The role of public service PR agents is to 'manage' the truth
Our health chiefs have been Goebbels-like in attempting to suppress dissent through PR 'spin', writes John Crown
Sunday March 01 2009
"The first victim
of war is truth"
Kipling
I FOUND myself feeling an uncharacteristic, but thankfully temporary, twinge of sympathy when I read reports (now known to be inaccurate) that Minister of State Maire Hoctor had "required a Garda escort" after she had been booed off the stage by her own constituents at a public meeting in Nenagh.
The meeting was held to protest local hospital reorganisation, a reorganisation which will include centralisation of regional emergency services in Limerick and Ennis, with a discontinuation of 24-hour service in Nenagh and other hospitals.
This type of rearrangement is inevitably controversial. While proponents generally argue that centralisation increases the quality of care by concentrating medical expertise, local people often feel that the Government's primary motive is cost-cutting, and that their community is losing something. A debate that should be calm, and which will have several different sincerely held opinions, can quickly become heated.
However, my sympathy for the minister's discomfiture was less than complete. In the first place, she was allowed to speak, and it was only after her audience took exception to the content of her speech, that the boos began to drown her out.
More importantly, the decision by the crowd to "suppress her views" did serve at least to give her a taste of her Department's own medicine. This particular health administration has been Goebbels-like in its attempt to suppress dissent, and to replace true discourse with spin.
During the week, The Examiner reported that the HSE (the armed wing of the Department of Health) had spent €51m on external consultants, including public relations firms. Approximately €5m of this -- not the entire sum as was incorrectly headlined in an otherwise excellent article -- was spent on spin.
This figure substantially underestimates the spin-spend in the health service. Individual hospitals, the Department of Health itself, various government agencies and quangos like HIQA (Health Information and Quality Authority) all have armies of press officers, public relations consultants, corporate affairs departments etc.
When the Health Minister toured US cancer centres on the famous 'Superbowl Trip', she was accompanied by two PR executives -- but no cancer experts. Many public service spin doctors bring strange qualifications to their well-paid jobs; qualifications that suggest who they knew was more important than what they knew. It will be suggested that they play a necessary role in fostering communication between the various agencies and the public, but the truth is different, and in truth somewhat more alarming. Not only is the Government misusing this money at a time when frontline services are under threat, but it is spending it against the public interest.
The primary role of the public service PR agent is not to advance communication, but is rather to manage the public's perception of the agent's paymaster. Top officials will generally only appear in carefully controlled environments. Public debates with informed commentators whose opinions are at variance with the official line are always avoided.
As some readers may remember, I was once removed from a Late Late Show panel at the eleventh hour after it had been suggested by an official that the panel was unbalanced. It should be noted that the minister herself and other officials had been invited to take part but declined. Cancer czar Tom Keane withdrew from another Late Late when he discovered that he would face critics. I was invited to debate Brendan Drumm on Primetime. It never happened. In the last year I have shared platforms with three ministers, all of whom insisted on speaking first and leaving before hearing the dissenting opinions.
No, the spinmeisters aid and abet the bureaucracy in their condescending attitude of self-serving paternalism. Kipling was right: in the health service culture war, truth is the first victim.
Professor John Crown is a consultant oncologist
- JOHN CROWN
