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DOI: 10.1375/acri.43.3.444 2010 43: 444Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology

Alyce McGovern and Murray Lee'Cop[ying] it Sweet': Police Media Units and the Making of News

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444 THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGYVOLUME 43 NUMBER 3 2010 PP. 444464

Address for correspondence: Dr Alyce McGovern, School of Social Sciences and Inter -national Studies, Kensington Campus, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052,Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

Cop[ying] it Sweet: Police Media Unitsand the Making of NewsAlyce McGovernUniversity of New South Wales, Australia

Murray LeeUniversity of Sydney, Australia

Over the past two decades police media units have played an ever-increasing role in managing the dissemination of informationbetween the police and media organisations. Using the example of theNew South Wales Police Media Unit in Australia (hereafter NSW PMU)this article assesses the journalistic deployment of PMU information anddevelops a broader sociopolitical argument explaining the growth of PMUsmore generally. We analyse qualitative research data, in the form of inter-views with journalists and NSW PMU staff (n = 29), and quantitative datafrom an analysis of two Sydney-based daily newspapers. We suggest thatthe growth of PMUs can be explained with reference to new programs ofgoverning crime that developed throughout the last quarter of the 20thcentury as well as significant changes to the global media landscape.

Keywords: police media relations, NSW Police Media Unit, law and order, newsvalues, crime reporting, culture of control

Behind the Headlines

The 47-year-old woman sustained superficial injuries after allegedly being repeatedlykicked and punched by a 38-year-old man. It will also be alleged the man threatenedthe woman with a firearm. Officers using a firearm detection dog executed a searchwarrant on the address, allegedly seizing two sawn-off rifles and more than 3,000 liverounds of ammunition. (NSW Police Media Unit, July 27, 2006)

The 47-year-old woman suffered superficial injuries when kicked and punched by aman, 38. It is also alleged the man threatened her with a firearm. Officers using afirearm detection dog allegedly seized two sawn-off rifles and more than 3,000 liverounds. (The Daily Telegraph, July 28, 2006, p. 14)

The above direct quotes, one a press release from the NSW PMU, the other itsreproduction in The Daily Telegraph, provide the context for this article; an analysisof information-sharing between police and media representatives. The almost


mundane reproduction of police press releases in the mainstream media, asevidenced above, is perhaps for the most part innocuous. However, upon closeranalysis, the breadth of such reproductions also provides us with a telling picture ofjust how, and by whom, stories regarding law, order and criminal justice are framed.This article is concerned with the dynamics of this framing in the context of policemedia interactions with the NSW Police Force, and their Media Unit, serving as acase study/site for analysis. As well as being the oldest police organisation inAustralia, the NSW Police Force is also the largest, with 15,801 members1 (Chan,2007; Chan & Dixon, 2007; NSW Police Force, 2010).

We begin this study with a necessarily focused discussion of the place of crime inthe media, and the role of the police and the media in shaping understandings oflaw and order issues. Following this we look more specifically at the NSW situationby outlining the emergence of the NSW PMU, the key site for our analysis. Thearticle then presents research findings from two interconnected empirical studies;the first, an analysis of the reproduction of police press releases in the mainstreammedia and the second, semistructured research interviews with key police mediaofficers and journalists. We analyse the results of this research within the broadercontext of policemedia relations, focusing on the sociopolitical significance ofclose relationships between policing organisations and the media.

Scene SettingMedia outlets allocate significant column space and airtime to stories about crimeand criminality. Cohen (p. 17) noted back in 1972 that the mass media devote agreat deal of energy to deviance; sensational crimes, scandals, bizarre happeningsand strange goings on, and if anything the coverage of the strange and grotesque hasonly increased with the development of news magazine, infotainment and realitytelevision style programming to say nothing of emerging media sources like theinternet (Jewkes, 2004). There is little doubt media coverage plays a significant rolein the ways in which the community frames and views issues of crime, law and order,and social control (Chibnall, 1977; Hogg & Brown, 1998; Lee, 2007). For the mostpart, the community does not get its information about crime from personal experi-ence, but from the news media. Sociologists, media theorists and criminologists havenow long understood that both the construction and consumption of crime stories iscomplex, bidirectional and multidimensional (Mawby, 2007; Reiner, 2002). Mediaoutlets and their staff are not only influenced in their publication choices by theirreal, and imagined, audiences, but they also take an active role in the construction ofsuch stories; agenda setting and reproducing the hegemonic ideologies of theprimary definers with which they communicate, such as the police (Hall, Critcher,Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978; Surette, 1998). With commercial, financial andconsumer pressures now impacting on staffing within media organisations, as well asthe impact of technology such as the internet (Burton 2007; Chermak, 1995; Cooke& Sturges, 2009; Davis 2000; Deacon & Golding 1994; Jiggins 2007; Lovell 2002;Mawby, 2002; Salter 1994), the likelihood of all-rounder, general reporters is on theincrease, such that crime reporting is no longer the realm of specialist reporters alone(Jiggins, 2007). While, as Reiner (2002) and Hall et al. (1978) argue, specialistreporters foster contacts that might leave them open to their stories being filtered

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POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY


through the eyes of these contacts, the introduction of the generalist reporter intothe field of crime reporting also suffers from a similar fate, if via different means.Given the broad spectrum of stories such reporters deal with on a day-to-day basis,one could argue that their ability to foster and maintain close sources within policingagencies is limited, thus generating a reliance on PMUs, which provide informationto journalists in an efficient and relatively effective way.

Likewise, audiences are no longer seen as passive consumers. Often they areeven enlisted in the project of news making, through being encouraged to send tip-offs, information and images to news agencies.2 As Bloustien and Israel (2006, p.46) put it, news programming does not mirror crime and its control; Journalistsactively construct their stories by choosing particular kinds of events and presentingthem to their assumed audience in terms of what they think will make such eventsintelligible. It follows that individuals and institutions that are in a position toprovide media organisations with information about crime are likely to have asignificant input into the construction of crime narratives within particular culturalmilieus (Chibnall, 1977; Cooke & Sturges, 2009).

Perhaps the most influential organisations when it comes to information aboutcrime are policing agencies themselves. As the agencies responsible for ordermaintenance, and with a monopoly over the state-sanctioned use of force, policeare in a privileged position when it comes to the ownership and dissemination ofcrime information (Cooke & Sturges, 2009). While early understandings of policeand their role were primarily acquired through the print media of pamphlets,newspapers and memoirs, blurring the lines between fact and fiction (Mawby, 2007,pp. 147150, 151156), today the police play an active role in their portrayals, bothfictional and factual (see also Schlesinger & Tumber, 1993, 1994).

What has emerged from these representations of police and their work,especially the more recent portrayals, are criticisms about the level of associationbetween police and the producers of television series that purport to be factual(Mawby, 2007, p. 156). As Mawby argues, the policemedia relationship is a seriesof co-existing relationships that ebb and flow in terms of dominance and controland the balance of power differs over time and location and at national and locallevels (2007, p. 156; see also Cooke & Sturges, 2009, p. 421).

Freckelton (1988, p. 78) has argued that a symbiotic relationship existsbetween some police and media representatives, a relationship that is not conduciveto high quality, critical, investigative journalism on issues of criminal justice orpolicing. Rather, he argues, there is an unnecessary and improper reliance uponunnamed police sources and an unwillingness to seek out independent, alterna-tive viewpoints. Freckeltons assessment becomes even more pertinent when oneconsiders the increasing prominence and influence of professionalised media unitswithin todays policing agencies, and the myriad of developments impacting uponthe media industry more broadly. Dwindling media budgets, reduced resources, thegrowth of low-cost infotainment productions and the proliferation of generalistreporters means that the police have become the primary definers (Hall et al., 1978)of policing matters. It follows then that working relationships between media organ-isations, journalists and police have implications for the ways in which informationabout crime, law and order, and policing is reported in the news media and what inthese crime narratives is likely to count as truth in the eyes of the public.

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ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE



A Good Story In 1977 Steve Chibnall argued that crime reporting had been ignored by academicresearchers or treated as essentially apolitical (1977, p. 1). Since then, much hasbeen written about the way in which crime is reported in the media, and the waysby which journalists go about constructing or mediating news (see Ericson, Baranek,& Chan, 1989, 1991; Fishman, 1981; Hall et al., 1978; Kelly, 1987; Mawby, 1998,2003; Reiner, 2002, 2003). However, it is useful to return to Chibnalls eight newsvalues, as they provide an instructive framework through which the utility of PoliceMedia Units to the media might be better assessed. Chibnall (1977) suggested crimestories are attractive to media organisations where they include the values ofimmediacy, dramatisation, personalisation, simplification, titillation, conventionalism,structured access and novelty. Of particular importance to the argument that followsare the concepts of immediacy, that events that have just happened are morenewsworthy; simplification, the reduction of stories to simple and often black andwhite dichotomies; conventionalism, the ability of an event to fit into existingthemes or knowledge structures; structured access, agents such as the police who areprivileged sources for stories; and novelty, that stories of the bizarre, not themundane, dominate crime reportage. While we suggest Chibnalls account fallsshort of providing the tools for a full sociopolitical analysis of policemedia relation-ships in the context of PMUs, it is clear from the discussion that follows that PMUsare able to facilitate for media outlets many of Chibnalls attributes of newsworthi-ness. As we argue below, the current climate of police relations with the media hasseen a shift from information reportage no matter how one-sided this informa-tion might sometimes be to sophisticated media management. Police media unitsare illustrative of this shift.

Context:The NSW Police Media UnitIn recent times police media units, or police public relations branches, have grownsignificantly in number, size and in their importance as filters for police publicrelations. The first formal public relations branch specifically created to deal withmedia issues within the NSW Police Force was introduced in 1964 (NSW PoliceForce, 1965) and can be considered as a reaction to what has been described as acrisis of consent or confidence in police organisations that was being experiencedacross much of the western world during the 1960s and 1970s (Edwards, 2005;Finnane, 1990, 1994). In the Australian context, the 1960s and 1970s marked aperiod of political and social dissent over matters such as Australias involvement inthe Vietnam War, Indigenous rights, standards of health and welfare, the equality ofwomen, abortion law reform and censorship matters (Chan, 1997; Edwards, 2005;Finnane, 1987, 1990, 1994). Internationally, civil rights groups including Blacks,women, gays, prisoners and mental patients became increasingly affirmed andtheir influence grew, leading to important shifts in the balance of power betweengovernment and the governed (Garland, 2001).

This naturally had an effect on policing, as police were increasingly being seenas aligned with the government of the day and out of touch with the community. AsFinnane notes, during the 1960s the organisation and effectiveness of policing inNew South Wales became a topic of increasing public comment and political dispu-

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tation (1999, p. 13). Greater public interest in policing issues led to closer publicscrutiny of those in authority and it became more common for police authority to bequestioned (Edwards, 2005). In particular, issues of public order control and policepowers came under scrutiny, especially as they related to the ways in which police,under the pressure of government, dealt with public dissent and protest. Certainly,the new role television played in covering many of these issues would have also hadan impact on how these matters were viewed by the public, who were able for thefirst time to witness the police role in many of these protests (Edwards, 2005). InNSW, high-level discussion within the force suggested the need for closer, moreproductive, ties to journalists and media organisations.

When the NSW Police Force Public Relations Branch was established in 1964 itwas tasked with the promotion of police public relations; assisting materially in theinvestigation of serious crimes and crime prevention, not only through press, radioand television broadcasts of information relating to cases, but also through thepublication of photographs and descriptions of people who were suspected victimsof crime (NSW Police Force, 1965). In the 1964 Annual Report it was highlightedthat the activities of the Public Relations Branch were expected to increase in thenear future (NSW Police Force, 1965).

Indeed, we have seen over recent decades the role and scope of the publicrelations work of this branch flourish. Today this branch, now known as the NSWPolice Media Unit (NSW PMU), has expanded its repertoire as a dedicated medialiaison team, carrying forward preferred messages to the public via a wide varietyof media (NSW Police Force, 2010). The unit not only responds to enquiries, butalso engages in proactive media work in conjunction with the CorporateCommunica tions Unit. These proactive strategies have led to commercial arrange-ments with a number of media organisations, particularly on police reality televi-sion shows such as The Force, The Recruits and Missing Persons Unit, as well asengagement with new media formats such as social networking sites and onlinevideo broadcasting (McGovern, 2009). Bureaucratically, the NSW PMU is an armof the Public Affairs Branch of the NSW Police Force, which interestingly alsoplays host to the Forces Freedom of Information Unit (FOIU). Given the FOIUsrecent history, which has seen it accused of failing to respond adequately torequests (NSW Ombudsman, 2008), its home in the Public Affairs Branch makesit appear positively Orwellian.3

The NSW PMU is now a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week operation, staffed byexperienced journalists, public relations specialists and police officers (NSWPolice, 2004, p. 5). The continued growth of the unit is evidenced by the fact thatin 2009 its full-time staff numbered 22. There is also a significant number of part-time staff. Staff include both civilian employees, typically with journalistic/communications training and experience, and seconded uniformed officers(OBrien, 2008). The Police Media Unit, along with all NSW Police Force employ-ees, is governed by the New South Wales Police Media Policy (NSW Police, 2004).4

MethodThe analysis and discussion that follows is based on two broad sources of originalempirical data.5 First, press releases published by the NSW PMU on the NSW

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Police Force website were monitored over the month of March.6 During this one-month period two major daily newspapers from the Sydney metropolitan area The Daily Telegraph7 and the Sydney Morning Herald8 were monitored and thecontent of crime- and police-related stories compared to that of the police mediareleases. The stories were then categorised based on the relationship between themedia release and the media story. Such an analysis obviously has two limitations.We acknowledge that it focuses only on the print media and its focus period isrelatively short. Despite this, we also believe it illustrates sufficiently the extent towhich the NSW PMU influences the framing of criminal justice issues in the NewSouth Wales press in what could be described as an unremarkable month in regardto exceptional crime stories.

Second, during 2005 and 2006, research interviews were conducted with 16police roundsmen and crime reporters working in radio, television and newspapersin the Sydney metropolitan area. During the same period, research interviews werealso conducted with thirteen current and former staff members of the NSW PoliceMedia Unit and while these are not the main focus of this article they do providesome backdrop to the analysis that follows. In the course of both sets of interviewsrespondents were asked a range of questions about the nature of their police/mediainteractions and what they considered was the role of the NSW PMU.9 It is alsoworth highlighting that the interviews reflect a particular historical snapshot ofwhat is a dynamic relationship between the NSW Police Media Unit and journal-ists. Participants in the research were recruited via purposive sampling, a way ofselecting participants representative of a specific set of characteristics or with aspecific purpose in mind (Neuman, 2000; Robson, 1993, p. 141).10 Purposivesampling was a key method of allowing key stakeholders and relevant individuals inthese relationships to be approached to participate. A total of 29 people were inter-viewed for this research project, constituting police/crime reporters, and current andformer NSW PMU staffers. While all respondents have been fully de-identified wehave used numeric aliases so that a continuity of responses can be established whererelevant. As the interactions between journalists and NSW Police Media Unit isthe main object of study, the central aim of the interviews was to enable the authorsto gain a deeper understanding of the nuances of the relationships between journal-ists and police in New South Wales.

Results 1: Media Content Or a Content MediaContent analysis has long been a mainstay of media analysis when it comes to crimereportage (Reiner, 2002; Surette, 1998). The aim of assessing media releases andsubsequent media content in this study, however, was not to specifically look atwhat was reported but to consider just how closely the media in this case thedaily newspapers reproduced information provided by the NSW PMU. In thissense this part of our analysis is aimed at identifying or problematising the issue wewish to analyse; this first section frames and triangulates the later qualitative discus-sion. NSW PMU media releases and the subsequent printed news stories werecollected, collated and compared and the news stories were grouped in one of fourcategories on the basis of their content of NSW PMU-based text and the form oftheir reproduction in the newspapers. The categories are as follows:

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1. ParaphrasedArticles attributed to this category were classified as being paraphrased almost word-for-word, or indeed plagiarised entirely from the corresponding media release. Therewas no original journalistic input in articles included in this category.

2. Semi-ParaphrasedArticles within this category were heavily drawn from the corresponding mediarelease but also contained some additional material. In most cases, this additionalinformation was obtained from the court appearances of alleged offenders.Nonetheless, articles categorised here almost without exception followed the mediaunit press release narrative.

3. PromptedArticles in this category were prompted by a specific and identifiable media release,but included supplementary information from other sources much of the time thisinformation was presumably from a journalistic follow up with the NSW PMU.Follow up articles were also included in this category.

4. Nonmedia Release ArticlesThese articles appeared unprompted by any official Police Media Releases and wereapparently unrelated to previous incidents. Many dealt with controversial or negativeissues involving police and may have used unofficial or anonymous police sources.Many could be characterised as being investigative in nature.

News stories were further broken down on the basis of the story being credited tothe authorship of a particular journalist. During our one-month monitoring periodthe NSW PMU produced an astonishing 260 media releases, an average of 8.5 perday. This sheer volume of information provides media organisations with a glut ofpotential stories, although doubtless some are deemed more newsworthy thanothers. The volume of releases, quite apart from their content, also speaks toChibnalls news value of immediacy. At 8.5 stories per day there are always newstories to choose from, most of which come hot off the press.11 The Daily Telegraph12

and Sunday Telegraph published a total of 119 crime-related articles (see Table 1)and The Sydney Morning and Sun Herald a total of 111 (see Table 2). In The DailyTelegraph and Sunday Telegraph 69% of all crime-related articles were derived fromreleases, with the remaining 31% being unrelated to any official NSW PMUreleases.13 Similarly, 67% of articles in The Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Heraldwere linked to releases, with 33% being unrelated.

As is demonstrated in Tables 1 and 2, there was a high percentage of articlesparaphrased from the content of NSW Police Media Releases with 35% of allTelegraph crime stories and 33% of all Herald crime stories falling within thiscategory. Attribution to an author (not the PMU but a journalist author) for thesestories was more likely in The Herald (Fairfax publishing) (24) than in The Telegraph(Murdoch News Ltd) (0). It should be noted that although it was not the aim ofthis section of the analysis to assess the narratives of the stories, it was clear in mostcases that those stories closely related to the NSW PMU media release generallypainted the police in a positive light.

The heavy overall reliance on the NSW PMU as a source, and the fact thatjournalists were relatively unlikely to seek out other sources, does raise seriousquestions about the impartiality of reportage and the power of police organisations

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to influence and frame crime news. It also raises questions about journalisticintegrity and the shrinking resources available for the maintenance of the highquality news journalism vital to liberal or social democratic societies such asAustralia. In the next section we discuss the views of journalists and employees ofthe NSW PMU with the objective of making sense of this high level or reproduc-tion of PMU news stories.

Results 2: Making News Today or Media InstrumentalismIn the overview of the results of the interview material that follows we have dividedthe discussion into three themes emergent from the data. These are: media instru-mentalism; taming the system; and new resistances. These themes then provide thebasis for the theory and discussion that follows in the final section of the article.

There is little doubt the growth of PMUs has also impacted upon the ways inwhich police and journalists interact. As our interview data attests, things are verydifferent now from the bad (or indeed good depending on your view) old days ofinformal meetings at local hotels, where information passed from police working ona case to the eager journalist (see, e.g., Chappell & Wilson, 1969). Of course, policeand policing organisations themselves are also operating in a newly diversifiedmedia environment where the traditional news media formats of newspapers, radio,and television have been joined by a plethora of new media forms and formats most significantly internet media sources as diverse as blog sites, YouTube, andTwitter.14 Although somewhat ambivalent about the NSW PMUs role, journalistsnevertheless freely admit to the utility of the unit as being instrumental to theirreporting roles. Most journalists interviewed suggested that they used the PMU

TABLE 1

The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Content Analysis Results

The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph

Paraphrased Half paraphrased Prompted Non-media release

Author No author Author No author Author No author Author No author

0 42 2 7 26 5 34 3

42 9 31 37

TABLE 2

The Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald Content Analysis Results

The Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald

Paraphrased Half paraphrased Prompt Non-media release

Author No author Author No author Author No author Author No author

24 13 12 0 22 3 36 1

37 12 25 37


regularly while being cogent of its role as a public relations unit putting a positivespin on police activities. As one journalist suggested:

Its a siphoning unit in a very positive way it saves me having to ring around everysingle [local area command] to see whats gone on overnight. At the same time theycan filter what is sent out to us because obviously their function is to not only get thenews out there, but to make sure its all good news. [They are] essentially a PR firm.(Journalist 1)

Staff at the Media Unit suggested unreservedly that their role was, as one staffmember put it, to try and portray the police always in a good light. Such state-ments no doubt reflect the policy that guides the unit,15 but it also tells ussomething of the staff s self-awareness of their roles. Journalists, they suggested,often phone the Media Unit hourly in order to update the latest news, check thatnothings going on or simply call in the hope of being first to report major events.The constant communication between journalists and the NSW PMU indicatesthat our content analysis only scratches the surface of the true quantity of informa-tion that moves from the NSW PMU to journalists on a daily basis, again highlight-ing the PMU as a source of not just novel or new stories, but also indicating itsprivileged position as an institute of structured access.

This in itself presents an interesting question; with the PMU operating 24 hoursa day, continually putting out media releases, holding regular press conferences andcontacting journalists with information on various matters, does the existence of aMedia Unit within the NSW Police Force make it easy for some journalists tooverlook the critical investigative function of their reporting? Grattan (1998, p. 42)argues that spin can encourage lazy journalism and distorted journalism, wherematerial is accepted uncritically from spin factories, such as PMUs. Jiggins (2007,pp. 204206) has also likened journalists to lapdogs, more so than watchdogs.One journalist seemed to agree with this assessment:

The police could offer cheap sensation to journalists and journalists would be likePavlovs dogs and they would salivate at this and they would say I got the scoop butthey wouldnt think about what was the motivation of the police officer giving themthat. (Journalist 12)

When other journalists and PMU staff were questioned on the issue of lazy journal-ism they were almost unanimous in their response. Some questioned the investiga-tive capabilities of other journalists and the roles of the roundsmen: I dont thinkmany police reporters do original investigations at all. You know, the investigationdoesnt really go beyond the coppers that will give them a bit of information(Journalist 3). While others felt that that some journalists simply overlooked theirresponsibilities, they noted that such reportage would only take the reporter so farin their career: I think most media outlets expect a bit more than press releases andsound bites, sometimes they need, you know, harder information than they aregoing to get from a press release (Journalist 4). Some saw it as more acceptable tocover the smaller stories without going to other sources, suggesting that if the storywas important enough they would follow things up:

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Yeah, in particular with the smaller stories, like you know, if the Media Unit puts outan armed hold-up or something, and theyve got the information there for us, we justwrite briefs from the information they give us. (Journalist 5)

This estimation reflects Reiners (2002, p. 222) view that many news stories are justroutine fillers, following a clearly established paradigm, and thus conform to asimilar pattern of presentation, only with different names and dates according to theevent. The capacity of the Media Unit to provide easy simplification of conventionalstories makes it a very attractive source of such briefs. While the PMU was seen asan important and up-to-date accessible source of novel information, there was somecircumspection about the quality of all information one was likely to receive. Thejournalist quoted below appeared to have a conflicting view of the NSW PMU,noting its capacity to reduce the quality of reportage while also celebrating itsability to provide immediacy:

It breeds lazy journalists. But its also very convenient, particularly for some aspects ofthe media like radio, where we need information quickly. Without it you are requiredto go to different sources, and in a sense it legitimises the cowboys of the industrywho are prepared to go to print without having checked as many sources as possibleor legitimising it through some officially sanctioned authority. (Journalist 6)

For another journalist the NSW PMU, and the ease with which journalists replicateinformation provided to them by the unit, was simply indicative of a culture thatwas spreading across the board, where spin doctors increasingly played a role innews reporting:

That doesnt just happen because of the Police Media Unit, that happens because ofspin doctors everywhere, I mean thats perfectly accurate, yeah if youre lazy Butyeah theres always people who undoubtedly get things from the Media Unit, type itin as a press release, and let it go. (Journalist 7)

Literature around the PR State (see Deacon & Golding, 1994) tells us that this is acommon feature of modern-day state institutions such as the police, as governmentslook towards public relations professionals and opportunities to ensure that themedia carry forward their preferred messages to the public. Importantly, thishighlights a significant shift in policemedia relationships, from police as sources ofinformation to police organisations as framing and constructing crime narratives.Analytically too this demonstrates the limitations of Chibnalls (1977) instrumen-talist analytical framework and necessitates a change of register so as to interrogatethe sociopolitical and cultural significance of the PMU. As is illustrated by thefollowing transcripts, the PMU also has a role in taming the system of policing.

Taming the SystemLooking back again at the role of the PMU, journalists also told us of how the NSWPMU often rewarded particularly helpful reporters with scoops or exclusivesproviding incentives to publish the police angle. Of course, the inverse was also trueand it was suggested that reporters could be punished for failure to publish thepolice line. As one disgruntled investigative reporter put it:

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Theres no doubt that there was a conflict between the Herald and counter-terroristtype people and the Police Media Unit [two nights before an operation] and theHerald was out of the loop and The Daily Telegraph got a leak that there was an opera-tion, you know, stand by for an operation, and so did Channel Nine. That couldonly come from them [the PMU]. (Journalist 2)

Journalists however were not nave as to the real role of the NSW PMU in produc-ing spin and publicising the police positively:

Youve got to keep in mind though that this sort of information is part of an agenda,which may be to create generally a good news story for the police, it may be a storythat shows that theyre being, you know, tough on crime. It might be story that showsthat the Commissioner was taking a hard line in respect to something. It may be acritic of the police is cast in a bad light, it may be any number of things. But its got ahidden agenda, and the problem with that is sometimes those stories make goodstories, but you get the effect whereby these stories are being spoon-fed and you know,I suppose its open to the idea that this is spin. (Journalist 5)

Another put it in terms of this contradiction between risk communication andinformation control:

I suppose, in an ideal world they are there to provide information, and to be as trans-parent as they can within the bounds of operational security and that sort of thing. Ithink theyve now evolved into an extremely sophisticated propaganda tool Ithink, theres a difficulty between drawing the line between public interest and publicinformation, and police spin. (Journalist 11)

It was also suggested that there was a further unwritten role of the NSW PMU thatwent beyond positive spin. This was to try and smother negative stories about thepolice. A taming of the system where sensitive interactions are referred up:

I think the reality is that they are meant to provide a limited amount of factual infor-mation regarding any story of interest and general stories of interest and certainly anyoperational story of interest to journalists. Over and above that I think their unwrit-ten role is to smother negative police stories, full stop. I dont think that individualswithin the unit are employed with the express purpose of trying to trip journalists up,hide things from them, you know, to go out there and choke the life out of negativecoverage of police, but, they are only given a certain amount of informationthemselves and if something becomes problematic, they are told to refer it tosomeone more senior and then a different process begins again. (Journalist 5)

A former staff member of the NSW PMU went as far as to suggest that the unit wasprimarily concerned with protecting the image of the Police Minister.16 Thisposition has also been aired publicly with the suggestion that the PMUs role iscontrary to the traditional separation of powers:

[Their role is] to protect the Minister, well they shouldnt be. What they were reallydoing there when I was there was protecting the Minister and the image of thedepartment. All right the image of the departments fair enough The mainfunction of that Media Unit should be to inform, keep the public informed of impor-tant events that they need to know Number 1 is to keep the public informed andgive the public a sense of safety, that police are out there doing their job, and numbertwo is to help police operationally through the media, so theyre the bridge, theyshould be the bridge, but theyre not. Theyre a big gap. (Ex-PMU/Other 3)

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Indeed, from the point of view of many journalists the NSW PMU could be concep-tualised more like a gatekeeper to NSW Police Force, and indeed any informationrelating to its operation.

New ResistancesJournalists and reporters interviewed did not always so easily succumb to police andNSW PMU attempts to control information. In fact, many actively resisted engag-ing with the Media Unit when they felt they were being obstructed:

When they start to say look, lets get in the way of this exercise then, thats when Iget cross and thats when I dont want to deal with them. Because thats not their job,their job is simply to protect their reputation and tell the truth. Their job is not toobstruct someone else trying to tell the truth. (Journalist 3)

As one journalist emphasised, you do have to develop independent sources. Thesewere not just reactions to particular events or stories, but more structural allegiancesthat could be seen as competing and operating in tandem with the official sources ofinformation. This was supported by a number of other journalists who had contactwith NSW Police Force over and above the NSW PMU:

Almost exclusively my contact with police is with people who are not working in themedia area of the force or the marketing area of the force, theyre people that areactually doing front-line jobs. And they are a range of people from detectives, tosuperintendents that run Local Area Commands in the suburbs, to coppers on thebeat. People that Ive gotten to know one-on-one over the last roughly 10 years, andknow that I can be trusted and for them to talk fairly frankly off the record to meabout things, thats how I get my stories. (Journalist 5)

Moreover, the fostering of these contacts was seen as vital to journalists being ableto carry out their role effectively:

Its really important that you have your own police contacts as a journalist, especiallysources that you dont have to talk to on the record If you want to sort of move tothe next level of journalism, if you want to break stories for instance because theMedia Unit disseminates these stories to everyone so, if you want to actually breaka story or have a new angle on a story, its good to know a police officer thats workingon the job. (Journalist 1)

Beyond this, however, some journalists felt that policies restricting journalistcontact with police were unproductive:

Just because these are the rules the government sets up in terms of dealing withpolice, it doesnt mean you have to play by them. You rely on your own contacts. Andthats what I do, I work the edges. Information comes from a variety of sources.(Journalist 2)

So for the more serious journalists, attempts to manage the ways in which theyconduct business has meant that they have had to adapt their investigative andresearch techniques over time. It is little wonder then that, as one ex-PMU staffersaid, the media policy was just a work in progress it was being reviewed all thetime and rewritten.

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Theory and Discussion: New Political Rationalities and Cultures of ControlAs demonstrated above, Chibnall (1977) gives us the tools to assess the productionof stories at an instrumental level that goes some way to explaining the utility ofPMUs to journalists. However, we believe PMUs demonstrate something of abroader shift in both governing rationalities and technical capacities. Almost twodecades ago, Grabosky and Wilson were able to suggest that journalists only usePMUs as a starting point in the construction of news stories (Grabosky & Wilson,1989, p. 37; Wilson, 1992, p. 171); our data suggests it is now much more than this.In many cases the PMU story is the news story.

David Garland (1996, 2001) has outlined what he suggested were the new and,in some cases, contradictory emerging programs of crime control through the 1980sand 1990s. He termed these the criminologies of everyday life or criminologies of the selfand the criminologies of the other. These, he broadly suggested, were responses to thecrisis in penal modernism and the normalisation of high rates of offending towardsthe end of the 20th century. We believe it is possible to theorise the development ofPMUs in relation to the emergence of these programs of crime control.

The criminologies of the everyday life refer to a complex array of responsibilisingand partnership strategies that seek to produce active citizens who govern the selfand that can be governed at a distance. As Garland (1996, p. 452) argues:

Its key phrases are terms such as partnership, inter-agency co-operation, the multi-agency approach, activating communities, creating active citizens, help for self-help. Its primary concern is to devolve responsibility for crime prevention on toagencies, organizations and individuals which are quite outside the state and topersuade them to act appropriately.

Such criminologies are optimised in programs and strategies as diverse asNeighbourhood Watch and private crime audits. They exemplify inter alia themove from policing agencies that once served and protected to those, like themotto of contemporary NSW Police Force, that provide a safer community withyour help (NSW Police Force, 2009). The criminologies of the self suggest although do not necessarily deliver in practice a noninterventionist, morelimited role for the state as citizens take on the role of crime prevention.

Most significantly for the discussion here, these criminologies require informa-tion networks through which inter-alia risks can be communicated, identified andavoided or guarded against (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). They require avenues ofrisk communication and the production of specific discourses about crime aimed atactuating these partnerships and self-governing prudential subjects (OMalley,1992). We see it as no great accident then that PMUs begin to appear historically at least in their current and more sophisticated form towards the end of the1980s when strategies of responsibilisation also begin to emerge as a then unrealisedor incomplete governmental program. Community begins to be enlisted in crimecontrol and prevention when, as Garland (1996, p. 448) puts it:

Modest improvements at the margin, the better management of risks and resources,reduction of the fear of crime, reduction of criminal justice expenditure and greater

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support for crimes victims become the less than heroic policy objectives whichincreasingly replace the idea of winning a war against crime.

Simultaneously, criminal justice agencies have had to adapt to failure. They adaptto the notion that these historically high recorded rates of crime are difficult toshift, that clear up rates are low and workloads are high, and that the communityhas lost their trust in the agency. Garland (1996) suggests this ushers in a new set ofmanagerialist strategies aimed at making organisations more efficient and customerfocused. And while organisations might be managed more like businesses, on abudget, they are required to adhere to stricter reporting mechanisms and to meet anew range of key performance indicators (KPIs). This taming of the system againrequires lines of communication for information equally to, from and within thepolice organisation and new strategies of bureaucratic management. The publicmust be made aware of the successes of policing17 to reduce fear and foster customertrust and legitimacy.18 As consumers, citizens both provide feedback on satisfactionwith the agency,19 the meeting its KPIs and the like (often defined by the NSWgovernment in order that they can be met),20 as they are simultaneously the targetof information about success. Government essentially increases its strategic manage-ment of the agency through a range of structural and managerialist changes21 whileat the same time expanding criminal justice agencies such as the NSW Police Forcein scope and size. As Ericson and Haggerty (1997, p. 388) put it;

communication technologies also radically alter the structure of police organiza-tions by leveling hierarchies, blurring traditional divisions of labour, dispersing super-visory capacities, and limiting individual discretion. In the process, traditional rankstructures of command and control are displaced by system surveillance mechanismsfor regulating police conduct.

PMUs are demonstrably part of this expansion in managerialist and communicativetechnologies, just as they obviously have a role in communicating successes to thepublic. As Garland (1996, p. 455) notes: One response to the problem of overloadhas been to develop new strategies of system integration and system monitoring,which seek to implement a level of process and information management which waspreviously lacking.

Yet at the same time as these new rationalities of governing crime have devel-oped, and as we have argued as PMUs have developed along with them, we haveseen a ramping up in the punitive rhetoric and actions of governments. There hasbeen, for example, a continual emphasis on tough on crime credentials (Hogg &Brown 1998; Weatherburn, 2004). These law and order policies often involve acynical manipulation of the symbols of state power and of the emotions of fear andinsecurity which give these symbols their potency (Garland, 1996, pp. 460461).These are the criminologies of the other. By the criminologies of the other Garlandrefers to criminologies that engage in images of the other, the marginalised, thecriminalised, the feared. Emotion is evoked rather than careful analyses. It is apoliticised discourse of the unconscious (see also Douglas, 1992).

Yet these contradictions in crime control provide no great impediment to PMUswho both enlist citizens as partners in crime control at the same time theyreinforce the tough crime-fighting credentials of the police force. Indeed, they areboth outcomes of these programs and rationalities of crime control and instruments

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of their proliferation. Conceptualising PMUs in this sense explains debates aroundthe politicisation of the NSW PMU. It also makes analytical sense in relation to ourinterview data.

Perversely, the taming of the system produces new resistances as journalists(and some police) seek new avenues for information. Overall then, the structure ofpolice media relationships changes; policing strategies become as much a publicrelations exercise as an operational one. High-profile policing exercises can bepublicised through the PMU, risks can be communicated and the citizenryactivated; the good policing story can be narrated to consumers. The observationsmade by journalists of control, spin, and propaganda disseminating from withinthe NSW PMU are further suggestive of attempts to control information by the unit(see Feeley & Simon, 1992; Garland, 2001; Lovell, 2003; Jiggins, 2007; Mawby,2002).

And this contradictory work-in-progress that is the PMU, and its guiding policy,becomes the vehicle of organisational requirement and political strategy expand-ing the capacity to frame and define crime and deviance while being subject topolitical pressure and quite likely the self-government of its own affairs. Moreover, ithas the complex task of responding to the ever-changing multi-mediated mediaenvironment.

Cavender (2004) among others has criticised Garlands account of the develop-ment of cultures of control, suggesting he downplays the medias role in agenda-setting and framing the debates through which these new penal strategies emerged.22

By this account the development of PMUs should not be seen as simply being drivenby new political rationalities but also as a response to changing media landscapes,capacities and indeed media technologies. In this sense, like previous analyses,Garlands account provides a partial analysis. As we have noted, the new medialandscape has provided opportunities for police public relations units to expandtheir activities into a whole range of new domains using creative new mediatechnologies. Innes (2004) has noted that narratives about crime and PMUs arenow integral into many of these narratives are part of a system of communica-tive action; thus mediated signals frequently perform a framing function forindividuals in terms of how they interpret and define their co-present encountersand experiences (2004, p. 351). Inness work highlights the complex relationshipbetween crime narratives, signal crimes, control signals, and fear and concernabout crime. The expansion of PMUs is thus also illustrative of policing organisa-tions wishing to influence the mass medias tendency to emphasise signal crimesand to provide narratives of reassurance or otherwise.

Thus, it would be overstating things, however, to suggest that the powerrelations between police and the media were all top-down or one-way that theculture of control is somehow functionally all-pervasive. One of the centralmessages to come across in the interviews was the unpredictability and dynamicnature of the relationship police and journalists had with one another, and thefrequent power struggles that each felt they are faced with in their exchanges.Foucault has addressed the issue of power relationships extensively in his work,moving away from notions of power as a repressive force, and instead arguing thatpower is productive, producing domains of objects and rituals of truth (Hunt &

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Wickham, 1994, p. 16), and we use this framework here to assess the production ofresistances to the PMU control of information.

The techniques of control produce actions of resistance that contribute towardsthe success (or failure) and progression of systems of control (Foucault, 1982).Power relationships will often be unstable, ambiguous and reversible as theseexamples demonstrate (Hindess, 1996, p. 97, 101).

Thus, attempts at information control on the part of the PMU can often leadjournalists to source their information from unofficial police contacts they havefostered, cementing these informal and unofficial lines of communication. In linewith Hunt and Wickhams (1994) Foucaultian analysis of attempts at governing, inmany ways the use of the NSW PMU as a tool of governing information flows wasset up to fail, or at least be partial and incomplete. Resistances to the centralisationof power to produce truth in the NSW PMU are constant and often successful and not just through the actions of journalists, but also through the actions of somepolice who see the PMU as an obstruction. As Foucault commented, discourse isnot simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but it is a thingfor which and by which there is struggle (cited in Young, 1981, p. 52).

Concluding RemarksAs Wilson (1992) has previously argued, the power exercised by police can have anumber of negative consequences; the orchestration of what is written andphotographed, the withholding of information from journalists with whom theyhave conflict, even the intimidation of journalists. Many journalists we spoke toconceptualised such attempts at control in the NSW policemedia interface.

As the interviews and content analysis above demonstrate, the NSW PMUplays a pivotal mediating role in the construction of news regarding both crime andthe NSW Police Force itself. Overreliance upon the NSW PMU as an informationsource evokes important questions about journalistic independence at a time whenshareholders in public media corporations are being appeased by editorial staff cutsand leaner, more productive journalistic staffing arrangements. With print media inparticular in (serious if not terminal) decline, the attractiveness of PMU mediareleases and readymade stories cannot be understated from an instrumentalistperspective. Indeed, in NSW the PMU is increasingly filling an information void inframing and presenting stories to media organisations in more creative ways.

The danger in this climate is that with a largely compliant and uncritical media,and the capacity of policing organisations to control much of the flow of informa-tion, police organisations have the ability to frame a great percentage of narrativesabout law and order and policing. Policing organisations can thus mediate thelandscape upon which crime stories speak themselves.

However, to again draw from Garland, the NSW PMU is constitutive of anotherdomain through which new political rationalities are deployed to tame the systemand manage both the police organisation and what news is disseminated. Thismanagement is subject to constant negotiation and resistances that renders thepolicemedia relationship as one that is in constant flux. Rather than simply beingan extension of existing attempts to manage (cf. Wilson, 1992), we believe thePMU is demonstrative of a range of new and often contradictory political rationali-

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ties and cultures of control that are in many ways empirically different to previousattempts to manage the media although, of course, they are also continuations ofthese. Indeed, the NSW PMU has functions well beyond the control of informationto the media. Its surfaces of emergence, as Foucault might characterise it, arecomplex and many. Not least of which is that PMUs have a central role in thedissemination of information about risk and the subsequent activation of citizens.

While Chibnalls news values offer important analytical tools for explaining theinstrumental attraction of PMUs as a source of information, their operation alsoneeds to be analysed as part of a range of new political rationalities that seek tocontrol the agenda of crime stories as part of range of strategies of image and riskmanagement. These intricacies of the policemedia relationship, transformed by theprofessionalisation of police media communications, signals the need for a changein the way we think about and analyse the crime media nexus. It is hoped that thisarticle contributes to the corpus of scholarship and research that highlights a needto enlist more sophisticated tools for the analysis of policemedia relationships.Meanwhile, despite resistance and struggles for the power of representation, wesuggest many journalists are simply cop(ying) it sweet.

Endnotes1 As of December 2009 (NSW Police Force, 2010).2 For example, the online edition of the NSW-based The Daily Telegraph (2009) encourages

readers to send in your news, while the Sydney Morning Herald (2009) online edition asksreaders if they have missed anything, urging readers to alert them of any corruption, problemsor issues and to send in photos, videos and tip-offs.

3 In 2008 the Freedom of Information Unit moved into the Public Affairs Branch in a moveaimed at improving the management of freedom of information determinations (NSW PoliceForce, 2009). In the same year the NSW Police Force was named by the NSW Ombudsman asthe source of the most FOI complaints due to its increasing rates of refusals on FOI applica-tions, with 55% of all applications refused (Bissett, 2008; NSW Ombudsman, 2008).

4 This policy provides police with guidelines on the release of information to the media . . .what information can be released, the circumstances that should be considered and the level ofauthority necessary for releasing information (NSW Police, 2004, p. 3). The failure of internalpolicy such as the Media Policy, that establishes who is permitted to speak with the media, hasrecently led to recommendations by the Police Integrity Commission (PIC) to introduce legis-lation that will lead to the prosecution of police who unofficially speak with the media andprovide them with information (Police Integrity Commission, 2007).

5 It is also part of a broader research project investigating police/media relationships in NewSouth Wales.

6 From March 1, 2006 until the March 31, 2006.7 A tabloid publication with an average Monday to Friday circulation of 359, 171 (NewsSpace,

2010).8 A broadsheet publication with an average Monday to Friday circulation of 211, 006 (Fairfax

Media, 2010).9 Interviews were semistructured and included a range of common prompts. While staff of the

NSW PMU were contacted and recruited in consultation with the NSW Police Force, journal-ists were selected on criteria related to their style of, and role in, reporting and their availabil-ity.

10 University of Western Sydney ethics protocol approval number HREC 05/062.

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11 More recently we have been told informally by the director of the NSW PMU that it aims at10 stories per day.

12 All references to the Daily Telegraph in this article refer to the Sydney-based Murdoch publica-tion and should not be confused with the British newspaper of the same name.

13 It is important to note that not all information disseminated by the NSW PMU is representedon their website in the form of a media release. Rather, NSW PMU staff have constantcommunications with journalists at which point follow-up information may be disseminatedand interviews with relevant police might be organised. Thus, there would be a significantamount of information our study would not capture. This caveat is clearly illustrated by thefact that some years ago the NSW PMU released much more in-depth stories on their site.Currently however, stories are generally only one paragraph in length.

14 The NSW PMU currently runs a Twitter account, as well as hosting advertising videos onYou Tube

15 It is suggested to all NSW Police in the Media Policy that by following it officers will playyour part in building positive public opinion of your work and that of your colleagues (NSWPolice, 2004, p. 4).

16 Interestingly, the NSW Police Force website now hosts a direct link to the Police Ministerspress releases.

17 For example, the NSW PMU webpage proudly displays performance indicators for the PoliceAssistance Line, indicating police both responsiveness to the public and bureaucraticefficiency. These include the average length of time in answering calls, the total number ofcalls answered and the percentage of calls answered in 27 seconds or less. The later being aperformance indicator for the grade of service 74% on our most recent viewing (NSWPolice Force, 2010).

18 For example, the Australian Productivity Commission through their SCRGSP (SteeringCommittee for the Review of Government Service Provision) (2009) reports on public satis-faction of policing agencies annually.

19 For example ,the latest NSW Police Force Annual Report displays the latest high results fromthe National Community Satisfaction with Policing Survey, a key indicator in the delivery ofpolicing services (NSW Police Force, 2009, p. 28). The results are also followed by adisclaimer which states that Survey estimates are subject to sample error. Perceptions areinfluenced by many factors, not necessarily related to police performance (NSW Police Force,2009, p. 29).

20 See, for example, the current NSW State Plan (2006). 21 For example, the NSW State Plan features heavily within recent NSW Police Force strategies.22 Also see Sparks (2000) for a discussion of this.

AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank Professor Mark Findlay, Professor Les Moran, ElaineFishwick, Professor Julie Stubbs, and the two anonymous referees for their construc-tive and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Dr Alyce McGovernwould also like to thank the support of the Charles Sturt University Writing UpAward Scheme, and the University of Western Sydney Postgraduate Awards.

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