Global Investigative Journalism Conference, Lillehammer, Norway, September 2008 (synopsis)
Exposing political parties and their strategies
Unelected political advisers are the most interesting and important part of many political issues, controversies and election campaigns. They can be more influential than the politicians they serve. Yet they usually get away with acting invisibly and avoiding media scrutiny. The media regularly falls for their tricks and serves as an uncritical conduit for their scripted spin, with the public left feeling manipulated and excluded. This session is about putting the spotlight on those political advisers and their actions.
Political parties around the world borrow and copy each other’s ideas and tactics. They recommend political consultants and techniques to each other. They meet regularly with like-minded parties from other countries to share their experiences. This means that we can use information from other countries to help us understand and uncover what is happening in our own.
I will be describing my three-year investigation into the New Zealand equivalent of the US Republicans: how the investigation was done and lessons from what I uncovered. Although the party is secretive, my sources eventually leaked me very large quantities of e-mails between the party leader and his main staff. I also got election strategy documents, correspondence about secret collaboration with business lobbies, copies of their advice from overseas election consultants and much more. Seeing how they operate helps us to understand, and ‘decode’, what is going on behind the usual political news we experience. This includes methods of closing down unwanted news and advancing news that suits them; news ‘framing’, issue management and ‘message discipline’; research-based exploitation of prejudice and fear with ‘soft’ voters; the role of large donors, secret political allies and ‘third-party’ campaigning in support of a party; and more.
The result was my book The Hollow Men, a study in the politics of deception. I have come to the conference with a suitcase of copies to give away, as I hope it can encourage similar investigations in other countries and maybe serve as a blueprint for recognising what to look for.
Although my investigation focussed on a conservative party, much of this applies to other parties. The scale of secrecy, deception and manipulation generally depends on how great the gap is between what the party believes in and what it knows the public wants. The larger this gap, the more their real agendas must be kept secret and the more that manipulative and deceptive tactics must be used to win support. But, also, the larger the gap, the greater the impact of investigating and exposing them. Organisations get complacent in their secrecy and say and do things that look appalling when revealed in public.
Sensitive political sources of course take time to find and cultivate. But, behind their smooth public fronts, political parties are made up of many different sorts of people and factions. A systematic approach to finding sources can be successful. The tip sheet goes into this. Also, since the parties copy each other’s methods, information from other countries can allow informed guesses about where to look for local information. I found this repeatedly.
An ultimate goal is that our investigative work can inform daily journalists and the public about the tricks and manipulation they are subjected to, and thereby make those tactics less effective in our national politics.
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Tip sheet: Exposing political parties and their strategies
Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2008, Lillehammer, Norway
Nicky Hager
New Zealand author and freelance journalist
* Political parties around the world borrow and copy each other’s ideas and tactics. They recommend political consultants and techniques to each other. They meet regularly with like-minded parties from other countries to share their experiences. This means that we can use information from other countries to help us understand and uncover what is happening in our own. I hope that my book about New Zealand’s right-wing National Party, called The Hollow Men, a study in the politics of deception, can be useful to other journalists as a blueprint for recognising and exposing underhand activities and the cynical modern techniques of political and media manipulation. The book draws on hundreds of leaked internal papers, which give an inside view of three years of politics, including an election campaign. The book can be ordered at the website below, or I will happily give copies myself to less resourced journalists.
* Our goal should be to investigate the political advisers who manage modern political tactics. Currently, these people think they should be able to be invisible, but they deserve more scrutiny than most politicians. Many journalists let PR people walk through issues unchallenged as if they carried some sort of diplomatic passports giving political immunity. The first step is naming and picturing them in stories. This should open the way to stories coming to light. TV camera people and news photographers should be encouraged to take extra footage and photos of the staff who normally stand just out of picture, advising and keeping an eye on the politicians who are the centre of the news.
* Likewise we should make their tactics the news. We should be naming and describing their techniques: “inoculation”, “message discipline”, “framing”, “bridging”, “dog whistling”, “political hygiene test”, “third-party campaigning”, “crisis management” techniques (attack the messenger, divert, paint yourself as the victim and mobilise ‘independent’ third-party voices to defend you), depriving issues of “oxygen” and so on. Overall their goal can be to create and maintain a kind of virtual reality, with public images constructed and issues hidden, emphasised and framed according to the interests of the party. Understanding these concepts allows the public to understand much better what is happening in the news. This is not only informative and interesting. It helps the public to see through the political methods and ‘decode’ the political messages, allowing a clearer view of issues and politicians. My book covers all these, in the political advisers’ and consultants’ own words.
* Once you understand the techniques, a systematic search through databases of political press releases, speeches etc reveals a lot about what is going on and being hidden.
* International collaboration between right-wing political parties can be seen in the International Democratic Union and allied organisations, see www.idu.org, hinting at relationships that can be further explored. I will be giving out DVDs of information on these links. Journalists can contact me for more information on this.
* But the most important sources are insiders. My study of this political party showed (as we know) that organisations are not as impregnable as they first appear. Behind an organisation’s happy, unified front are all sorts of different people. Some may be deeply loyal, others just doing a job and still others quietly appalled by what is happening around them. Our working assumption should be that if we are creative and try hard enough, we have a good chance of finding sources.
* A good starting point is obtaining staff lists or internal phone directories for the organisation. These show organisational structures and allow us to recognise names, check out possible sources and cross-reference other bits of information we hear. I try to collect a series of internal phone directories to trace peoples careers and identify interesting staff who have left the organization. It should not be too hard regularly to get copies of Parliamentary phone directories (many Parliamentary journalists have these) and use them to track staff.
* The next and most important step is to think laterally about all the places where information can be located. This means, think beyond the obvious main people. Consider former staff, friends and family of staff, contractors, suppliers, employee unions, legal firms, links with university departments, government ministers and their staff, external public relations companies, industry organisations, overseas partner agencies or companies, security guards, Police and many more. We might imagine leaks coming from senior staff (and sometimes they do), but there are many more lower level staff in an organisation and they may not feel the same loyalty to organisational secrets as their bosses. There are numerous junior staff and personal assistants who are treated as deaf and blind by their superiors, but who can know a lot of what is going on and have wide access to file systems. PR/communications staff (often ex-journalists) can also be helpful.
* The idea is to imagine the types of information needed and create a matrix or map of all the places those types of information may be accessible. Information is nearly always spread much wider than those in authority imagine. There can be scattered clues on even very secret subjects that when gathered point to where to dig further.
* Once we have a mental list of types of people we’d like to locate, it’s a matter of searching hard enough and waiting long enough until possibilities come along. Most sources seem to come from word of mouth, friends of friends, chance meetings, suggestions from colleagues or other sources. The key thing is not to assume that people won’t help. Our assumptions (“no one in that party is going to talk to me”) can be our greatest obstacles. Even now, when our National Party is furious at me about my book, I am still finding new people who want to meet me and who are willing to help. Political parties are full of old factions, personality disputes, people who were passed over for promotions etc etc. And, as I found, the sources can just be principled people who are uncomfortable about party behaviour or secrets and who, when approached, decide to help.
* The main way I’ve lost sources is by being in a hurry and pushing too hard. Good sources usually take time — with probably quite minor contact at first while the source gains confidence and then later a sense of trust and joint endeavour growing and lots of information arriving.
* Getting good sources is only the first step. You can get an amazing source and still miss the important stories.Indeed, I believe most journalists do this: leaping at the first or obvious story and not realising what they are missing. In my experience, the best information often comes from the third or fourth meeting (or longer), when I’ve had time to reread the interview notes and think of the right questions. The source may well not be ready to say much yet. They may not realise what the most important information is. Ask lots of broad questions that help to trigger memories and raise subjects that might otherwise be missed. Ask them to draw a diagram of staff structures; describe key personalities; provide minute details of technical procedures, organisational rules and overseas links; draw the layout of the offices and jot down the names of which staff do what where (this often triggers fascinating stories) and so on.
* We have to be utterly faithful to our sources. We often have a better idea than them of the risks and have to advise them on what is and isn’t safe. Part of this is being strictly secret. Most people, including journalists, are not good at keeping secrets. They only tell one other person, who only tells one other and thus any interesting information accelerates outwards. For sensitive sources, I say to them that we are putting a fence around us and no one except us will know about this for the rest of our lives. This means that if there is ever an investigation or suspicion, they can be sure nothing has leaked from me; and it reminds them to be equally careful themselves. An important source is a life-long relationship. And if we do it well, it can pay off as well. The same source could provide even a bigger story in future and still be helping us years later.
* There is a component of luck in finding good sources so the key is to have a systematic and persistent approach that increases the likelihood of being lucky. In my National Party study, it took about eight months before I found the first inside source, a few more months before I found others and I received only a trickle of documents in the first two years. Then suddenly, after those two years, various factors coincided and the floodgates opened. Some of the sources were ready to leak in very large quantities.
* One of the lessons of my investigation was that secretive and deceptive tactics are double edged swords. They can work very well for political parties — it is depressing to see how much the media falls for the tactics — but they can also backlash strongly if they are exposed. They’re kept secret precisely because they don’t look good. In my case, the party leader had no option but to resign on the day the book came out. The following week he resigned from Parliament completely.
The Hollow Men is available from:
http://www.craigpotton.co.nz/products/published/books/booksocial/thehollowmen