“Now news hits us from all angles which, you might think, is great for anyone working in public relations. The options for coverage are numerous, the focus of each channel so precise as to allow us scope to communicate specific messages to an audience already salivating in expectation of the next piece of information. However, what some might have missed is that news is dead; or at least on life-support and awaiting the final but inevitable end. And the cause of this? Well, we might call it ‘the Kuenssberg Effect.’
“You may know the name. Laura Kuenssberg is the Political Editor for BBC News. She follows in a long line of ‘big beast’ editors who have sat at the heart of British politics for as long as news and Parliament have been wedded. However, Laura is something new; the fresh face of reporting that eschews news in favour of comment and opinion. Comment is not new, of course. The concept of a ‘leader column’ in your newspaper is an old one, and something that still works well to tease out one element of news and take a view on it.
“Columns such as this one have always been a part of the media content. Experts, and those of dubious fame, put pen to paper to offer up their opinions in the wider context of factual news. And there we have the change. It is perhaps a subtle one but a change nonetheless. News has been usurped by a point-of-view. In fact many points of view but with one key element, and here is the shift; opinion is replacing news. Laura Kuenssberg is not the only exponent of this cancerous aberration, she is just one of its most high profile.
“To understand the distinction between news and opinion try watching Nick Robinson, her notable predecessor, back-to-back with Kuenssberg. In his reporting there was a clear distinction between news, what facts he had dug up and was reporting, and his view. Often he presented them in that order. This is what we know followed by, and this is what I think it means. We could bow to his experience or knowledge, or not, but at least we had the facts on which his opinion was based.
Pictured: “News has been usurped by a point-of-view,” says marketing expert Chris Journeaux.
“The Kuenssberg Effect drops the facts and presents just a view. She brings the social media style of armchair experts into our living rooms and onto our mobile phones. She might be better informed than the ‘citizen journalists’ that so cram our feeds with their incoherent babble and poison, but who knows for sure. The facts have been removed as though to save us from the need to think.
“The drive behind this is obvious, as is the success of dropping news in favour of opinion: because so many of us eagerly consume the ‘fake news’ spread, slick-like, across the screens of our devices. If professional journalists are forced to compete with this verbiage of the untrained social media jockeys then it is hardly surprising that the Kuenssberg Effect has them by the throat. If they want our attention then they must feed us the swill of opinion masquerading as news. Think about it…someone’s opinion now equals news. Beyond farcical.
“What matters to those of us ploughing our way through the world of PR, though, is the need to alter what we communicate. If news is indeed dying and the Kuenssberg Effect holding power, then everything we write should have opinion bound up in it. We have to have a view and the more outlandish, controversial, the better. Let us be the catalyst for the heat of social media that pleads to be outraged so that it can post into forums at 02:00 and share posts of horror and crisis so beloved by the mobile generation. And this is an easy thing to achieve.
“News is difficult because it demands accuracy, the Kuenssberg Effect just requires a Pavlovian audience ready to respond in predictable ways as soon as we ring our PR bell. They used to call it a clap-trap. Our jobs just got a whole lot easier…and a whole lot less interesting.”
The views expressed in this piece are those of the columnist and not those of Bailiwick Express.
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