The Commission Representation in Helsinki regularly monitors EU reporting in the Finnish media. Such monitoring, however, provides no information about how useful the press releases are to journalists. To explore this issue, the Representa-tion decided to commission an independent survey from a consultant in autumn 2007.
The survey was carried out in October 2007. A questionnaire was e-mailed to 375 journalists and other communication professionals. Respondents were asked to comment on the viability of Commission press releases and their relevance com-pared with other sources of information, and to state what use was made of them
and how they could be improved. 45 replies were received, yielding a rather low response rate of 13 %. Some regions, notably northern Finland, were under-represented among the respondents. Apart from this, according to the consultant who carried out the survey, the sample can nonetheless be considered representa-tive enough to warrant general conclusions.
Among the respondents, 47 % represented the printed press and 16 % were TV reporters. Smaller groups included magazines (11 %), web publications (9 %) and radio (4 %). In terms of specialisation, the largest group consisted of political reporters (22 %), followed by editors and editorialists (17 %), managers (15 %), news reporters (13 %), economic editors (11 %) and foreign correspondents (9
%).
Replies were received from all the leading Finnish media houses except the Fin-nish News Agency. Some of the regional media, especially in northern Finland, were insufficiently represented in the sample.
Half the respondents stated that they monitored the Commission Press Room website regularly or fairly regularly. The majority considered the Commission’s press releases to be “useful” or “fairly useful”. Only a bare third of all respon-dents, however, made “frequent” or “fairly frequent” use of such press releases in drafting their articles or features. Occasionally some journalists might use a Commission press release as their only source of information for a short news item.
Generally, press releases were used as one of many information sources. About half the respondents had frequently or fairly frequently already received the same information from another source. A factor limiting the usefulness of press releases was their late timing: they are published at noon Brussels time, when it is already 1 pm in Finland.
The respondents were fairly unanimous about the usefulness of localisation. At any rate, when asked to compare the examples attached to the questionnaire, 84 % pronounced that the localised version was more useful for their purposes, as it was clearer and more concise, and went straight to the point.
The respondents also suggested some improvements. They felt that the press re-leases produced by the Representation should concentrate on issues relevant from a Finnish point of view and on their impact on Finland. The texts and introductory paragraphs should be shorter, and the use of terminology and EU jargon should be minimised. The number of links should be increased.
On the basis of the survey, there is clearly a demand for localisation. The Com-mission’s webpages are too extensive, making it difficult to find the relevant in-formation. There is not enough information in Finnish, and too little about the local impact of EU actions. The localised versions should therefore delve deeper.
As one respondent put it, “You can’t overestimate the laziness and ignorance of journalists”.
6 Conclusions
The Commission’s new communication policy is based on the idea that passing on information is not enough; press releases and other forms of communication also have an important function in fashioning the communicator’s image. The danger with pompous and wordy messages is that they convey the impression of a Commission indifferent to the needs of the various target audiences. Hence the need for Plan D. Successfully communicating the EU is only possible if EU af-fairs are debated at local, regional and national level. The Commission is aware of the need to go local: a European public sphere cannot be created in Brussels. Poll-ing results show that citizens expect their national government to inform them about what the EU is doing for them and how this affects their daily lives. What is therefore needed is not the self-serving attitude described in our ice hockey meta-phor, but a genuine partnership between the Commission and the Member States.
References
European Commission (2005a). Action Plan to Improve Communicating Europe by the Commission. SEC(2005) 985 final.
European Commission (2005b). The Commission’s contribution to the period of reflection and beyond: Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate. Communi-cation from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the Euro-pean Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.
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