Understanding the Divide Between Press Secretaries and Journalists

The divide between press secretaries and journalists has resurfaced in recent weeks, following the publication of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, in which he criticizes the press for not being aggressive enough during the run-up to the Iraq war. To find out more about press secretaries’ and journalists’ working relationship, we asked professionals from both sides to talk about what works, what doesn’t work and what they could do better.

Jill Chamberlin, director of communications for Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, says trying to present information to the press while accommodating a public official’s needs is a careful balancing act that journalists don’t always understand.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “reporters think they are more important than they are.” Not everyone gets their political news from print newspapers anymore, she noted, and not all politicians read newspapers.

 

A former reporter at the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, Chamberlin has found that journalists often don’t have the time or the resources to thoroughly report the information they are given. Press secretaries could help journalists be better at this, she said, by providing them with more background information on complicated issues, such as state energy bills.

Chamberlin said she appreciates when journalists explore delicate issues and are aggressive in their reporting, even if it makes her job harder.

“I would much rather deal with a very ethical, tenacious, aggressive reporter even though there’s the risk that they’re investigating every aspect of someone you work for,” she said. “… Pretty much reporters are all writing about the same thing all the time. There’s less independent review of what public officials are doing.”

One reporter who does write enterprising stories, she said, is Lucy Morgan, a senior correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times, which The Poynter Institute owns. Having dealt with press secretaries for 43 years, Morgan has had her share of difficult conversations with them. Some press secretaries, she said, have called the paper on Sunday mornings to complain about a headline or the play of a story. They would “scream” at the paper, she said, if they didn’t like something. Other press secretaries would call demanding to know what she wanted with records, even when she was making a routine request to an obscure agency about something non-controversial.

The best (but rare) press secretaries, in Morgan’s opinion, are those who see themselves as public servants whose duty is to dispense information. “Press secretaries can be a real help in getting accurate information, details, records, access to the official,” Morgan said. “But they can also obstruct access to everything if they are so inclined.” She has found that the biggest obstacles in dealing with press secretaries are caused by two factors:

Despite working with disgruntled press secretaries, Morgan has a cordial relationship with most of them — in part because she works at it. “Once in a while I’ve had disagreements with them, but I have also cooked dinner for a number of them over the years in an effort to get to know them better and have them know me better.” She said she considers Chamberlin to be a good friend and a trustworthy press secretary who sees herself as working for the public.

Kathy Kiely, Washington correspondent for USA Today, shared similar sentiments about her relationship with press secretaries, saying that for the most part she gets along with them fine. Over the years, Kiely has developed an understanding of press secretaries, making it easier to build a healthy working relationship with them.

“In Washington, most politicians are smart enough to get good people and to keep them in the loop,” she said. “A good press secretary has to serve two clients: his or her boss and the press. It’s a bit of a high wire act, and in order to do it well, they’ve got to be fully informed about what their bosses are thinking and doing.”

Sheila Tate became used to walking a tight rope as a White House press secretary for Nancy Reagan and George W.H. Bush.

One of the biggest challenges she faced as a press secretary, she said, was trying to convey a more accurate, three-dimensional image of who Reagan was so that the press would have a fairer understanding of her. Mistakes can happen, especially when reporters are overworked on the campaign trail, but for the most part, Tate has found that they get the information correct.

Making sure they obtain the information they need is the tough part. “You are really speaking through the [politicians], conveying their views and explaining their positions to the press,” said Tate, who is now vice chairman of Powell Tate, a public affairs company she started with Jody Powell, former White House press secretary for Jimmy Carter. “You’re also representing the press’ needs as best as you can. It’s a message battle.” 

Even talented journalists can’t always know if what they’re being told is the truth. Sometimes, messages get misinterpreted or remain hidden altogether. It was a politician’s failure to convey information that led Scott Libin, news director at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, to leave his job as a press secretary.

At one point, while Libin was working as a press secretary for Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), an administrative assistant told him that Aspin was at his lake home. Libin passed this information along to a reporter. The next day, Libin saw a photo of the politician in The New York Times, which revealed that Aspin was actually in Beirut. “He didn’t want it known that he was going there, but I was misled, and as a result, I misled a journalist,” said Libin, who was Poynter Online’s managing editor and a member of the Institute’s broadcast faculty before leaving for WCCO last year.

Having worked on both sides of the spectrum, Libin understands the role of both journalists and press secretaries, and acknowledges the divide.

“I distrust press secretaries who say they’re fundamentally in the same job as reporters. They’re not,” said Libin. “Their job is not to inform the public fully, it’s to get a specific story out, a story that makes their employer look good. Their first obligation is not to readers, listeners, viewers, losers; it’s to their boss. That doesn’t make it a dishonorable job at all. There’s just a natural friction there.”

Though plenty of stories include quotes from press secretaries, the better stories are usually those that use press secretaries not as primary sources, but as starting points. “Press secretaries are most helpful behind the scenes. You want to get to those primary sources. You want to talk to the office holder,” Libin said. “Sometimes you really want to talk to people at the street level, and you don’t want to get bumped up to the press office every time.”

Press secretaries aren’t secretaries for journalists; they’re a source, and often an important one. And while it isn’t necessarily a press secretary’s job to critique the media, sometimes criticism from “the other side” helps. Rather than be so quick to defend claims that journalists weren’t aggressive enough during the lead-up to the Iraq War, or that journalists “think they’re more important than they actually are,” we would do well to ask questions about what these criticisms mean — and what we might learn from them.

How would you describe your interactions with press secretaries?