Disclosure: The author is currently a candidate in the UTS Council postgraduate student election.
Something unusual happened at CommsCon, the communications industry’s annual gathering. It took place behind the scenes, not during the main events.
A panel set to discuss contested narratives about Murujuga and World Heritage recognition was cancelled. The speakers pulled out, and the conversation ended before it began. While panels often get cancelled at conferences, this one did not just fade away. It became impossible to continue.
That’s what made it stand out.
What happened was more than just a conference issue. It showed in real time how the communications industry reacts under pressure.
Later that day, I noticed something similar at the Edelman Trust Barometer session. The setting was typical: a well-organised room, respected speakers, and a clear message about declining trust in institutions. The data showed that people are turning to smaller, like-minded groups, making trust more personal, local, and tribal.
Still, the discussion stayed within expected limits. Institutions were described as possible neutral brokers, and communication was seen as the way to rebuild trust. The session followed the usual format: presentation, panel discussion, and agreement.
What was missing was any real challenge. There were no questions from the audience, no visible disagreement, and no point where the group’s assumptions were questioned. In a session on trust, the lack of debate among students studying stakeholder engagement and ethics was noticeable; this wasn’t abstract. It was a live case study.
At the heart of the CommsCon issue was a common tactic. Some people call stakeholder views “misinformation.” This label is powerful. It gives one side more credibility and makes the other seem less trustworthy. It also lets communicators shift quickly from engaging with others to correcting them.
But it also limits who can take part in the conversation. The perspective is labelled “misinformation,” the question is no longer how to interact with it, but whether it should be engaged with at all. That shift changes the role of communication from enabling dialogue to defining its boundaries.
In contested environments, setting these boundaries is rarely neutral. In situations of disagreement, defining what counts as legitimate participation carries its own bias. One industry practitioner suggested that what is often labelled “misinformation” can reflect incomplete or partial representations rather than outright falsehoods. That distinction is important. But it raises a more difficult question: who determines what constitutes the “full picture,” and at what point does defining completeness become a way of excluding competing perspectives? These questions are not just theoretical. They happened in real life.
The panel was never tested. It was not faced with disagreement or open to differing opinions. In the end, it did not take place. This cast itself as the architect of engagement, which should give pause, because the industry is often more comfortable designing narratives than accommodating competing ones.
Stakeholder engagement is widely taught, discussed, and put into practice. But when engagement gets tough—when stakeholders question the framing, the facts, or the purpose—the usual reaction is to set the rules for who can take part. This means deciding which voices are credible, which views are valid, and who gets included.
Sometimes, drawing that line is necessary. Not every claim is equal, and not everyone acts in good faith. But it seems the bar for excluding people is getting lower, and the results are easy to predict.
The stakeholder does not disappear. The forum does.
The conversation does not end. It just moves, often to places that are less organized, less accountable, and harder to reach. In a world where trust is already breaking down, this is not a neutral result.
The Edelman data points to a world in which people no longer rely on institutions as neutral brokers. Instead, they place trust in proximity — in people who share their experiences, perspectives, or identities. Against that backdrop, the reflex to label perspectives as “misinformation” risks strengthening the very fragmentation the industry claims to address. By trying to protect a particular story, communicators accelerate the loss of mutual understanding, further entrenching the gap.
This is the contradiction.
Efforts to maintain clarity can strip away complexity. Attempts to protect credibility can undermine it. Efforts to control the conversation can push it somewhere else entirely.
Which brings us back to a more fundamental question: what role does the communications industry believe it is playing?
Is it helping people talk, or just choosing which opinions are allowed?
Those roles are not interchangeable. One requires engaging with perspectives that are incomplete, uncomfortable, or contested. It is messier and riskier. Whilst the other excludes those perspectives altogether. Ultimately, this stagnant reality is the most fragile.
The CommsCon panel did not fail because people disagreed. It failed because there was no longer a space to negotiate those disagreements.
That is not an issue with the stakeholders.
It is a problem within communications.
At a time when the industry talks so much about trust, the real question is whether it is ready to do the harder work needed to build it. If we only have conversations we can control, we should not be surprised when those discussions happen somewhere else.
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