#31: Is it news or is it PR?

60 Reasons to Protest: Reason #31 – Is it news or is it PR?

Brisbane Airport Corporation and Airservices Australia spend a lot of money on PR professionals. What is PR? Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the communication and relationship between an organisations and its various stakeholders, including the public, media, customers, investors, and employees. The main objective of PR is to create and maintain a positive image and reputation for the organisation at all costs. This can entail crisis management and damage control if an organisation’s dodgy practices are uncovered and there is a need to paper over any scandals and preserve the public image.

PR professionals use various communication tools and strategies, such as press releases, media relations, social media, events, to promote and protect the interests and reputation of the organisation they work for. They also monitor public opinion and feedback to anticipate and rectify any potential issues or concerns.

Airservices and BAC’s PR staff work closely with private media companies such as News Corp. and 7NEWS. This is entirely legal and common practice. You can see an example of this collaboration in the coverage by 7NEWS last night. Is it news or is it PR?

Yes, we heard the voice of an affected resident – conflict is good as it increases newsworthiness, that is, the extent that a story is interesting, relevant, and important enough to be covered by news media outlets.

Busy journalists at the private news outlets love PR: It’s like fast food. Not so healthy, but it’s cheap, ready-made, quick, tasty, and the public love it.

Healthy journalism is investigative journalism that involves in-depth research and analysis of a particular topic, issue, or event to uncover hidden or unknown information, often involving investigative techniques such as interviewing sources, analysing documents and data, and perhaps even conducting your own searches, FOI requests, forensic analysis and detective work. The aim of investigative journalism is to expose wrongdoings, corruption, illegal or unethical practices and other societal issues that are of public interest but may be concealed or misrepresented by vested interests and those in power. Investigative journalism plays a critical role in holding individuals, organisations, and governments accountable and promoting transparency and accountability in a democratic society.

Investigative journalism is rare these days, because it is expensive and time-consuming, yet exactly what we need. If you check our collection of media coverage since we started in 2020, most of it is fast-food journalism: Great to get the word out, attract attention and recruit new members, but sadly not so great for helping to uncover the underlying issues and causes and communicate what’s really going on here.

BFPCA’s collection of 60 protest reasons creates the foundation for a detailed investigative documentary that clearly shows the collusion and deceit by venturing deep down the rabbit holes. This is crucial work in order to get the rest of Brisbane and Australia to understand why we need a Royal Commission: We are not protesting noise per se. Noise is a symptom. We need investigative journalists to draw attention to the root causes of all this: vested interests that have captured the state for commercial gain at the expense of the community. And we are all paying dearly for this.

Can you help? Please contact ABC Four Corners now and ask for these issues to be investigated. Do include a link to the collection of protest reasons.