A quick media-lines primer

I learned today that the federal government has revealed a deep-seated nervousness about how the new Office of Religious Freedom will be perceived. 

This was unmasked through an access-to-information request, which of course is the beginning of every Shocking Disclosure. The significance of any detail is turned up to 11 when it is disclosed through FOIP or a similar law as opposed to an interview or an online document. How exciting! Let's get right to it!

The CBC has its hands on what communications staff call "media lines". As the public broadcaster explains, media lines are questions the minister (or any spokesperson, really) could face and the appropriate responses. They are common; I don't know of any serious communications organization that doesn't use them. They are used to provide clear, concise responses to questions from media or the public. They are especially handy for complicated issues that require multiple organizations to speak to the same issue: it is clear that each agency will speak to the matters under its own jurisdiction, and nobody will be caught by surprise. 

It would, of course, be possible to use media lines for evil rather than good, but you could say that about any tool. They are fundamentally very useful communications tools and their use does not imply anything improper. 

I have written many sets of media lines over the years. They can be off-putting to people who are not used to them: I have been accused of not being supportive of various projects because I'd written media lines that took managers by surprise. Media lines can't have a fawning yes-man tone; they might even need to be combative. When your spokesperson is actually taking the questions, he or she needs to recognize them and link them with the correct answers. That means that your media lines need to sound like this: "Is the creation of this Office politically motivated to curry favour with certain constituencies?" (or, ideally, a bit less governmenty, but you get the idea). You might write a question like "Some have criticized the proposal to create the Office of Religious Freedom as a blurring of the time-honoured line that separates church and state. What's your reaction to this comment?"

The simple fact that media lines exist does not prove any sort of nervousness. It proves that staff are taking an issue seriously enough to plan how they will talk about it. The questions written in media lines do not reveal anything other than the questions that staff expect spokespeople to get. CBC needs to stop wetting its pants and get back to journalism.