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An Arranged Marriage: Police - Media Conflict & Collaboration
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Media and police professionals are bound together in interdependent, and often tense, working relationships. For different purposes both professions need to work effectively together while simultaneously retaining independence from each other. These complex inter-reliant relationships create unique challenges that often call for improvement. This essay examines whether relationships between interdependent professional organizations can be improved through a collaborative problem-solving intervention, based on the interactive methods of facilitated dialogue and appreciative inquiry. The article describes a case study of a large Canadian police agency working with local media outlets to improve their working relationship. It highlights the importance of conflict analysis followed by effective change management strategies in implementation of collaborative solutions that meet everyone’s needs. This case study illustrates dynamics that generalize to organizations that have strong organizational cultures and are highly independent and simultaneously required to work together. Some examples of such organizations are military, prison guards, scholars, medical professionals, social workers, teachers, lawyers and most government agenciesLes médias et les corps policiers sont à la fois interreliés et interdépendants, et leur collaboration est souvent tendue. Dans divers objectifs, ils doivent travailler efficacement ensemble tout en maintenant leur propre autonomie. Ces relations complexes donnent lieu à des difficultés auxquelles il faut remédier. Cet essai porte sur les améliorations pouvant être apportées dans les relations entre deux organisations professionnelles interdépendants par l’entremise d’une intervention visant à résoudre les problèmes fondée sur des méthodes interactives de facilitation du dialogue et d’interrogation appréciative. Cet article décrit un cas où une grande agence policière canadienne a collaboré avec des médias locaux en vue d’améliorer leur relation de travail. On y souligne l’importance de l’analyse des conflits suivie de stratégies efficaces de gestion du changement dans la mise en œuvre de solutions axées sur la collaboration et répondant aux besoins de tous. Cette étude présente les dynamiques communes aux organismes indépendants dont la culture d’entreprise est bien affirmée, et devant travailler en partenariat. Parmi ces organisations, on compte l’armée, les gardes de prison, le secteur universitaire, le corps médical, les travailleurs sociaux, les enseignants, les avocats et la plupart des organismes gouvernementaux.
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... On that count, gaining public trust and support in policing organisations hinges on how the media portray the police force and how the members of public perceive the police through the media. This "complex loop of interdependence" is depicted as a triangle and has been recognised by many research (Chrismas, 2012;Cooke & Sturges, 2009;Kešetović, 2007). According to Chandler (2008), the media relations triangle is, from the public relations spectrum, best understood as a model with three points, representing the news media, the organisation (in this case policing organisations) and the public ( Figure 1). ...
... This source-reporter relationship has further extended to police-media relations, in which both entities need each other very much to serve citizens of the nations. Nevertheless, the relationship between the police and the media is far more complex (Chibnall, 1977;Chrismas, 2012;Cooke & Sturges, 2009;Kešetović, 2007;Reiner, 2008). ...
... The interview data revealed that police culture emerges uniquely from the organisational setting. According to Crank (2015), culturally shared meanings represent how police think about their working environment and how they think about their lives. Police culture lies in the role it plays in the everyday functioning of police officers. ...
This book brings together a collection of new and innovative work by researchers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK - settings where issues of voluntarism and participation have become increasingly important for the development and delivery of social welfare policy. Prefaced by one of the foremost geographers in this field, it contains empirical and theoretical work from both new and well-established geographers. The chapters explore the interactions between voluntarism and a range of issues including governance, health, community action, faith, ethnicity, counselling, advocacy and professionalisation. The book will be of interest not only to students and researchers in human geography but also to those working in social policy, sociology, health and political science. The detailed case material will also be of particular interest to practitioners working in the fields of health, governance, social welfare and social exclusion.
This essay examines changing public opinion on a contentious political topic in the province of Alberta, namely, the two waves of “welfare reform” initiated by the Conservative government from the mid-1990s onwards. Province-wide public opinion data collected in 1995 and 2004 are compared to determine whether support for government spending on social assistance decreased following a decade of Conservative government preoccupation with deficit/debt reduction, or increased because the deficit had been eliminated, the provincial debt was about to be cleared, and the government began asking how budget surpluses should be managed. We find that support for social assistance increased, substantially, and among all population sub-groups. In fact, even back in 1995, there was surprisingly little support for cuts to welfare spending. The implications of this disconnect between public preferences and government policies for low-income Albertans and other citizens are discussed.
Policies implemented in the mid to late 1990s in Ontario by Mike Harris’s Conservative government have had undeniable repercussions for the population of that province. Kate Bezanson’s Gender, the State, and Social Reproduction is the first study to consider the implications of those policies for gender relations - that is, how women and men, families, and households coped with these changes, and how division of labour and standards of living were affected. Bezanson also considers implications of neo-liberalism more generally, for the lives of people living under such regimes. Beginning with an outline of the restructuring experiment which took place under the Conservative government between 1995 and 2000, Bezanson shows how this process dramatically altered the scope of the welfare state, labour market protections and conditions, and the capacity for people to manage and plan their own lives. She combines this detailed investigation of the changes introduced by Harris with data collected in in-depth interviews of selected Ontario households, in order to examine how neo-liberalism affects daily lives, particularly of low income people, and especially of women. Ultimately, Bezanson finds that the neo-liberal restructuring of Ontario in the 1990s consolidated a gender regime that was highly unsustainable for poor households, many of which were lead by women. A controversial and illuminating study, Gender, the State, and Social Reproduction crosses the disciplines of politics, history, gender studies, and sociology.
