Undies, undies, togs: undressing the Epsom talk scandal

by Claire Robinson

Many will be familiar with the Tip Top Trumpet “Undies” advertisement when a man in a bathing suit walks away from a beach into a town, while the question is asked “how far away from the beach do togs become undies?” The answer: “if you can’t see the water you’re in underpants”. Something that is acceptably public becomes private once it has crossed a perceptual dividing line.

It’s a scenario analogous to the Epsom talk scandal that dominated the 2011 election campaign last week. While the camera crews and journalists were inside the café covering the tea meeting between John Key and John Banks they were at effectively at the beach, but once they left to go outside the café window they were in town. The dividing line was also perceptual; a piece of glass that meant the media was still able to see what was going on, but they were not permitted to hear what was being said.

Like the appropriateness of wearing underpants in public, in politics there is a dividing line between what is private and what is public. Another analogy is the theatre concepts of backstage and front-stage: there is politics that goes on behind closed doors [backstage] and there is politics that is presented before a live or mediated audience [front-stage].

Backstage is the area that the public does not enter (either because it is personal, sensitive, unnecessary, unhelpful, boring, impractical or time consuming to do so). Opinions expressed in these spaces are not for public consumption. Backstage areas include the 9th floor of the Beehive, the PM’s home, many corridors in parliament buildings, the Cabinet and other rooms in the Beehive, inside crown cars, bars, restaurants, meeting and hotel rooms. Some of these places are public, in the sense of being perceived in open view, but they are nonetheless backstage in terms of being out-of-bounds to the public (including the news media).

Front-stage includes the lobby of parliament, wherever there is a stand-up press conference, the Beehive Theatrette, the television and radio studios when the cameras are running and the mics are on, the chamber, the campaign trail. Front-stage is the space of the ‘photo op’, the on-one-one interview and the media “stand-up” news conference. The rules and timing of these moments are mutually agreed between political leader and media pack, and access to this area is granted “at the pleasure” of the Prime Minister. In return the PM relinquishes his right to edit the tapes, frame the news item or control how his image and message is subsequently used.

During election campaigns the media has increased access backstage. This works to benefit both media and politician: political leaders need to be in the public spotlight as much as practicable in order to communicate their message to as many voters as possible, and so they allow the news media to accompany them on the campaign trail day and night. The news media follow them to gather announcements about the campaign which they can frame as news.

Access to backstage is tightly controlled by media managers, private secretaries, diaries, security detail, processes and systems. However, during an election campaign, when politicians are away from their normal office support systems and are found in myriad public spaces, this access is at greater risk of being violated, as it was in Epsom.

John Key’s cup of tea meeting with John Banks was front-stage in the sense that the media was invited along, the setting enabled them to participate, take photos, ask questions. The media was then asked to leave, and once they had left the immediate vicinity (although still outside the window) John Key and John Banks had what they thought was a backstage conversation in accord with the norms and conventions that have been established between leader and media; the type of conversation that would normally be held in any one of the out-of-bounds places listed above.

Many have argued that because the cup of tea took place in a public place and the media had been invited along to a staged photo opportunity, the details of the conversation between Key and Banks should be available to the public; turning it, in effect, into a front-stage conversation. However, simply being in a public space does not automatically confer those properties on the conversation. The important question is whether the PM gave them a back-stage pass (or permission to wear their undies on the beach) and he did not.

The situation that has dominated the news is a breakdown between front-stage and back-stage actions. It’s no surprise that John Key has dug his heels in and is refusing to engage. The line between backstage and front-stage, the beach and town, has been shifted. And not at his pleasure.

By not being accommodating in subsequent stand-up interviews Key has sought to shift his own line between back and front-stage. The media stand-up is part of the ritual of an election campaign; a reward for arduously and patiently following political leaders around on the trail. For politicians the interview is one of the primary mechanisms by which they can get their messages used in the construction of news. But it’s also the barrier between beach and town, back and front-stage. To refuse to answer their questions is telling the pack that they stepped too far and he’s going to withdraw some of their privileges for a while.

And not surprisingly the media pack are a bit pissed in return. They are expressing this through the selection of unflattering photographic images to illustrate the story: selection of image being one of the powers they have over the PM’s Office. They have also been trying to get Key’s behaviour subsequent to the tea cup taping to form another scandal in itself: in particular the PM’s alleged ability to mobilise the police to investigate the case. Through the vehicle of news stories about ordinary people who haven’t been able to call upon the resources of the police as swiftly as the PM the media is hiding their outrage under the guise of empirical evidence.

As we know from the opinion polls, a majority of New Zealanders accept that there is a distinction between private and public, and that this is media obsession with the story is a sideshow. This is not about public morality but is rather, like most scandals that become media stories, a manifestation of a struggle over a deeper set of power relations between political leader and the news media.

The media will only be truly happy when John Key wears his undies in public. But this is not a man that is ever likely to do so.

Associate Professor Claire Robinson is the Assistant Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Creative Arts and a specialist in political marketing.

This column was first published on spinprofessor.tumblr.com on October 21, 2011.