Knowing the rules of the game

My last column, Thin Skin, generated a lot of feedback from politicians, public administrators and citizens. The public servants didn’t like the imagery and took the article (and others by me) as personal attacks.

Conversely, readers liked the column and believe that the critical light of the media acts as a check on the (perceived) actions of overzealous government officials. This is an old story that goes back to the founding of the republic.

It is also a topic discussed in my book on organization theory written several years ago. In a chapter titled "Improving the Relationship between Public Administration Intellectuals and the Business Press: Two Areas of ‘Fit’", the chapter outlines how little public administrators know about the journalism culture and, consequently, why public agencies (and their leaders) often get bad press.

Because the media shapes the image of government officials/institutions for public consumption, and is also government’s most powerful stakeholder, I thought it was important to discuss in the book ways this relationship could be improved.

Seminal research by Professors Chen and Meindl in a 1992 Administrative Science Quarterly article identified two dominant journalistic value preferences when it comes to shaping perceptions of leadership. The first is called antideterminism. This simply means a belief that an organization’s outcomes are influenced by leadership traits and actions rather than such impersonal forces as fate or luck. Organizations that have antideterministic leaders tend to get good press.

For instance, Roanoke County administrators threatened to go to court to block location of a methadone clinic in SW County. This occurred after the county had issued the clinic owners a valid business license to operate. County administrators may have been on shaky legal grounds for both reneging on the business license and being in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act for restricting medical access to opiate addicts. Still, county administrators were willing to tempt the "legal fates" to block the opening of the clinic. Consequently, they received favorable press constructions for their actions.

It is important to note that they would have also gotten favorable press coverage even if they had gone to court and lost. Chen and Meindl note that favorable press constructions do not depend on whether the leader always succeeds but rather whether he/she is perceived to have a vision for handling unruly environments.

Called the "Romance of Leadership," the journalism culture tends to give positive accounts to antideterministic leaders in order to reinforce the collective belief that someone is in control in turbulent times. Chen and Meindl explain this journalistic value: "Writers and readers who traffic in images of leadership influence each other to determine how leaders are talked about. In doing so, we rescue ourselves from the threats of a dangerous and capricious world and the disconcerting prospects of uncontrollable, if organized, human systems."

The second leadership value that the press favors is called altruistic democracy. This value preference suggests that politicians, officials and the system of democracy are all expected to be efficient, honest and dedicated to the public interest.

Public administrators who display antideterministic leadership traits and lead altruistic democracy agencies will receive the most positive image constructions and reconstructions from the media. The opposites of altruistic democracy organizations are impersonal, governmental units called bureaucracies. These types of structures are guaranteed to generate negative image constructions from the press.

The removal of a sign several weeks ago by a Salem official illustrates this point. A storeowner was protesting public policy by displaying a sign on his business property. The sign was removed by a government agent. Although it was put back the next day, the damage had already by done. Local media gave full coverage to the incident, the property owner hired an attorney and the state office of the ACLU issued a press release threatening legal action that was picked up by the wire services. Given the altruistic democracy value, there was no way the media would have given Salem political leadership positive constructions about the incident.

Since the Chen and Mendl article appeared 12 years ago, the most dramatic change in the journalism culture has been the restructuring of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism by President Lee Bollinger (see Positive Changes at Columbia’s Journalism School). Bollinger’s goal is to produce a generation of reporters that are also public intellectuals. These reporters will not only report the news but offer interpretations of the story.

Historically, giving interpretations of the news was the function of newspaper editorial writers. Bollinger’s restructuring, however, suggests that readers will have access to multiple interpretations of a story — while reading it and also on the editorial page. He believes that the interpretations of an editorial page writer and reporter are different and will provide a more holistic representation of the story. Bollinger, as protector of democratic values, is content to let the reader chose from multiple interpretations when making sense of a story.

If Chen and Meindl’s antideterministic leadership/altruistic democracy theories represent the second wave of American journalistic value orientation, Bollinger’s notion of the reporter as a public intellectual makes for a third wave. Public administrators and politicians should prepare for a new type of reporter who values antideterminism and altruistic democracy and also has the institutional license to frame these values in story writing.

Most Americans believe that the press has a liberal bias. It would be more accurate that the liberal worldview is less deterministic and bureaucratic. Still, conservatives such as Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld get favorable press constructions because of his antideterministic strategy on fighting the war on terrorism (especially in Afghanistan) and his altruistic democracy platform of bringing free elections to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Indeed, his weekly press conferences were a virtual love-fest until the Iraqi prison scandal erupted this past spring. Those shocking events were too out-of-control, impersonal and bureaucratic in nature. The media are now uncertain about Rumsfeld’s commitment to altruistic democracy and have been lukewarm to him ever since.

Politicians and public administrators feel picked-on by columns such as "Thin Skin." They have to understand that such a column reflects professional and cultural value dispositions. They also have to understand that the journalism culture believes that reinforcing the image of "leader in control" plays a dominant value in maintaining tranquility. My research suggests that public servants resist journalism values and thus, may not like the rules of the game as dictated by the media culture.

But, alas, it really is the only game in town.