Persuading the Media
Client
European Trade bodies representing agricultural biotechnology.
Objectives:
- Persuade Europe’s media to write and produce balanced articles and broadcast stories about the role biotechnology plays in European agriculture.
- Persuade journalists and producers to challenge current NGO positions and statements
- Examine the industry’s activities in a more holistic environment.
Challenge
Few journalists have scientific backgrounds and find writing about scientific issues troublesome. For some, it is easier to take a story from an NGO that promises controversy, and difficult to spend time exploring a more balanced and wider picture.
However, in terms of science, the public sees the media as an impartial commentator and will believe what journalists say – ahead of other societal groups like company spokespeople and politicians.
The challenge was to create relationships with the European media in a way that would establish responsive points of contact and generate stories, materials and events that would facilitate the appearance of well-informed articles, features and editorials.
Activity/Approach
MWD’s response was to create, for journalists and broadcasters, a dedicated media programme. This provided them with stories on how biotechnology was affecting farmers’ daily operations, how new techniques could improve yields and how this would subsequently provide farmers with a securer financial future.
It was also necessary to counter stories that had been generated by NGOs with a financial interest in opposing the technology, to begin a process of educating the media about farming and rural issues and to challenge them to compare how Europe was in danger of lagging behind millions of farmers elsewhere who had adopted this technology.
Media visits to farms across Europe where new crops were being cultivated were organised. Such visits took into account the diverse nature of European media and the different ways in which they worked. The spokespeople needed to be credible, so the farmers became the industry’s representatives to explain what they did, and why.
Market research across Europe had already established that farmers had a high level of trust amongst the general public.
This media programme created opportunities to grow relationships with journalists and to include them in a rolling programme of future information provision as well as giving them key contact points in a complex industry.
Results
Over time, media coverage became much more balanced and NGOs were no longer seen as automatic points of contact on news stories.
Over several seasons, more than 100 journalists ranging from agricultural experts to editorial writers and general news broadcasters attended these visits and the usefulness of the visits meant that invitations to attend became sought-after.
Media monitoring showed that the number of one-sided negative stories declined dramatically and stories began to appear in previously-uninterested media.
The increasing groundswell of coverage at nation-state level then resulted in coverage in Europe-wide media such as the Wall Street Journal. The impact of more positive coverage was then monitored by improved general public sentiment towards the technology.
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