Archive for the ‘Communities’ Category

The Wall Street Journal on the use of third party spokespeople. Something I think most intelligent viewers are aware of  but a practice nevertheless, that isn’t in the least but transparent.

In November, Child magazine’s Technology Editor James Oppenheim appeared on a local television show in Austin, Texas, and reviewed educational gadgets and toys. He praised "My ABC’s Picture Book," a personalized photo album from Eastman Kodak Co.

"Considering what you showed me, kids’ games really don’t have to be violent," said the anchor for KVUE, an ABC affiliate and the No. 1-rated television station in its market.

"If…you’re not careful, they will be," Mr. Oppenheim replied. "That’s why I’ve shown you some of the best."

There was one detail the audience didn’t know: Kodak paid Mr. Oppenheim to mention the photo album, according to the company and Mr. Oppenheim. – WSJ, April 19, 2005

Now I’ve been pretty harsh in my comments regarding the Bush Administration’s use of paid spokespeople and VNRs without any kind of transparancy. Commercially this has been happening for decades. So at what point does the PR industry issue some guidelines on transparency and correct this erroneous practice. The Government has set the standard’s bar low enough that you could pretty much roll over it.

And at what point does the media – especially the broadcasters – step-up and do their job of fair and balanced reporting. Tell us where the "independent expert" is being paid to speak to a particular brand or product. If you want out loyalty and trust, you are going to have to earn it. We the people expect more. Dan has more on this.

If you’re not reading Howard Hurtz’s Media Notes they are well worth a read. He’s got a great column on John Bolton’s U.N. nomination. What’s also interesting is how predominantly he points to the Blogs.

The must read is his piece on "The Coming News Crisis". Some interesting remarks on circulation at the Post:

This is a sensitive issue for The Post because circulation, while still a healthy 700,000, has been declining in recent years. Circulation goes up and down for a variety of reasons, but the fact that anyone can read any Post story online without paying a nickel has got to be up there. The reason you should care is that advertising revenue from the paper version is what supports this infrastructure of reporters, editors, columnists, photographers, graphic artists and others who make The Post what it is. If that’s eroded, the quality of the paper’s journalism will eventually suffer, and what you see online will suffer as well. (Obviously washingtonpost.com also has a number of Web-only features, including Media Notes, and generates some of its own ad dollars.) – Howard Kurtz.

Some interesting data from Eric Zorn from over at the Tribune:

"The percentage of people in their 30s who read a paper every day was 73 percent in 1972, and it’s 30 percent today. The average newspaper reader is 53. More and more people, trained by the Internet, believe that information should be free, and so give-away daily tabloids are springing up in big cities all over. I realize that media professionals are studying this problem full time, but what does your gut tell you newspapers should do to remain vital and profitable in the digital age?

I’ve long advocated media planning for PR professionals. I wonder how many are doing it today. Not many I bet. If they were they might be refocusing those campaigns on where readers are reading.

The Economist on the transparency (propaganda issue) – here’s a snippet from their "premium content" (read: log-on required).

The televised interview with John Walters, the White House drug tsar, ran on hundreds of local stations before the 2004 Super Bowl. “Many parents admit they’re still not taking the drug [marijuana] seriously,” explained the news anchor. “Mike Morris has more.” It ended with the usual sign-off: “This is Mike Morris reporting.” It looked like a news report, and quacked like a news report. But it was not one. The segment had been produced by Mr Walters’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. The apparently independent Mr Morris was on contract to the government.

Bogus television reporting like this is, alas, an established part of American “news management”. It is the video equivalent of issuing a press release. It will not disappear overnight. But at least you might have hoped, when government departments are caught doing it, they might feel a bit sheepish. When word of this particular episode leaked out last year, officials at the drug-control office promised not to do it again.

The General Accountability Office recently criticised the use of “prepackaged” news. The White House issued a response.
That was then. This week the White House spokesman said that, in promoting fake news, the administration was doing nothing wrong, and that the General Accounting Office (GAO), which had called it illegal “covert propaganda”, was talking through its hat.

While they make the point that Bush isn’t in the clear on this issue, they do point out where the media let us down:

Anyway, it is not the government’s fault if news programmes fail to identify a government agency as the originator of the material they are running. That is the broadcasters’ responsibility. And it is no excuse that they are short of cash and correspondents (though they are) and no excuse that government departments—as in the interview with Mr Walters—go out of their way to make the footage look like a ready-to-roll news report

I watched the Flickr acquisition announcement with interest this weekend. While I’m thrilled for all the Flickr team it got me thinking about the issue of fair disclosure and SEC regs – two things that are the bain of every communicators existence (at least those in public companies).

It appears that the announcement went something like this (thanks to Noel for his thoughts here…):

• endless gossip and rumor
• 3/20 – Yahoo confirms to CNET
• 3/20 – Flickr blog confirms purchase
• 3/21 – founder Jerry Yang confirms at PC Forum, $4k to attend
• 3/21, 8:33pm ET – WSJ Online reports on acquisition
• 3/21, 12:27am – Reuters report

In chatting to a few lawyers today, all agreed that neither CNet or Flickr meet the standards of fair disclosure or broad distribution as characterized by the SEC. PC Forum definitely doesn’t. All also pointed out that perhaps Yahoo doesn’t regard this as a material announcement (or they don’t really have a deal yet – do you?) and therefore weren’t bothered about fair disclosure.

It would appear that Yahoo is pushing the boundaries of fair disclosure and transperancy with still no info on their web site for investors wanting to follow their "daring exploits". Which is a little bizzare given their announcement of Yahoo360 (which would seem of equal importance to shareholders).

The sooner blogs are regarded to represent fair disclosure the better. Perhaps then we might have seen more substantial comment from Yahoo – as a shareholder I really do want to hear from them on the acquisition. I can’t think of a format that better than blogs that combine democracy, informality and immediacy.

But to really deliver transparency and communicate effectively with constituents, companies need to look beyond blogs and technology events. Especially if they regard their brand to be substantial – as I am sure Yahoo does. This is where good old fashioned tools like press releases, web sites and wire services come into play. Not doing so leaves a large group in the dark.

Until Blogs are recognized as a vehicle for fair disclosure, I’m still wondering how Yahoo managed to skirt SEC regulations?

A month or so ago Alan Kelly penned an interesting piece for PRWeek on the right to propaganda. It’s something I agree with.

We do have a right to promote everything from positions and products. The recent exposure of the airing of VNRs as news stories – without any credit to their origins – suggests a new standard is needed if this right is not to be confused with that of engaging in duplicitous activity. Ethics are at the core of the issue. What might seem like smart PR to one person is in fact the propagation of mistruths and lies to another. And to them, those that engage in it should be censured and punished.

This is the paradox of propoganda – whether for bands, people, or positions… Those with one position rarely agree with the manner in which the other is being propogated. What are lies and wrong-doing by one group is more than often percieved as fair by another. I was chatting with a friend – an avid Bush supporter – on the VNR issue. His view was that the onus was on the media to report the source of content and that if the media had been reporting fairly anyway they would have reported precisely what was in the VNR. He has a point, although one I don’t agree with.

What we have – occuring in nearly every corner of communications – is a massive failing of ethics. Today, The New York Times draws (a pretty extreme) parallel between Enron and the current Bush administration:

The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery – and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in "The Smartest Guys in the Room," Enron "was fixated on its public relations campaigns." It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company’s Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay. "We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in," a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. "We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling" even though "some of the computers didn’t even work."

If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing 60-stop "presidential roadshow" in which Mr. Bush has "conversations on Social Security" with "ordinary citizens" for the consumption of local and national newscasts. As in the president’s "town meeting" campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the panelists for these conversations recruited from administration supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, "We ran through it five times before the president got there." Finalists who vary just slightly from the administration’s pitch are banished from the cast at the last minute, "American Idol"-style. — Frank Rich, New York Times, March 20, 2005

Simple acts fix this – acts of truth and transparency. If nothing, this points to the vital role media has to play as a watchdog and commentator. I wonder if we’ll look back on the opening of this new century as the period in which we faced and dealt with the ethics crisis in business, communications and government? Or will we just shrug this all off as fair game in the course of making a buck? I hope not. Sadly, Bush seems willing to do so…

At last weekend’s Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how "most" of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them – and us.

I come back to Alan’s original op-ed. There isn’t anything wrong with propaganda. The right to inform the public should be protected at all costs. And if you want to skip the intermediaries – media, analysts, opion formers – there are plenty of ways of doing so (blogs being a great example). But what is wrong are attempts to knowingly avoid transperancy and dupe the public. These must be stopped.

While I’m not making excuses for those engaging in these acts, the media are also failing us. Their lack of diligence in reporting has allowed many of these spurious acts of propaganda to take place unchecked. While higher standards are needed in public and corporate communications, they are also needed in the media.