Cover those backs - there's a journalist about

There's a strange paranoia pervading the nation.   It stems from the fear that, on an otherwise inocuous day at work, there might be a call from .....a journalist!   And, in my case, a trainee one at that.

At some point in what I imagine to be the recent past, the majority of the working population seems to have been imbued with an innate fear of even the most harmless of journalistic approaches.   "You'll have to go through head office," comes the plaintiff reply.   "We're not allowed to say anything."   Even when the subject is a good/indifferent news story for the organisation for whom they work, the default position of most people is one of blind panic.   If you are lucky enough to coax somebody to talk, the next hurdle which you have to clear is the necessity to make some kind of record of what they actually say.   Producing a digital voice recorder in such situations often elicits a reaction akin to if someone had been waving a sawn-off shotgun around in a confined space.  

Accounting for a natural mistrust of journalists and the inability of most to distinguish between non-threatening broadcast trainees and foot-in-the-door tabloid types, this mind-set is a difficult one to fathom.   The vast majority of companies are employing press officers or public relations bods to field all their enquiries.   Whilst that is hardly surprising nowadays, it seems these individuals are trying to safeguard or even justify their existence by instilling an irrational fear into staff that anything they say will be noted, duly twisted and used against them in the very near future.   The result is that it's increasingly difficult to get informed, authentic local voices to comment on anything at all - thereby stifling one of the most important features of local and regional journalism.

So what scraps are journalists offered instead?   A dry statement, prepared hundreds of miles out of the catchment area which eventually arrives long after your deadline has passed.   And that's before you even start investigating anything controversial.   

Or am I just being unlucky?