The Government of Jersey’s new director of communications, Dirk Danino-Forsyth, said the professional standards of the media, including the training and values of journalists and editors and the regulatory frameworks which underpinned their work, added a value that should not be underestimated.
While he said social media was a positive tool for community engagement, and one which the government regularly used, he added it was important for the government to continue to work constructively with the local media, especially during a crisis. And part of that process, he added, was about ensuring that the media robustly held politicians and civil servants to account at regular press conferences.
‘Part of what I would encourage people to do is to buy a local paper, to go online to read a reputable news source, to listen to the news radio and to watch news broadcasts because the value that the media add is through the professional approach of their journalists, the professionalism of editors, editorial policy and the regulator,’ he said.
‘That is something you often don’t get on social media. While we use social media as a direct way into the public, often social -media commentary and social-media rumour can be quite harmful.’
He added: ‘That is part of why we are so keen to enable media access. We see the benefit in doing it.’
Mr Danino-Forsyth, who moved to Jersey last month after working in the UK Prime Minister’s and Cabinet Office communications team as a head of strategic communications for international security and defence projects, has overseen a move to digital press conferences since the coronavirus measures began in Jersey.
In today’s Saturday Interview he explains how ensuring journalists can still ask questions of those leading the local coronavirus response has been a key part of the communications strategy to ensure transparency, robust scrutiny and the flow of information and messages.
He said that people consuming local media knew the professional process that news had gone through, whereas posts on Facebook could be from complete strangers hiding behind profile pictures that were not even of them.
‘The level of disinformation and misinformation often increases during times of crisis and people should be very careful of how they digest that information,’ he said. ‘One of the most important things they can do is look at the government website or to be quite strict in their consumption of the media because of the professionalism that they bring and the editorial policies that news goes through.’
