It’s August 2024 and a number of foreign countries are posting travel warnings after the outbreak of rioting – let’s not call it protest – across England and Northern Ireland.
What started with the murder of three children in Southport became a riot fuelled by misinformation and then disorder in more than a dozen towns.
The Civil Contingencies Act requires UK police, council, fire and rescue and NHS to warn and inform.
I’ve gathered toghether some content that has lanfded. It’s important to stress that it’s not always the eye catching that works. Yes, there’s some arresting footage of police body-warn cameras but there’s also some very straight forward meat and potato communication that scores well because it is timely.
But alonngside the messaging, don’t forget media relations.
The conviction and sentencing of those accused of taking part in disorder is now an important part of the process.
Justice must seen to be done to deter those who could take part in future disorder.
Here’s some that’s caught my eye.
Communicating the incident
X, formerly Twitter, still has a role in a breaking news situation. Wisely, Merseyside Police limited who can reply to the original message. A similar message on Facebook has been shared 350 times in seven days.
LATEST | Emergency services are in #Southport after a major incident this morning (Mon). One man has been arrested and a knife seized. There are casualties.
But as the situation spread to a far right-inspired riot in Southport and to other towns in England the situation became more charged. Merseyside Policeshared some shocking bodyworn camera footage.
Communicating condemnation
In other towns there was condemnation of the trouble caused such as here, Rotherham Council. Sometimes, attractive content isn’t needed. The simple text of it works here.
Communicating arrests
Putting through the door of one of the suspects accused of taking part in the rioting in Sunderland. Face obscured to not jeopardise a future trial from Northumbria Police.
And body worn content showing the arrest of suspects – with faces obscured so as not to jeopardise their conviction.
Communicating recovery
It’s important to show the recovery phase. Here, the people of Sunderland turned out to help with the clean-up operation in the city centre after violence. This post from Sunderland City Council.
And here, Liverpool City Council didn’t hide the deep impact of the violence. Here, library staff on TikTok talk of their shock after their building was targeted.
Mark and Debbie who work at #Spellow Hub, express their sorrow after the destruction of their community hub. The service gives vital support to the community and the devastation caused by the appalling criminal actions of a minority has left people in shock.
Again, residents taking part in the clear-up posted by Hull City Council.
A simple picture of gifts thanking Cleveland Police officers who tackled trouble in Middlesborough gets huge reactions.
Communicating recovery from the residents
As much as the content from official channels is important – and it is – there’s certainly something to be said for sharing other recovery content. After all, this shows powerfully that the community are on the side of law and order.
Here, a Southport football player Jordan Lussey offers free coaching to kids from the town.
If there are any parents on here from Southport who’s children are distressed after todays events.
Please DM me. I am hosting a Football Camp this week and your children can attend free of charge.
It’s also important to remember the role that traditional media plays in these moments and that their content is shared back online. Here, a Liverpool Echo piece is shared back into the Southport Community Facebook group.
And this from South Yorkshire…
And court reporting which is an important part in the process…
On the subject of media relations…
Alison Hernandez, police and crime commissioner for Devon gives a masterclass in communicating restrained anger and praise on BBC TV. It’s five minutes but worth the watch.
As the dust starts to settle on the horrific murders of three children and rioting in Southport two important questions start to emerge for public sector communicators.
Firstly, how to communicate on a hyperlocal level in an emergency?
Secondly, how to challenge the world of disinformation that can come with it?
Communicating on a hyperlocal level
Ofcom’s Review of Local Media correctly shows the dartboard-shaped new landscape of communicating locally.
It starts with your street as the bullseye and radiates out to your neighbourhood, town or city then your county nation or region. It looks like this:
The channels radiate from WhatsApp and Facebook groups locally right up to TV and radio nationally.
In an emergency, Twitter has been the default first platform for the public sector to communicate on since 2011.
Indeed, London Ambulance Service stopped answering the phones to the media and relayed their statements on Twitter as the incident played out.
But Twitter, now X, is not what it was. The limit on tweets you can see has blunted its effectiveness at reaching people. Its timeline is no longer in chronological order.
What is now happening is the local emergency and the disinformation that surrounds it is playing out first on WhatsApp and Facebook groups.
The big problem is this escapes the gaze of police, fire & rescue, NHS and council people who operate on a town, county or regional level.
It’s important to say there is no criticism in this post of those organisations responding to what was a triple murder in Southport followed by a riot then recovery. Quite the opposite, teams from Merseyside Police, Merseyside Fire & Rescue, North West Ambulance Service, Mersey and West Lancs NHS Trust and Sefton Council stood up to be counted.
In an emergency, information rather than click-attracting content is key.
I’m sure there will be a more detailed study into the events and lessons learned but as a blogger some things struck me.
The timeline for Southport
Firstly, let’s look at the timeline to see how it measures up against the Ofcom dartboard.
At 11.50am on Monday July 29, a man armed with a knife attacked children at a venue in Southport.
Jamie Lopez, a reporter for the subscription news service The Lancashire Lead, recalls how the information vaccum was filled with rumour:
“I was born and raised in the town and on Monday spent hours waiting in fear for official news to come through. The WhatsApp groups and Facebook comments were filled with terrifying stories of what may have happened and just how many people were affected.
“Most of those suggestions had lots of details wrong but ultimately the key point remained true – children and adults had been stabbed by a lone attacker who’d embarked on a spree of unimaginable terror.”
“All of a sudden I was getting all these messages flashing through on my phone, on WhatsApp and things,. No one really knew what was happening or where it was — at first we were worried it might be some of their friends.”
So, misinformation and confusion on WhatsApp and Facebook groups first as the incident played out. It started off as being hyperlocal.
Just over an hour later came the first statement on the Merseyside Police website.
Far right social media had gone into overdrive. They immediately blamed Islamic terrorism with unfounded allegations the attacker was from Syria and had come to the UK illegally. See here, here and here.
By the morning of Wednesday July 31 Nigel Farage MP had got involved. He posted a video questioning what information was being withheld rather than asking the question in Parliament and getting an answer.
Legitimate questions, commentators said, but he could have got answers had he asked his questions in Parliament.
What was being hidden?
In the UK, the law forbids police immediately identifying a 17-year-old but in the world of conspiracy ‘they’ don’t want you to know who it is because ‘they’ are hiding something.
A court order was later made to identify the accused as Axel Rudakubana who was born to Rwandan parents in Cardiff.
So, it wasn’t a Muslim immigrant who came illegally on a boat at all.
Organised disinformation
The News Agent news podcast produced an excellent investigation into the background of misinformation (accidental) and disinformation (deliberate) around the Southport incident.
I strongly urge you to take a few minutes to catch-up on this if you work in the public sector. It sets out the far right conspiracy playbook that if you spend any time online you’ll see.
One of the means of conspiracy, the podcast reports, is ‘they’re not telling you stuff’. They’re hiding it from you.
Who?
‘A shadowy cabal, the Deep State, the woke.’
It sounds crackers but it clearly has traction.
This isn’t unique to Southport. This practice, the programme reports, is well established to encourage division and hate.
This may or may not be be the case but this probably won’t help the police, NHS or council communicator faced with an unfolding incident on the ground.
I’m a member of hundreds of Facebook groups across the UK. In part, this is a legacy of work I did during COVID to support councils across the West Midlands and from work I’ve done with the public sector across the UK. Occasionally, content from them drifts to the surface.
Fired by revulsion and anger at the Southport murders the misinformation about the identity was being circulated in groups such as the Cannock Chase Discussion Group which has 9,500 members.
The Sunderland Have Your Say Facebook group’s 35,000 members were also alive with misinformation days before violence was to flare there.
Horror then shock then a determination to come together by clearing up the damage.
Heartening.
And also…
But also…
So, the Facebook group can be a compelling part of the recovery just as much as they can be a source of speculation.
Indeed, content created by the public sector was shared into Facebook groups such as this Mersey Care NHS Trust post which captured the mood of remembrance and reflection.
The role of WhatsApp, Nextdoor and Facebook groups
The incident in Southport falls squarely into the findings of the Ofcom Review of Local Media.
It played out on WhatsApp and Facebook first. This is a danger point. Rumour fills the vacuum. Once the official statement has been released the message used to be immediately amplified by traditional media. The only vacuum was word of mouth. Now, that’s not the case.
I’d add the community-based network of Nextdoor into this street-by-street mix.
Emergency planning v3.0 and spreading the message on Facebook and WhatsApp
Emergency planning is the duty on the public to warn and inform in an emergency.
This is something that police, fire and rescue, council, NHS and others have a legal duty to plan for.
If traditional media releases are emergency planning v1.0 and social media then using Twitter has been v2.0 then the evolution of WhatsApp, Facebook groups and Nextdoor would be a v3.0 iteration.
This is the phase the puublic sector must now adapt to.
How to plug into WhatsApp and Facebook groups?
I was working in local government around 2010 when the English Defence League came to Birmingham. The first time they came they spread rumours of a white youth being stabbed by an Asian gang. It was pandemonium. The second time they came the police were ready for them.
The second time, a senior officer active on Twitter was scanning for misinformation and then shooting it down in real time.
If there’s a rumour of a stabbing who are you going to believe? An account you don’t know or a police officer you follow?
This incident was a breakthrough moment for me.
A similar Eureka moment is needed with the latest evolution of Emergency Planning, the v30 which has WhatsApp, Nextdoor and Facebook groups.
Ideas for WhatsApp
In peacetime, the lesson from the first WhatsApp Channels are that images with text are sharable and do best on the platform.
So, would a pre-existing WhatsApp Channel that can share an image with text with a request to share into subscribers groups be an idea?
Absolutely.
Indeed, Liverpool City Council used their WhatsApp Channel to spread a video appealing for calm.
The value of using WhatsApp to send a message to particular community leaders in a specific language also presents itself. The good part of a fractured media landscape is that it’s fractured and you can reach your audience with some research.
Could this work in the first minutes of the incident? Potentially and the recovery phase, too.
Ideas for Facebook groups
The lesson from the General Election in Facebook groups is similar to WhatsApp. That’s sharable images. So what would that look like? Key points from the statement as Sefton Council did when encountering online rumour? Images of community clean-up with text, maybe?
Within 15 hours this post from Sefton Council showing a landmark lit up in pink in memory of the attack wqas shared more than 130 times and 300 engagements. That’s a positive number however you look at it.
A strategy of posting and forgetting probably isn’t the most effective way to use Facebook. Being proactive and sharing to groups is definitely the way to go. I’ve heard of some police forces having an email list of Facebook group admins. I’m not sure that’s the most effectiove way to talk to them but the idea of taking them seriously I absolutely love.
Ideas for Nextdoor
This is harder to review since what a council posts to Nextdoor is invisible if you are not in that particular community.
But the partnership agreement with Nextdoor by a public body allows a message to be sent to EVERY subscriber. This is a hugely helpful step in an emergency. One downside if you go down this path is that you can only see messages which land on your page. You can’t see the discussion that falls outside it. In a situation like Southport that’s probably not helpful.
Report, report, report
If you see misinformation and disinformation hit the report button on social media. I don’t see much hope with doing this on CX, formerly Twitter but I’ve anedcdotally heard of Facebook taking complaints more seriously.
Conclusion
‘All politics is local,’ is a commonly heard phrase that was first heard in the 1930s.
All emergencies are local, too. But as my first news editor once said local can be a very elastic term.
There’s no question that the new landscape that gives a local voice to local issues needs to be one that the public sector needs to understand.
It needs to grasp the hyperlocal landscape of WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups and Nextdoor.
But running alongside is the second challenge that is more insidious and that’s how to challenge misinformation.
Should resource be allocated to monitor and tackle this? I’d say so. But that’s easy for me to say because I don’t work for one of the public bodies that dealt with it. Being several steps removed to see the absolute need to tackle that rumour.
I’d be interested in seeing the debate around these questions.
I remember hearing Carolyne Mitchell, the Scottish communicator, say that it is better to sort things out in peacetime rather than when cars in the street are on fire.
In a week when cars in the street have been set on fire I’m reminded how very true this statement is.
You never really know someone until you talk to them at 4am, an internet meme has it.
Even then, I’ve had some early morning conversations with people who have turned out to be absolute coins.
Imagine if you had the huge responsibility to appoint someone to an important job. Yes, there’s the interview but I’ve known some people be brilliant at playing the interview game and then be shocking at the actual job.
There’s an AI for that. Of course there is.
This week, I’m trying out whitebridge.ai a tool that searches digital footprints online. It could be you, a potential employee or someone you are looking to meet.
As a wheeze I thought I’d try it out and then blog the results.
I could have done someone else but I wouldn’t have been 100 per cent on whether or not it was accurate. That hobby painting Napoleonic War-ere lead figures? Well they could I suppose but how do I feel about that?
The website
The website is pretty straight forward.
It searches publicly available records for the person with social media channels, public networks and other public records.
The results
So I dive in…
After two or three minutes it comes back with the report. And 307 data points checked.
Overview
The overview is a broad summary.
Dan Slee is a prominent figure in the field of public sector communications, known for his innovative use of social media and digital tools to enhance public engagement. He is the Director at Dan Slee and co-founder of comms2point0, a consultancy specializing in public sector communications, offering training and consultancy services1. Dan has a rich background in journalism and local government, having served as a Senior Press and Publicity Officer at Walsall Council, where he played a key role in the award-winning Walsall 24 experiment2. He is also recognized for his contributions to the Guardian’s Public Leaders Network and his influential blog, which ranked fourth in Cision’s Top 10 PR Blog list3. Dan’s recent activities include promoting the use of WhatsApp Channels for public sector communications and analyzing the impact of AI on media and public relations. His insights and practical advice continue to shape the landscape of public sector communications in the UK.
RESULTS: Well, it’s all factually accurate. The Guardian Public Leaders Network stuff was more than a decade ago so hardly topical. Nor is the Walsall 24 experiment.
SCORE: 3 out of 5.
About
They got the about right. I live in Dudley in the West Midlands and there’s links to some of my social media. Not linkedIn which is interesting.
SCORE 5 out of 5.
Career
They’ve got that I moved from journalism into the public sector and that I do thinks with public sector comms. I’ve worked in the West Midlands and London? Well, that’s half right. This is where serving on the Guardian Public Leaders Network comes in. It was a voluntary role. Things like this I can clear-up but others wouldn’t.
SCORE: 4 out of 5.
Leisure and hobbies
Apparently, I like making tea, creating musical duets and support Arsenal. I don’t mind a cup of tea, sure but Arsenal? Eh? This comes from a post about an AI-post about Arsenal player. That’s a big leap of faith I’m not that struck about.
As for tea, yes, I like tea but I wouldn’t like to be categorised as one of the nation’s tea drinkers. Had someone started a conversation prompted by the TikTok about tea making I’d be fine with that.
And as for the line about my liking to create musical duets they couldn’t be more wrong.
They correctly surmised that I like hiking from a TikTok I made of my son on the top of Catbells in the Lake District.
What seems to happen here is that the platform will take a fact it discovers and then draws a pretty hard and fast conclusion.
SCORE: 2 out of 5.
Negative media
This one was fascinating. It lists a series of scores around substance abuse, scandal and breaching professional standards. I was all clear on these and got a green tick.
However, one box needed attention. Looking into it it was because I’d blogged about the danger of a fake profile on Facebook. Interestingly, it flagged this up ‘for review’ without coming up with a conclusion. From a legal perspective, I’d be a bit worried if I was basing a decision on a conclusion made without context.
I’m also not on any global sanctions lists which is a relief.
SCORE: 5 out 5.
Gallery
It pulled together a stack of images. They were accurate but I’m not sure what there is here that a Googfle Images search would not have found.
SCORE: 5 out of 5.
Cost
From £21.15 per search so its not something to chuck around.
SCORE: 1 out of 5.
Overall conclusions
After running my search I ran a couple of other searches that drew blanks.
With more than 300 data sources there’s plenty of places to look. It will save time. There’s plenty to get your teeth into. But sometimes the extrapolation from very limited resources are slightly off the mark. It’s a starting point not the destination.
Probably useful as part of the recruitment process.
When I was a younger man than I am now I loved mustard.
Our local Sainsbury’s had a choice of four and I would buy them to experiment. After all, what mustard would taste good on a ham sandwich was quite different to a barbeque sausage.
So, when our Sainsbury’s moved to a new site four times as big the mustard choice also expanded. There was now 16 different types of mustard. There wasn’t just one type of Dijon mustard. There was four. And English, spicy beer mustard and three types of American burger mustard.
Choice now paralysed me and the first time I went I left without buying any.
What I’d come across in this is something academics call ‘choice overload bias’. This means that when there is too much choice your satisfaction can actually decrease. We are tormented by the fact we may be buying the wrong thing.
Communicators who are looking to reach a local audience are faced with choice overload bias on a regular basis. What channel to use when there are so many?
When I started my career in local government the channels were a hard to use website, the local paper, local radio and quarterly residents magazines.
Social media obliterated all that and there are so many more places to get information.
I’ve gone through their 36,000 lines of data for you so you can better navigate the metaphorical supermarket shelves.
Key findings
Local newspapers are in an existential crisis. This time they really mean it. Print weekly paper readership across the UK has dropped 19 per cent in 12-months. Regional dailies have dropped 15 per cent in the same period.
Not only that, but there has been a loss of 271 titles between 2005 and 2022.
We already have news deserts. There are boroughs in London without a newspaper circulating and the same can be found in other parts of the country.
We don’t want to pay for local journalism. Not only do we not want to pay we don’t want to pay for ads. Digital or otherwise. Ad revenue is pouring out of the hole in the newspaper’s bucket.
There are experiments with local news. A spate of email-first news services that cover cities have taken off but all attempts at building a new form of journalism over the past 20 years has struggled. There are hyperlocal independent sites across the UK.
Struggling journalism is bad for democracy. The Government’s Cairncross review into local journalism and other academic research all point to this. There is a link between voter turnout and newspaper circulation.
Yet, the demand local news as an entity is surprisngly strong. Be that local politics, events, weather, sport or traffic, weather and travel we want to know about it. All of us. Not just the over 50s.
Local news and current affairs is surprisingly of interest. Almost half – 49 per cent – of 16 to 24-year-olds are interested in local news in their area. I know. I’m shocked as you are. This rises to 73 per cent of over 55-year-olds. This may be the roads that are being built, the cuts to the leisure centre or the event in the park.
But local campaigns not so much. One in five 16 to 24s is interested in a campaign on somethinmg like crime rising to a quarter of 55 to 64-year-olds.
And yes please to weather. Maybe its because we’re British but the category of local weather updates was the most popular with people. Six out of ten of younger demographics were interested rising to 80 per cent of over 65s.
But how we’re accessing this local news has splintered more than I could have imagined. If its not local newspapers then what?
This is where this handy illustration comes in.
I think of it as a dartboard with your street at the centre radiating out to your neighbourhood, city, town, village then your county then your nation.
In your street, it’s WhatsApp and Nextdoor you plug into then as you go wider its social media, newspaper’s social media and then as you approach the region and country its TV and radio too.
I like how they’ve made this visual.
In your street or neighbourhood, WhatsApp and the neighbourhood site Nextdoor are important. As you move towards the town or village and up through the country to the region or country then other platforms become important.
We often forget about TV and radio. There are 39 BBC stations and 250 commercial radio stations and in Wales the Welsh language S4C station plays an important regional role. But broadcasting only comes into play on stories that will reach broad audiences on the edge of the dartboard.
Local news is being consumed by social media with local groups like Facebook community groups now the biggest single place. The secret to good data, I find, is that it can challenge your own experience. I’ve been an advocate for Facebook groups for a long time but even I’m surprised to see that nationally it is now in pole position for local news.
The BBC. I often say in training that making friends with your BBC local democracy reporter (LDR) is essential. They are a trusted channel and that single LDR can shape content for multiple outlets.
Delve deeper and you’ll find newspaper’s digital footprint is important. The data shows 17 per cent for websites and apps of news outlets. Confusingly, it adds 9 per cent to other nmews websites such as Reach plc’s Birmingham Live. Reach fill prettty much all the top 10 for web pages with the highest audience.
People have left print for the web but sill trust local journalism.
Younger people consume through social media. The stat given is 16 to 34s are consuming news twioce as much on the socials compared to adults aged 55 and above.
Podcasts locally? Nah. Podcasts have enjoyed a boom in the 2024 General Election coverage but with five per cent using them for local news this isn’t a factor locally just yet.
While it breaks down into age demographics it also breaks down if you drill deep enough into regional differences. So, if you’re Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, West Midlands, South West, London or wherever a bit of time spent to refine the data would be time well spent.
A word of warning.
There is a top level summary of 56-pages and the data sets of 36,000 lines you can plough through.
When you break it down
I’ve selected one of the many data tables to include in its entirity. As you’ll see, there are some surprises.
Q: What sources do you get your local news from? By percentage (source: Ofcom)
Channel
16-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65+
Social media (FB, Insta, X)
63
63
59
56
44
36
TV
29
43
50
54
64
69
Word of mouth
45
46
41
49
54
59
Radio
27
32
32
34
32
29
Print newspapers
17
15
17
20
24
32
Newspaper websites & apps
14
19
23
21
26
23
Messaging or neighbourhood apps (WhatsApp & Nextdoor
14
19
23
21
26
23
Email newsletters
15
22
16
18
20
18
Local news websites
22
22
23
19
20
18
Search engines
34
37
39
31
29
24
Conclusion
I thought the local news landscape was fractured but I had no idea it was as fractured as this. Of all of iot, I love the dartboard graphic that shows how local news can feel very different depending on your perspective.
So, if its your street or neighbourhood its one thing – WhatsApp or Nextdoor – but as you move out its social media then TV and radio.
Given that there is this change none of us can take things for granted.
‘Switch off,’ they say when you go on holiday and then they give you an epic reading listof books about your day job.
Not in this blog post there isn’t. The only doctorate you should be studying for in your deckchair in Weston-super-Mare, Barry Island, Portrush or Troon is that of eating ice cream and playing crazy golf.
Here’s a book list of recommendations crowdsourced from the Public Sector Comms Headspace. Thank you to everyone who has contributed.
It’s split between fiction and non-fiction.
None of these are about PR and comms.That’s why they are on the list.
Non-fiction
PIER REVIEW by Jon Bounds and Danny Smith
“Two friends from Birmingham decide to settle an argument on which is the best pier by visiting them all. Part travel book and part history. This is THE book to read in a deckchair eating an ice cream.” – Dan Slee
“I recommend for anyone that has an interest in sport. It’s inspiring and demonstrates throughout that sport is about much more than just participating, being good or even winning. It teaches discipline, hard work, resilience, team work, determination and so much more.” – Laura Beale
“A book based on his travels in Europe and it’s a sometimes laugh out loud read. So it’s an especially good choice if you have an European destination in mind.” – Vicky Croughan.
“Really fascinating, neutral, and well-written, analysing Labour’s successes and failures at general election and putting them into context with what else was going on at the time. There’s even a chapter on this year’s win.” – Liz Wotsit
“For a more lighthearted read try Riding the Waves by Jane McDonald. This is an incredible tale of determination and self reliance and Jane being Jane it’s also funny. Top Yorkshire lass.” – Josephine Graham
“This has been out a decade or more but is the book I most enjoyed reading in 2024. A readable detailed story of the first years of The Beatles that ends in 1962. Essential.” – Dan Slee
“When I was a kid I was the most voracious reader ever and was at the local library at least once a week getting my quota and my Mom and Dad’s too, which were mostly sporting biographies and autobiographies. It’s because of the latter that I know more about cricket and snooker players of the 1970s than I’ve known of either since because I’d read their books when I’d read mine. Find yourself Freddie Trueman’s Ball of Fire autobiography and immerse yourself in a different world.”
“Incredible, really moving with a lyrical writing but in a way that absorbs you. My favourite reads of the year when it was released. Nice and short too.” – Michelle McVeigh
“For pure entertainment, I love the Why Mummy Drinks series by Gill Sims. Something about the busy working mum frustrated by a husband who thinks a lasagne is a quick dinner chimes with me for some reason.” – Ruth Fry
“As a chronic and uncurable Mancunian, I must recommend The Manchester Man by Mrs G. Linnæus Banks. Its a tale of rags to riches, set in the context of some of the real events of the world’s first industrial city. Its the ultimate place narrative.”
I’ve decided to read the document for you because if its on your list at all it is probably no higher than 9th.
Here’s what public sector comms need to know.
Preparation was a shit show
Just how much of a confused shit show preparation was can be best illustrated by the flow chart which shows how things would work.
If you look at the UK map from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland and think your own country was better let me tell you no, it wasn’t.
A confused web of bodies, duties, laws and responsibilities that nobody can understand least of all in an emergency. Within them were documents, the report says, with opaque language designed to deflect from work not being done.
Bad planning lead to more death
In short, the report says that more people died because thought in the planning stage wasn’t given.
There was no allowance for the fact that the pandemic would hit some parts of society more. This led to more people dying if they had a condition such as heart disease or if they lived in a deprived area or were from an ethnic minority group.
Lessons from the past were not learned and there was no space for dissenting voices.
In short, the report is clear that the planning process failed.
So what’s recommended?
The most headline grabbing is that the UK government and the three devolved governments need to create an independent new UK-wide body for responding to emergencies.
All this would also see the current network of local resilience forums in England and equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland replaced.
Once the new body is up and running exercises should be done tio test how effective they are and then lessons need to be adopted.
But the problem is, governments don’t know what’s going on locally and the boundaries of these local bodies don’t always tally with boundaries for the NHS, police and other bodies. This needs to change, the report says.
So does the mish-mash of having public health representation on these bodies. Sometimes they are part of them and sometimes not.
Communicating in England and Wales
Of course, public sector communicators will be looking out for the word ‘communications’ in this document.
Rightly, the voices of the bereaved are uppermost and can be found in panelled quotes in the document. This is really important as it helps decision makers remember just why they are doing this. I hope when it gets to it other patriots of the report will draw from the experience of public sector communicators.
With this in mind, one passage stands out.
The directors of public health, the public health workforce and local government have a critical contribution to make to pandemic preparedness and resilience. Their knowledge and skills are an important local and national resource to be drawn upon in whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience.95 They are in regular contact with the local population and therefore have an important role in communicating their needs to the institutions whose responsibility it is to prepare for and build resilience to whole-system civil emergencies.96 There should be far greater involvement of directors of public health and local public health teams in developing those plans.
Those at the coalface in the pandemic have spoken to me about messages coming from the top down with little chance to influence them. After the white heat of Boris Johnson’s 10 Downing Street stay at home announcement the national message were least effective locally. Messages with local voices better suited to an area worked best. If this is what plays out from the report this could be a good thing.
Are public health directors good at communicating? I’ve heard some pretty conflicting stories. Public health is a local government thing so prepare to step forward local government communicators with your best advice and your best diplomatic manner.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
There’s a different set-up in Scotland with a resilience division of Scottish Government. In Wales, there are separate processes. There’s not much in the report about communications for either country. Although Wales’ systems were called ‘labyrinthine’ so good luck in trying to understand how things work from a standing start.
In Northern Ireland, the suspension of the power sharing agreement which saw politicians absent themselves didn’t help, the report said. Infection rates more closely tracked with the Republic of Ireland rather than the rest of the UK which makes sense given the freedom of movement.
Whatever. The UK-wide approach to tackling the next big emergency will be simplified and UK-wide, the report says.
Preparing for the next
It’s entirely right that the document focuses on how the arms of government can be made to work more effectively next time. There’s lots in the report for emergency planning nerds.
The key recommendation is for a UK-wide independent statutory body for whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience. There’s an emphasis in asking what the third sector, public health and community consultation in the regular decision-making too. Presumably, this would be a communications task, would it?
What’s worrying is that communications doesn’t really feature in the report. Maybe that will come. The public sector communicator needs to look through the document for places where they can put a hand up.
One place they can try and use sharp elbows is where the report looks at the importance of what capabilities there are on the ground. A second is to take part in exercises when they are staged and be vocal during them. The report is clear that exercises need to be staged and their lessons implemented.
Mind, you it was nice to read the report’s war on jargon…
‘as jargon obscures communication rather than enlightens the reader.’
I feel this needs to be printed out, memorised and then quoted as a reason for making communication clearer.
Of course, the worry is that emergency planning remains perpetually 9th on the list until the next time.
As public sector communicators we can expect deepfakes to try and throw elections… but as satire?
In the final days of Euro 2024 a rash of fake videos involving England manager Gareth Southgate were posted. But rather than derail a campaign these were so obviously fakes that it’s worth asking what’s the point.
Here’s one after England beat Holland.
Would an England manager celebrate drug use? Of course not.
The quality of the deepfake isn’t the best. The audio doesn’t quite synch with the video and it’s fairly easy to spot the joins.
Of course, it’s tempting to disregard AI deepfakes like this.
But not so long ago there was a Gareth Southgate-related clip that really had me guessing. This was an interview with an Arsenal defender who had ruled himself out of being picked by the England manager.
This time it was believable and skillfully edited with cutaways in the style of a Sky Sports package. I’ll confess I went looking online for corroboration.
That video is this…
So, what does this mean?
The technology is there, getting better and bad actors need to base what they do in reality for it to really cut through.
Change can be radical and the incoming Labour administration shows no signs of letting the grass grow.
In a few days time the Kings Speech will set out the new Government’s plans for the next Parliament and there’s plenty for public sector comms to think about.
For me, the most significant of the 30 bills expected to be listed is the long awaited Hillsborough law. In short, this puts an expectation of candour on public officials and bodies at a public enquiry. In other words, to be honest and transparent when things go wrong.
This recommendation was first made seven years ago by the Government report into the 97 deaths into the football stadium disaster of almost four decades ago. It is high time it was enacted.
Why is this significant?
In very simple terms, a lack of transparency from some public bodies has led to justice delayed. South Yorkshire Police for decades blamed Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough disaster rather than reflected on their own actions.
There’s a catalogue of errors that reputation management has had a hand in.
What’s wrong with reputation management?
In itself, there’s nothing wrong with the comms team looking after the best interests of the organisation. Reputation management is presenting the best side of the organisation to the public.
The problem is reputation management can label everyone who isn’t happy as the enemy.
In the NHS, the Francis report highlighted reputation management as one of the problems with the running of Mid Staffs Hospital in Stafford. Findings highlighted: “An institutional culture which ascribed more weight to positive information about the service than to information capable of implying cause for concern.”
The report into problems with East Kent’s maternity department highlighted reputation management singled out “denial, deflection, concealment and aggressive responses to challenge.”
The Lucy Letby murders also highlighted reputation management as one of the issues in the case.
Then there’s the Post Office sub-post master prosectutions.
Every organisation makes three types of decision
Let’s be honest. Any organisation makes three types of decision.
First are good decisions.
Second are good decisions poorly explained.
Then there are bad decisions. They make no sense, they’re unpopular and lead to flak.
The role of comms in decision making
Of course, the ideal is to be at the top table helping the decision makers and flagging up problems. But the world isn’t like that. So, the role of comms is to play back the online feedback to the decision makers. If there’s a 20 comments in rapid order calling the decision out do you need to better explain the decision? Or is this something for the organisation to reflect on?
The answer to this is often above our pay grade but we comms can help give information that will help shape their answers.
A more healthy approach to reputation management the Hillsborough Law introduces can only save lives.
It doesn’t need a disaster for you to start doing it.
Many council comms people began on newspapers and know the Russian rouletteof the walk-in. That’s the member of the public who wanders in with a story. Sometimes they have and sometimes they haven’t.Here’s an insight into what that looks like from the author Alex Morrison of an excellent book on the subjectThere’s Someone in Reception.
What should a journalist do when a member of the public walks in with a complaint about “the council”?
First, take a deep breath. Grab a coffee. Maybe cancel your next meeting. These stories are usually complex, and are often backed up by carrier bags full of discoloured documents.
Take the man who walked into the Surrey Daily Advertiser in Guildford in the early 1980s.
The visitor was partially sighted, and reporter Alan Jones had been running stories about the lack of accommodation for disadvantaged groups in Guildford.
The man said the council had ignored his repeated pleas for housing.
Determined to help, Jones phoned the council there and then.
The council’s housing officer asked Jones to describe the man.
Jones: “He’s late fifties… long hair, he has a white walking stick. Oh, and appears to have a glass eye.”
Housing officer: “Ah, it’s him again. He’s been claiming disability benefit fraudulently… Has he taken out his glass eye yet and bounced it on the floor? It’s something he does when he doesn’t get his own way.”
Jones ended the call and turned back to the man, explaining that the council couldn’t help.
The man said: “You don’t believe I’m nearly blind, do you?”
Then he removed his glass eye and bounced it on the floor, to screams from the receptionists.
Recalling the scene, Jones told me: “It took a while to find his eye, give it back to him… and send him on his way. I didn’t answer calls from reception for a while after that.”
But what is the lesson from this story? Never trust the public? Assume claims against “the council” are usually unfounded?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. My book on local journalism – which focusses on “walk-ins” such as this – contains over 100 stories, from the 1950s to the 2020s.
There are no solid rules. Some walk-ins told unbelievable stories that turned out to be true (I just windsurfed from Swansea to Devon). Others told believable tales that turned out to be lies (someone shot us with an airgun – in fact these visitors shot themselves in a bizarre bid for compensation).
For council comms people asked to respond to such stories, things could be even more complicated.
Should you lend the story credibility by commenting on it? If you know something’s untrue – or more complicated than the way it’s been presented to a journalist – can you quietly steer them towards the truth?
Again, there are no easy options.
In my own time in local journalism, a walk-in claimed the councillors of Crawley were werewolves.
Disappointingly (for me at least), the council declined to comment.
There’s Someone in Reception by Alex Morrison is available in e-book, paperback, hardback and audiobook via Amazon.
‘A new dawn has broken, has it not,’ Tony Blair famously said as he addressed supporters at Royal Festival Hall in London as its new Prime Minister.
The Labour operation had deliberately waited until the first golden rays of the morning sun had reached over the Thames to brighten the shot that framed the 1997 Labour landslide.
Their approaches of message discipline and news management became the textbook of how to communicate.
Yet, everything changes, as Take That once pointed out. In 2007, The Sun sold 3.1 million copies and the News of the World shifted 3.5 million. Today, one doesn’t exist and the other no longer publishes circulation figures.
In 2024, The Sun’s intervention to support Labour with a lame football-themed frontpage that called for a new manager was met with general indifference and a shrug. It was a bulletin from another era.
Eighty per cent of the UK population has a social media account where we will graze our entertainment and news will come and find you if its important enough. The very idea of cycling to the paper shop to find out what’s happened belongs in the 20th century.
My General Election from a different perspective
In 2024, free of being politically restricted I volunteered to work on Labour’s campaign in Halesowen. It was professionally eye opening.
My first General Election was that Blair Labour triumph of 1997 where I covered it as a reporter for the Halesowen News. Labour fought and won that Black Country seat that fringes the Worcestershire countryside.
As a reporter, the phone would be ringing with calls from candidates most days in the six months beforehand. In the last six weeks, we would have a theme and invite the candidates to tell us what they’d do to handle crime, the NHS, jobs and other perennials. One week, we even got each candidate to submit an example of handwriting with their permission to a retired company director who was the UK head of a graphoanalyst society.
In 2024, The Halesowen News, is no longer based in the town, featured the Labour candidate a handful of times. Print media was an after thought to the campaign.
This was the meme election
But if it wasn’t local media driving the debate what was? I think I’ve got a meme that can tackle that.
Memes are sharable pieces of content that can make an observation, crack a joke or make a point. Agree? Hit like. Disagree? Fall into the trap and start an argument that will boost the original post with the algorithm.
Both Labour and Conservatives used memes as the sharp spear point of their election message. Activists were signed-up to spread local-themed and national messages across their networks.
Politics has long moved on from 19th century beer-laced election festivals to hustings to newspapers to the mobile phone that you scroll through. Had Blair, Churchill or Attlee being campaigning today they would be all across the meme.
The Conservatives had an app while Labour had a website with downloadable imagery.
But for all the officially-shaped content there was also a blizzard of combative unofficial content that would never have got past the approval process. Reform have a downloadable profile picture that’s all about spreading the branding.
The Sun boasted in 1992 that ‘it was The Sun wot won it.’ In 2024, if there was one thing more important than another maybe it was the meme election.
But…
This was also the anti-meme meme election
Need a message? Here, have one. Then move onto the next thread. To counter that there’s the anti-meme meme. You’re making this point? Here’s a meme that pricks your balloon.
There was plenty of this in the meme wars that raged across the internet and in particular in community Facebook groups and Nextdoor.
As the campaign went on, it was clear that even more subtle ways to get past the admin gatekeepers was needed. In particular I was impressed at the Stourbridge resident who offered the olive branch that this really was all about love and used the highly incendiary shot of Matt Hancock kissing an aide during COVID in breach of COVID regulations.
Nextdoor were particularly adept at throttling the algorithm on content that may have mentioned elections.
This was the AI election (sort of)
In 1924, the Daily Mail printed the Zinoviev letter. This quoted an emissary from the newly-formed Soviet Union that spoke in support of the Labour Party which was knocking on the gates of Downing Street. It alarmed Middle England. It was a fake. But the public didn’t know this until after the election.
A century later, there was no AI-generated equivalent that pointed an accusing finger at a Labour Leader poised to take power in then last few days. This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t AI if you went looking for it.
The big warning that AI was going to flood our timelines with misinformation and disinformation didn’t land this time.
What we did see was a lot of ‘patriotic’ right wing AI art of Reform’s Nigel Farage and more racist content that was also called out. It was clearly artificial. But both Conservative and Labour also created memes that showed opposition figures in unreal scenarios. Labour using Rees-Mogg’s face to show what it would look like to wake up next to him if there was five more years of a Conservative government.
Was the Rees-Mogg image made with AI or just PhotoShop? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. But that’s just it. It’s supposed to be hard to tell. It was definitely not real.
There was also the fake TikTok videos of leading politicians playing and commentating on Minecraft. To be really effective in their manipulation they have to carry a grain of truth. This couldn’t have pulled the wool over anyone. So, harmless then? Yes, largely. But it does nothing for building up politics as a worthwhile and noble profession.
More worryingly, The Guardian pointed to one example of AI tools being used to manipulate audio recorded on a Ring camera. This footage was shot which captured Labour supporters calling to deliver a leaflet. The candidate who posted it alleged a racial slur. An analysis of the recording showed anomalies.
Aside from that, the parties themselves were active creating content specifically for TikTok that looked and felt unlike video from other places.
This was the podcast approach election
I heard an episode of Radio 4’s ‘The Westminster Hour’ during the campaign. It was dreadful. Set piece lines to take deployed against each other by rival MPs not yet famous enough to have won their spurs.
The only Leaders’ debates that looked anything other than painful was Sky News in front of an audience whose laughter stripped past the lacquer of pre-prepared interviews. I cannot think that the set piece interview as it stands has any life left. It has been sanitised to death buried with a green pharmacy cross on its grave.
Yet, the informal podcast approach taken by programmes such as Electoral Dysfunction with Beth Rigby, Tory Ruth Davidson and Labour MP Jess Phillips or the genre-defining The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart are far more engaging.
It was the clipped-up news election
So, if print media is largely irrelevant does this mean that journalism is dead? Of course it doesn’t. It just means that the news will find people in clips that are seen online by far more who watched the original.
Keir Starmer’s stumble on Bangladeshi immigration cost his Party a big chunk of the Bangladeshi population across Britain, for example. Even the local journalism turned into sharable content.
And finally
If you think all this is just political communication and it won’t affect you as a communicator think again. Political campaigns, as I’ve said many times, are a petri dish for innovation.
The memes played a role but so did other factors. I can focus on the digital element but the door knocking, data gathering and get the vote out operation was all part of it.
Several of these approaches with a degree of imagination I can see working across the public sector. History shows that new tools which are at the bow wave in an election often become firmly part of the toolkit.
