On the manufacture of fake news

I know others have commented on this but it's pretty important that we understand that fake news is not simply something manufactured by 20 year old Macedonians or Russian spies. Throughout our media stories are created based on the flimsiest of evidence. Or indeed on evidence that really doesn't exist at all.

Here, from that impeccable establishment media source, The Economist:

The report does not say what proportion of the 53,000 sample tweets related to Ms Cox’s murder, and what share concerned Brexit more generally. When The Economist asked the authors for help, they declined to share their data with us, citing death threats they said they had received since the report’s release. So we undertook our own analysis, examining tweets from June and July that included the terms “Jo Cox” or “#JoCox”—some 341,000 unique messages. Of a random sample of 800 of these, none was celebratory, and just four seemed to be derogatory toward Ms Cox, criticising her support for Syrian refugees, for instance. From this, simple statistics suggest that the true number of tweets cheering the politician’s murder would lie between 0 and 1,500. (The Hope Not Hate report reproduces about 30.) Mr Awan notes that our sample did not include tweets that mentioned only the killer, Mr Mair; it is also likely that some tweets were deleted before our collection.

Now, as the report notes, it's terrible if even one Tweet celebrates a murder but the thrust of media coverage - driven by the original Hope Not Hate press release of this shocking study - was that such activity was commonplace when it wasn't.

We see this pattern repeated by newspapers again and again with the thread of fake news creation often going back to a press release from a worthy organisation like a charity or campaign group. From sugary drinks and booze through to vaping and fracking the misuse of evidence, even the creation of evidence simply to generate a news story, is widespread. Journalists used to challenge and question the claims made by those issuing press releases but it seems today that there's either no time or no inclination to do that basic journalistic job of checking the facts before publishing.

....

Of course Bradford Council talks to local residents - and that costs money!

Now this is a sensitive subject for a marketing professional to embark on - defending the budget for communications of England's fourth biggest local council. And, it's rather more sensitive when you're also a councillor on that authority!

According to my dear friends at the Taxpayers Alliance (whoever said they were a Tory front?) Bradford Council spends £6 million on communications. Phew, I hear you say! All that cash on spin doctors, propaganda and glossy brochures - whatever happened to spending priorities then guys! Surely you can make some savings here?

Well yes - there are always the options for savings. But can we please remember that councils do have to try and communicate with those they serve! And Bradford, with nearly 500,000 of those local residents, probably needs a little more than the average local council to achieve that communication. So what's involved and how might we make it better?

The main areas of spending include:

1. The Council's press office - dealing with hundreds of enquiries every week from a multitude of different media. We could cut down a little here maybe but at the expense of giving a less good service to the media - I leave it to you to decide whether this is a good thing or not?

2. Community Pride magazine (and its various offspring) - this is an award-winning publication that, were I in opposition, I would hate. Not because it promotes the ruling party - it is very careful not to do that - but because it is attractive, well-written and tells local people about their local services

3. Advertising including statutory notices - there's a huge scope to save money here but wouldn't that jeopardise the viability of the Bradford Telegraph & Argus wherein most of the advertising is placed? I'm no special pal of the T&A but I would think Bradford a poorer place for not having such a rag for us all to get cross about!

4. Notices, leaflets and publications required by statute - we're required to publish in hard copy a whole raft of documents, reports and strategies. It would be possible I guess to simply get a good quality PDF and print off when needed but I'm not sure that would comply with regulation. And the leaflets giving vital information to at risk groups such as the unemployed, elderly, vulnerable young people, single mums and refugees - I guess we can't skimp too much on those either, can we?

And just to add a little extra cost, Bradford - quite rightly - has to meet its access and language obligations which means producing documents in a range of different languages (eighteen and counting) as well as in formats suitable for the blind, the deaf and other disabled groups. Not sure there's huge scope for savings there either?

Now I do believe there's some option to change how we operate - money could be directed from issuing endless turgid press releases replete with quotes from important councillors into direct public communications - we need a good direct marketing strategy. The Council could also make much better use of its much improved IT infrastructure. Perhaps the application of Web 2.0 (ooh, very brave to put that in Simon) stuff might free up some more cash - it would certainly bring a new dimension to the Council's communications activity!

Bradford's communications budget needs a good look - there's a need to sharpen up the strategy and to move away from the very old-fashioned media relations approach that sadly dominates our thinking. But - and try this on any private organisation - spending less than 1/2% of the budget on marketing - that seems a pretty good deal to me!