Trust in the media is something we talk about on a grand scale. The Queen having a strop, for instance, or the uproar over You Say, We Pay on Richard and Judy.
We dissect the issue of trust when there’s been a major breach. But what of the minor ones?
I’ve long since got over the fact that some content is magazines is made up. Those sex stories in lads’ mags, for example, are not really sent in to the title. Rather, some delightfully imaginative staffer pens out some filthy fantasy.
It’s a white lie. A fib. I can deal with things like that, because they’re damn entertaining to read. Not a problem if they’re not true — I’m not relying on Nuts for tips in the bedroom, thanks.
I’m a lot more concerned about something I learned just this week. Over on a forum I frequent, a member posted a dilemma. A press trip to stay in a hotel (for reviewing purposes) was all set to go ahead. Booked it, packed it, etc. But then the magazine folded. The now angry hotel wants the journalist to pay in full anyway. The journalist explains:
“The hotel (a very swanky expensive one) offered three nights on a comp basis half board plus four nights on a media rate.
I’ve promised them I will try very hard to get something placed elsewhere BUT they have come back and said the hotel now wants to charge me the media rate for all seven nights and it’ll only be B&B.
So the stay will now cost me around £600-700 extra. Not good news.”
Not good news at all. But by far the most alarming part of those paragraphs were the words ‘media rate’.
One member shares my concern:
“I might be missing something here but how can you review a hotel when the hotel knows you’re reviewing it?”
To which comes this reply:
“I’d love to be able to review in secret but given my editors aren’t in a position to pay my expenses, the only way most of us can do travel pieces is by being hosted on press trips of one sort or another.”
Which is backed up further by another member:
“Straight hotel ‘reviews’ are pretty rare in travel journalism, really…they’re much more likely to be just mentioned in the fact box, with maybe a name check in the text for letting you stay for free. The nature of the assignments (ie. they would cost several thousand pounds to do) mean that in fact almost everything within travel journalism is paid for by someone other than the journalist.”
Thus rendering them useless, no? If hotel staff know you’re there to review the hotel, you can bet you’ll be getting preferential treatment. Quicker food, the best rooms, friendlier staff. In fact, I bet in the staff rooms they’ll have a list of which rooms have people paying ‘media rate’.
One member points out:
“I wonder how many negative reviews are written by journalists on freebies. It’s no wonder sites such as Tripadvisor are proving so useful.”
Quite. It goes back to a post made by former-Press-Gazette-now-PaidContent journalist Patrick Smith, who questioned the validity of film critics:
“A more extreme and amusing example of obscure film-blurbism Guy Ritchie’s not-awful-but-completely-bewildering Revolver (about gangsters, unsurprisingly). The film was universally panned by critics, yet huge billboards appeared around towns declaring it ”Brilliant…Guy Ritchie back to his best!”
Fair enough if that’s what you think, except that the line is from The Sun’s online film e-zine Film First which had bagged a WORLD EXCLUSIVE interview with the director, as The Guardian pointed out at the time. Private Eye established that the “brilliant!” part of the quote was from none other than The Sun’s Page 3 girl Ruth (she makes a brief appearance in the film).”
Are journalists really going to pan a hotel when they know that if they big it up, they’ll probably get another free trip again soon?
Perhaps more worrying is this scenario from another member:
“I only adored one of the hotels (one was fine but naff, and the other was fine but austere) they only used the one for the hotel I genuinely loved. I still got paid for all my work.”
So not only can we not fully trust motives behind hotel reviews, we also don’t get to see the ones that don’t get a favourable write up. Why is this? If it’s a high-profile hotel which turns out to be a complete stinker, isn’t the press in place to provide the service of warning us?
From when I was in New Zealand, I recall Jim Tucker telling me about how he went around Wellington reviewing restaurants. This wasn’t a press trip, and I’m certain Jim didn’t let them know he was there to review the food. His reviews never saw the light of day. Why? Because he dared to criticise.
We often call for high-profile journalists to declare their interests. In fact, a member of the same forum that I’ve been quoting from here has suggested we produce a national register documenting those interests. Great idea, I say. And, let’s not forget Robert Peston who is being ‘looked at’ because of some of his financial coverage. I believe we’ll find that Peston is merely a brilliant journalist and an astute financial genius, but we just don’t know how cosy he is to the people he reports on.
They’re more serious examples. But why not apply this practice to all journalists? If a hotel review has conducted with the hotel’s prior knowledge, then I think we, as readers, have a right to know this.
Let me declare, straight off, that I’m a travel journalist, of sorts. I’ve accepted 2 press trips, ever, both many years ago. I broadly agree with your piece; you’ve largely nailed why I now *never* accept press trips (and have to put up with the rather scant writing opportunities in UK nationals as a result).
I’d pick you up on 2 points, though.
1. You’re, alas, completely missing the point of what “mainstream” travel journalism is *for*. (By mainstream, I mean for UK national papers.) Mainstream travel journalism is an extension of the travel PR industry: it’s there to *sell you holidays*. These glossy features aren’t designed to give you a critical view over a place, restaurant, or hotel. They’re there to make you want to go there. So, in that sense, your point is moot. It doesn’t need to be “honest” because that isn’t its remit; its remit is to sell, in a well-written way; they neither invite nor deserve “trust”. If you want honest travel journalism from a consumer angle, you need to check the consumer-focused columns that all major travel supplements contain. If you want more of a “travel writing” take, buy a book or a magazine (though chunks of many of these are also given over to PR puff-pieces). And the answer to your guess (“I bet in the staff rooms they’ll have a list of which rooms have people paying ‘media rate’”) is… “of course they do”!
2. You cite: “Straight hotel ‘reviews’ are pretty rare in travel journalism…” Not true: pick up a good guidebook. They’re the best places to go for the kind of honest, journalistic hotel reviews you’re looking for. (With the proviso that most won’t bother with lists of hotels that are crap – paper costs after all. They just won’t include them.) I’ve looked over countless hotels for the guidebooks I’ve written, usually anonymously, but even when I have declared myself I’ve not hesitated to write something harsh, or omit the place altogether if that’s what it deserves.
(BTW, which forum were you on? I’d be interested to see the original thread. If you don’t want to publish it, email me.)
Thanks for your comment DonaldS.
On point 1, I’d argue that if mainstream travel journalism is, as you put it, “an extension of the travel PR industry”, then I think articles like that should be labelled as such. Advertorial, ’sponsored by’, whatever.
Come to think of it, I have seen pieces like that in national press. So it shows they’re not afraid to show it. And I’m not entirely against it either — especially when it’s advertorial and sponsored supplements that provide a huge chunk of revenue for a struggling print industry.
But isn’t it the case that when you look in a newspaper and see ‘Hotel Review’, you’re expecting a fair and balanced piece of journalism based on the experience of staying somewhere?
By making the reviewers known, you defeat the point completely.
On point 2, I agree with you — some guidebooks are very good. And the logic of not printing crap reviews is a sensible one that I admit I didn’t really consider. But still, we’re never quite sure who is contributing, and who they’re, for want of a better phrase, in bed with.
> But still, we’re never quite sure who is contributing, and who they’re, for want of a better phrase, in bed with.
Indeed, but in my experience guidebook publishers have *very* strict rules on what writers may or may not accept; and, even more importantly, the terms on which you may accept *anything*. No reputable guidebook company would swap an author freebie for guaranteed editorial space. Period. That’s almost the polar opposite of how newspapers operate.
> isn’t it the case that when you look in a newspaper and see ‘Hotel Review’, you’re expecting a fair and balanced piece of journalism
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d answer that “no”. Unless I see it in black-and-white that the writer paid for his/her own trip and stayed anonymously (like, IIRC, TimeOut print in their food guides), I always assume it’s a puff-piece. That’s not to say there isn’t good travel journalism out there (there is); it’s just that I start from the assumption that it’s PR and hope to be surprised. When I can be bothered to plough through the supplements, which is ever more rarely these days.
> I think articles like that should be labelled as such. Advertorial, ’sponsored by’, whatever.
Who do you think pays for the whole supplement? The advertisers finance the lot. They’d have to print that disclaimer on the front of every weekend supplement, every weekend, which I guess would deter the readers just a little. Find an honest travel editor at a national, and I’m sure s/he’d happily admit that without the advertisers, s/he’d have no job. The supplement wouldn’t exist. So, who’s the supplement for? (I should add, though, that there are some excellent “consumer” columnists in those weekend travel sections, too. All those advertiser-funded destination puff-pieces help pay for those, which definitely works in a reader’s favour.)
All this is IMHO of course. I think your instincts on this issue are spot on. Maybe I’m just a little more cynical?
Relatedly,
http://twitter.com/hackneye/statuses/940686258
Is that journalism?
Absolutely not… but you knew that. I put that in the same league as the likes of Peter Schmeichel commentating on football. Just because he’s involved with it, doesn’t mean he should be telling us anything about it.
On your previous comment…
Are you suggesting, for example, that the entire Travel section of the Saturday Guardian is advertorial?
I’d never make such an assertion without looking carefully over the section. And I haven’t done for a while, so it’d be unfair to comment.
But it is a fact that, quite opposite to guidebooks, travel sections in newspapers offer coverage in return for writer freebies as standard practice. (Though ’tis also true that [some of the] writers still have to compete for the right to have *their* idea, their “sponsored coverage”, make the weekend pages.)
Is this not a working definition of advertorial? It is if we assume that writers on freebies aren’t completely free to write what they like, as you suggest in your original piece.
Dave, there is still good travel journalism going on and having met, chatted with, pitched and learned from some of the best in the business, I can tell you that the PR trip is not the only route into placing a feature in a travel supplement or page.
Editors can be very wary of freelances who appear to plugging a place off the back of a freebie. But if there is a newsworthy angle covered off the back of a freebie, they may go for it.
What matters to them is the story – as with other areas of journalism, not plugging a particular destination or whatever.
Simon Calder (Independent travel editor as is or was, sorry I may not be up to date on this) pays his way, as do, as I understand it, many other “leading” travel journalists. They aren’t producing some tick-box piece on how good a hotel is, they are giving a reader latest info on where they have been and hopefully a good read.
The challenge for freelance travel journalists is to make their trips pay – so if they have to go to say Barcelona, then they try and sell more than one piece to cover what they have shelled out to get there. I wrote a piece about this for Press Gazette once, http://www.freelancewritingtips.com/2008/02/thinking-of-tra.html
As for would a journalist slate a place that has given them a freebie, yes they would. I certainly did – way back when I went on a maiden flight from Birmingham to New York with BA and then wrote that not enough people were using BA and I could see why. I wasn’t invited back on any press trips, funnily enough.
Seriously, don’t take comments on a journalists’ forum made in the spirit of helping members as some snapshot representing a whole genre of journalism, it just isn’t so…