similar sounding but differently-spelt words such as “their, they’re and there” appear in the wrong context.
That criticism extends to those who think an apostrophe is no more than a comma that has randomly jumped up off the base line and which is scattered at will throughout the script.
Many of the best PR operators in the rural scene today have previously worked as journalists before heading into the allegedly more lucrative world of spin. They therefore know the score of what we scribes are looking for and make the most of their expertise to direct their messages to a bespoke audience.
Asked to draw up a list of the most effective PR operators, Carol Mclaren of Quality Meat Scotland would be close to the top with her citation stating she is one of the hardest working people in the PR business with press releases coming out in flurries like a snow storm. She appears to have complete and utter belief in the Scottish red meat sector and tends to duff journalists up if they make any criticism of the organisation.
The media team at NFU Scotland has been under the steady hand of Bob Carruth for more than a decade now. Apart from this giving him a very comprehensive knowledge of Scottish agriculture, he manages to keep a calm sough regardless of the political complexities, although Brexit might still test him.
Scotland’s Rural College, SRUC, is also well served by its media team and journalists come away from a college briefing feeling that Jane Smernicki and Tom Maxwell could be tied to a stake over a burning fire and still they would not reveal where the college bodies are buried. Add to that praise their releases are meticulous in content.
These are a few of the profession whose job it is to present information via journalists to the wider public. But do not think for a moment that we journalists are spoon fed.
As previously indicated, there are still the nuggets of truth to dig out from among the self-congratulatory releases or to describe it in an agricultural way to sift the grain from the chaff.
In the main, there is a symbiotic relationship between agri-hacks and spin masters and mistresses, but the fact remains that each have a clear function. And agri-hacks have to be prepared to ask the questions, query the assumptions and challenge the press releases, and do the work of the Fourth Estate.