Fools' Paradise

It is impossible for a reader of automotive journalism to gather a true and complete picture of what is going on - to a greater or lesser degree, you are all being kept in the dark.

That statement, of course, might be applied to all forms of journalism - wouldn't the same thing be happening in political journalism, for example? Perhaps, but in automotive journalism there are no investigative reporters prepared to blow the top off an industry or reveal products that are being sold in breach of the Trade Practices Act. There are almost no hard-hitting interviews where questions are aggressively asked (or if any do in fact occur, they're never presented unadorned so that all that was said can be seen). Nearly every automotive journalist and/or publisher receives financial benefit from car manufacturers - press cars are freely loaned, with that (lack of) financial exchange never mentioned.

In fact, the vast majority of automotive journalism is either advertorial or straight entertainment... and yes, that includes the 'tests' and other stories which in any other journalistic field would be regarded as 'hard news' - and so would be written with a completely different regard for the facts.

And while here at AutoSpeed we have tried to step out of that straitjacket, I am not for one moment suggesting that we are above criticism.

In automotive journalism there are four major factors that conspire to keep you - the readers - in the dark. All relate to money... hardly a surprise. However, the relationship between the dollars and the content that you read isn't always immediately obvious.

1. Advertising

The first factor is advertising, where a car or product manufacturer takes out paid space within the medium. With very few exceptions (and AutoSpeed is one), the media cannot survive without a large influx of advertising dollars. Magazine publishers tend to directly relate the number of pages of advertising that have been sold with the magazine length, so if more ads are placed, the magazine can afford to run to more pages - which of course will leave room for more editorial content. The price that you pay for a magazine or newspaper barely covers the paper and printing costs - sometimes not even those. So the production costs - the salaries of the journalists and editors, the costs of renting offices, etc - are primarily paid for by advertising.

Advertisers are normally free to 'pull' their ads whenever they feel like it (ie long term advertising contracts are rare) and so if they don't like something that has been published in the editorial content of the magazine or newspaper, a direct financial hit can be instantly made. However, it is the very obviousness of this cause and effect that prevents this occurring more frequently - it's very hard for an advertiser to publicly defend such an action when it can be subject to only one interpretation.

So while statements like "that magazine wrote nicely about the Commodore because Holden advertises heaps with them" are a common refrain on web discussion groups, this constraint - while definitely important - is less widespread than is imagined. Plus of course, if a magazine bagged a Commodore and Holden did pull advertising, then Holden's direct competitors will be pretty happy... and may well place more of their own ads in the same magazine!

Journalists also seem to be very aware of the 'advertising dollars' threat, and at least pay lip service to their independence in this regard.

2. Legal Action

The laws of defamation in Australia are strict - but in theory there are excellent defences available. The truth, public benefit, fair comment - all are libel defences in a court of law. However, it's one thing to be on the side of the angels; it's another to have the money to prove it - it's not coincidental that legal action of this type is frequently used as a tool by the rich and powerful.



AutoSpeed, for example, has been threatened with legal action four times - and in each case the company making the threats had sufficient resources to follow them through. In one case, we had to pull the negative product test - the risk was simply too great for us to take - and another time a story looking at both the positives and negatives of a product had to be dropped. (And if you think that is a pretty weak approach, take a look at some Australian media law history - like the restaurant that sued on the basis of a negative review... and was awarded AUD$100,000 in damages.)

It's ironic that because of the risk of legal action, actual real-life examples cannot be detailed in this story. Even the limited number of photos in this story is significant - for example, if we ran a workshop pic near to the text about some workshop proprietors being in bed with journalists, we could be sued.

Strong negative stories are conspicuously lacking in the automotive media - usually, you only find out that the modification product or workshop was lousy long after the product is no longer current or the workshop has gone broke.

3. Contacts & Sources

The third factor is the most important - but is almost never mentioned. Journalists rely heavily on their contacts and sources for their stories: relatively few generate stories without relying to a major degree on others for the information. In fact, since a primary role of journalists is to convey to the wider public what is being said and done by newsworthies, this makes complete sense. However, start to think about the implications and they're pretty frightening.

Many news events these days are completely stage-managed. Take press conferences for example - the 'spin' placed on the news is comprehensively in the court of the manufacturer. But, significantly, there are also more private meetings - for example where a 'select' group of journalists is invited each month to an audience with the head of a car company. Don't laugh: it's an on-going process. Or where access to (say) senior car company engineers is granted to only some journalists. It won't surprise you to learn that only those who write stories deemed 'acceptable' by the company get invited to these meetings - it is a corollary that if a journalist produces material that the company doesn't like, such sources dry up.

Here's the killer - a journalist without excellent sources and contacts cannot produce quality work on an on-going basis. They may be able to do one brilliant, reveal-all story... but following that, they're almost certain not to be able to do any more stories with the source. As a result, they are then severely limited in their work success.

The same notion applies to modification workshops. For a journalist they are a great source of stories - the step-by-step of fitting an intercooler, the 'before' and 'after' power figures for a modification, and so on. But how many stories have you ever seen that were negative about either the workshop or the job that was being done?

None...

In fact, an example springs to mind of where a car had a supercharger fitted. The engine blew up during the tuning, and the discussion between the owner and the workshop became so heated that when the owner came with the flat-top truck to pick it up, the workshop got together all of its employees to make sure that there was no trouble. The customer also brought along his mates, and there was a folded arms muscular stand-off while the car was being taken away...the threat of violence was very real. Interestingly, a journalist wrote a story about the car's modifications - and the engine destruction and customer's ill-feelings towards the workshop didn't seem to make the story! Reading it you'd have assumed that all was well...

So maintaining sources is one of the most insidious - but powerful - influences causing automotive journalists not to rock the boat. New car tests, workshop stories, personality stories - all are constrained to be positive (or at the most, only gently negative) if that journalist is to continue to be able to generate the requisite number of stories from that source. There are simply so few good sources of stories that if they're burned, the automotive journalist is left with little.

4. Bias

All automotive publications can be termed 'special interest' - that is, they cater for one group of readers. By definition, they therefore carry material that has a distinct bias towards the inclinations of those people. You won't see in a car magazine too many stories focusing on the ecological damage that the car has done to the planet; equally, in a modified car magazine it's exceedingly rare to see any stories on how safety is often compromised by the mods. To an extent these are givens, but think it through and you'll realise that an extension of this is to pander to the readership's prejudices and preoccupations - to deliberately promulgate a bias in the reporting.



The Impreza WRX is currently a cult car, ipso facto lots of car magazines run positive stories on the WRX. But lost in that is the full and frank disclosure of all the facts - that the cars suffer from gearbox and clutch longevity problems, that the four-wheel drive system is - these days - very primitive, that - depending on the model - turbo lag can be horrendous. That's not to say that the story is all bad news - the WRX is still a brilliantly affordable car with immense performance and traction. But in nearly all car enthusiast media any concept of balance, fairness and respect for bringing the full story to the attention of the reader is left by the wayside.

I remember reading once in a four cylinder magazine a comparison between a new four cylinder turbo car and a new V8. Duh - the four cylinder turbo won! No doubt that left many readers with the warm fuzzies, but any thinking person didn't need to even pick up the magazine to know what the conclusions of that "test" would be....

Simply, if you are after the full story, the more specialist the car media is, the less likely that you are to get it.

Un-Dizzying the Spin

So these are the major factors that dictate the spread of what you read - and don't for one moment underestimate their power. But you're a car nut - you're currently reading AutoSpeed and it's very likely that you also read lots of other automotive publications. So how do you see through the spin - sort out the bullshit? Regrettably, it's by being as cynical as possible.

1. The Facts

Read for the facts, rather than the camouflage. For example, most modified feature car stories are 'fill' - that's because if you take away the treatment, all that you'd be left with is a bunch of facts in a list. But while you can enjoy a well-written feature car story, the bottom line is that only the facts make any difference. Do the same in road tests - what points are supported with evidence? It doesn't have to be numerical evidence - but if the journalist says that the car understeers badly and then points to the front tyre wear that had occurred by the end of the test, that's a helluva lot better than a line like "tends to run wide in some corners" - or no mention of handling at all.

2. The Strength of the Criticism

Take note of journalists who write strongly and critically about things - any things other than their readers. (To most media, individual readers don't matter - so explaining the harsh replies often used in 'Letters to the Editor' columns.) If you mentally bookmark the journalists who write really critically about a car, a product, or a personality, then you'll have found someone with higher credibility. In all likelihood, there will be only a tiny number of names to memorise.

3. The Half-and-Half Rule

On the balance of probabilities, around half of all product stories in a publication should be negative. That's because if an average (or median, to be pedantic) is the middle ground, then about half of the products reviewed should be better than that - and the other half worse than that. (If the reviewer isn't comparing the product with the rest of the field, they should be. And if they're only reviewing the good 'uns, again they're telling only half the story.) This is a real killer concept - in some newspapers the car reviews will be positive for well over 90 per cent of the time - in fact, some papers never print a negative car test. Using this 'half-and-half' rule, their cred is zero.

4. The Handful of Sources

Be wary of journalists who source their modification stories from a small number of workshops. It might be because those workshops are the best in the business, or it might be because the journalist is in bed with the proprietor. (Relax - it's a metaphorical 'in bed'.) One indication of this is when the story personality profiles the proprietor in matey terms - the use of nicknames, over-zealous praise, frequent mention of the bloke... stuff like that. Are there direct quotes from the owner of the car supporting the thrust of the story - ie that it was a fantastic mod that worked really well? Any hint - whether in the story or by gossip - that the journalist has a financial relationship with the workshop should immediately raise danger flags. Keep an eye out for these indicators and you'll be amazed how quickly the cred level of some writers drops...

5. The Publication

Look carefully at the biases inherent in the publication itself. They may be overt (eg in the title of the publication, or in a clearly stated automotive philosophy) or a lot more subtle, being reflected only in the content. Often they're carefully disguised under a veneer of objectivity.

In Your Hands...

The bottom line is to be cynical and sceptical - there's not a single automotive story that doesn't realistically have two sides to be reported. You've now got a better idea of why that type of reporting seldom - if ever - occurs, and now it's up to you to critically evaluate what you read - both here and elsewhere.