A certain division of general practice rather let the cat out of the bag last week when it advertised for a public relations officer and spelled out what they expected of this spin doctor. According to Crikey the Brisbane-based organisation was looking for someone to raise the profile of primary care and "manage the media [and] control what ends up on the front pages of the paper, and what doesn't."
Such a bald statement of what spin doctors aim to do these days comes as no surprise to those of us who work in the media, but I am still amazed by the number of otherwise intelligent people who actually believe what they read in the papers.
Flicking though the morning papers each day it sometimes seems as if I am witnessing a battle of the spin doctors. A typical scenario would be when a press release from the health minister or health department's media team forms the basis of an article accusing doctors of being greedy or protecting their turf. Count to ten and wait for the response from the other side. The spin doctors for the medical bodies will have a detailed rebuttal out within hours, if not minutes. The same happens for all the other range vested interests whether it be industry, insurance companies and lobbying groups for other health practitioners.
You could almost imagine a world in which the journalist is bypassed and the various media departments just take each other on directly. And the way that mainstream media companies are cutting their staff this might not be an imaginary situation for much longer. With fewer journalists being asked to do more, it's inevitable that they will have to rely more on a quick re-write of press release to save time.
It may already be true that when it comes to health spin doctors outnumber journalists. A recent report in the Australian estimated that the Queensland government alone has almost 70 spin doctors for health. And when you consider that almost every hospital, every company, every medical organisation, support group and government department has its own dedicated media relations staff, we must be talking in the thousands. And that's before we even mention the PR industry.
The positive news for doctors is that journalists still prefer to deal directly with real people. So if you feel you're getting a raw deal or have something you think is not getting the coverage it needs, try calling you local journo and tell them the story. They'll be glad to hear from you.
