The news that Whitney Houston’s publicist has arranged footage of the late singer’s funeral service to be distributed throws a spotlight on a lesser-known media management practice called “pooling.”
Pooling is where one media outlet is chosen to film an event and shares the footage with competitors. It’s commonly used to limit media attendance where space is at a premium or their presence might be upsetting.
Witht he Houston story, squeezing a herd of American TV crews into a small Newark church wouldn’t have made much sense.
Barring attendance point-blank would have encouraged ultra-competitive reporters to push the envelope and sneak in a camera. The footage will be made available to TV news and sent all over the Internet.
Pooling is usually a good compromise even if it goes against the grain for many reporters.
Back when I was working as a go-between in media-police relations, pooling was sometimes used at funerals or at open-air crime scenes where evidence had to be preserved.
It’s a little-known fact that police find it useful to have access to TV crews’ unedited footage at events like homicide victims’ funerals . The rationale is that killers are often known to their victims - their behaviour might provide evidence to build a case – so cops often do some kind of deal with the media to maintain their distance.
A pool camera closer to the action can quietly provide the better footage that TV needs.
I went to biker funerals where allowing TV crew access would have been like throwing petrol onto a smouldering fire. If access for one crew (on the condition that they shared their footage) kept the peace, that was a good outcome.
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