The daily press conference and why it matters in a public health crisis

For nineteen months now, the premiers of Australia’s states and territories have become familiar faces on our television screens as they update us on the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures introduced to curb its spread.

The press conference has become a daily lockdown ritual but it does more than convey to the public in a simple fashion important information; as a carefully stage-managed forum, it is also a strategic political tool.

I invited a public relations industry expert to assess Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ performance during his 120-day-run of daily press conferences during the 2020 Victorian lockdown, for a seminar with my students. They rated him highly for his clear and concise public health messaging, empathy around the loss of life, and the fact he turned up every day.

But they also said he was “doing everything a media advisor would ask him to do”.

Behind the scenes, an army of media advisors help craft the messages, set the stage and determine the agenda, even if the press conference also gives journalists the opportunity to publicly question a government’s direction and decisions.

Ritual and performance

Academic Geoffrey Craig sees press conferences as a ritual contest between politicians and journalists, where each performs their professional roles of campaigning and scrutinising.

So for journalists, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s decision to cease her daily conferences illustrated a lack of government accountability.

ABC political correspondent Laura Tingle referred to Berejikilian abandoning any semblance of accountability to the people of her state just when it was facing the worst of its COVID crisis.

Journalist and academic Margaret Simons also views the press conference as an opportunity for accountability, but she is critical of some journalists and their lines of questioning which, she said, were sometimes not designed to elicit information but to grandstand.

In an opinion piece published in The Age on 17 August last year, she wrote of some sparring at one of Daniel Andrews’ conferences:

“One question was something like ‘how can people ever trust you again’? That is a wasted opportunity – a showy, hyperventilating spectator sport question. It could not possibly result in more information.”

History of press conferences

Press conferences emerged in the twentieth century and, since the advent of television, have become an important platform for politicians to communicate with the public.

Livestreaming press conferences were a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency, as academic Jay Rosen explains in this video.

Trump’s press conferences offered both spectacle and entertainment and delivered television ratings as Trump sparred with the ‘fake news’ media and, in particular, CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Trump’s press conferences set the tone for the American public in that they sidelined public health experts and undermined public health messaging.

The Victorian press conferences, often held outdoors, are carefully staged to reinforce public health messaging, with physical distancing and mask wearing.

Telling stories

Reflecting on his year of press conferences in his secondment to the deputy Chief Health Officer role, Monash Professor Allen Cheng, acknowledged ‘public health is inherently political’, and the challenges in conveying technical details and mathematical modelling to a lay audience. However, he stated they worked best in helping people make sense of complexity, and in telling the stories behind the trends, data and the hard work being done behind the scenes.

That explanation points to some of the broader impacts of the press conference. After all, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services now gives a ‘soft release’ of the daily cases each morning through unofficial briefing of journalists and through their own social media, and the press conference often repeats this information.

But what the conference does do is help people make sense of that information.

As a public performance, then, conferences are paradoxical. They can be alarming and fear-provoking. But they can also build a sense of solidarity in the community and in doing so, encourage citizens to take specific steps, from ‘stay home’ and ‘flatten the curve’ to ‘get the jab’.

As lockdown fatigue increasingly sets in, Victorian health minister Martin Foley, as a counterpoint to NSW’s premier, sees ongoing press conferences as vital and an opportunity to bring in new voices, such as ICU nurses, psychiatrists, community leaders and GPs in high-risk suburbs.

"Not every person, no doubt, logs in and watches us, but it is an important part of getting the message out. But it’s not just numbers, it’s people, it’s lives, it’s health systems, and we have to do [them]. We have to take every opportunity to get the message out. And it is in our collective ability to reshape that.

"As imperfect and as sometimes challenging as these media conferences are, ... a key part is engaging with people in their lives, in their stories... That’s the key message, but as things change, we need to keep Victorians updated with that. If there's a better way to do it, I’m all ears.

Berejikilian sees a very different role for press conferences, as she maintains NSW needs to move to living with the virus less than two months after declaring a national emergency.

She stated that: “We will be here whenever we need to communicate something very important to the community’ and ‘when I feel I need to be accountable.”

The decision provoked outrage from journalists, who saw the press conference as ‘the only opportunity to hold the government to account during this crisis’.

What else is lost in a public health emergency without daily press conferences?

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said:

“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic.”

The infodemic – too much information – is particularly challenging in a health emergency as it fosters rumours and misinformation and can create confusion, mistrust and propagate conspiracy theories.

Daily press conferences therefore provide a (mostly) reliable and current source of information. They build public trust in government, despite the changing messaging in response to a dynamic and complex public health emergency.

They set the news agenda and the tone for how citizens can respond and support public health efforts and allow elected members to be visible leaders.

If we have to learn to live with the virus, the daily press conference plays an important role.