« Over the Wall | Main | If The Media Can Do It, So Can PR »
April 18, 2005
It's The End of the World As They Knew It
Three important news stories this week indicate a move to a more open society forced by wired, intelligent consumers despite a stubborn unwillingness of major institutions to recognize this profound change. Columbia University's exclusive release of a special committee's report on alleged mistreatment of Jewish students by Palestinian professors, GM's decision to pull all advertising from the Los Angeles Times in response to "unfair coverage" and the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) mandate that all video news releases (VNRs) include a commercial disclaimer acknowledging the sponsor all reflect a command and control mentality doomed to failure.
Columbia's PR department chose to offer the New York Times an exclusive, advance look at the special committee's report. Access was granted to faculty members of the special committee but the Times was not allowed to interview the aggrieved students, leading to the inevitable disaster. The positive story appeared, clearing faculty members of bias. The students went on the attack on line, then other NY media outlets such as the Daily News picked up their dissenting views. The New York Times was mortified by the appearance of bias. The ombudsman of the NY Times pointed out the fallacy of the reporter accepting the conditions imposed by Columbia's PR department in a major expose. The paper's editorial board then blasted the report. This debacle calls into question the validity of granting exclusives, and certainly an exclusive with strict conditions that prevent a 360 degree look at an issue.
General Motors has long been upset by negative stories in the LA Times. The last straw, according to GM's PR department was a particularly ad hominem attack by a car reviewer on two of the new GM cars. The company decided to pull its $20 plus million in advertising from the paper. This prompted a series of negative articles in the national media, including the Wall Street Journal, NY Times and Advertising Age. Most pundits suggested that there might be a better way, including work with car aficionado bloggers or other media in the Los Angeles area. The net result of the GM decision was a further confirmation of a company stuck in the past, operating with the mind set that, "What's good for GM is good for the country."
The FCC mandate comes in the wake of a series of negative articles on the Bush Administration's use of prepackaged news to support its initiatives. One recent story in the NY Times contended that financially-strapped television stations were looking for "filler material" for news broadcasts and were not exercising sufficient editorial judgment, thereby opening the door to US Government propaganda. Let's be clear about the process used by Edelman and other major PR firms in dissemination of the VNRs. A letter is sent along with the video material to the news producer, with clear identification of the client and spokesperson, plus the "news hook." The producer then decides whether the content is worthy of air time. Now the US Government is asking that all VNRs be treated like advertising. This is an over reaction to the problem. A better solution would be to offer a disclaimer on screen for Government funded VNRs, while allowing news producers to maintain their discretion on use of VNRs from corporations.
Henry James, a native New Yorker who lived abroad for much of his adult life, returned to New York in the early 1900s and wrote The American Scene. His description of New York Harbor captures his profound feelings. "The aspect the power wears then is the power of the most extravagant of cities, imparting to every object and element, to the motion and expression of every floating, hurrying, panting thing...all practically, a diffused clamour of detonations-something of its sharp free accent. The universal applied passion struck me as shining unprecedentedly out of the composition." This is in fact the scene 100 years later in our communications environment. We need to help universities, major corporations and governments recognize that with excessive control comes lack of credibility, the better they will all be.
Posted by Edelman at April 18, 2005 9:13 AM
Comments
Mr. Edelman -
I discoverd your blog tonight and really appreciate the thought you put into your comments. I lead a small PR shop where a great deal of our expertise is in open technology systems. I have religion about transparency (in all facets of public society) as a result.
I have begun a blog that I am hoping will evolve into an open source project (of sorts) that looks at the intersection of blogging, journalism, and PR. The purpose of the project is a more transparent media universe that is brought about by a process that separates the more credible (read: transparent) publishers of content from the opaque to the mutual benefit of information consumers and credible publishers.
I am wondering if I can borrow your notes below as part of this project and possibly as part of the prospectus I've been asked to write for a local university's j-school.
"...Gladstone of NPR took issue with this idea of a "trust advantage" for traditional media. She contends that Jon Stewart of the Daily Show is the most trusted newscaster because he is transparent, mixes news with entertainment and because his bias is quite evident."
I think the point about Jon Stewart drills the message that transparency can be fun, it can be serious, it can help expose the truth very broadly, and importantly it can be very profitable.
Posted by: Usher Lieberman at April 20, 2005 1:25 AM
Usher,
Note my blog of this morning on speech by Jon Klein of CNN If J Stewart is voice of truth for the national media, then it is a wake up call to the others Note that Klein's speech to National Assn. of Broadcasters cites serious bias in 7 of 10 stories on Fox News versus 1 in 10 for CNN (which he still thinks is too high) Objectivity leads to trust
Posted by: Richard Edelman at April 25, 2005 11:57 AM
Richard, if i may be so bold,
I came to your blog with some preconcieved notions. I can't say that I feel better about VNR's from ANYONE when it is not made clear that it is not a report done by a reporter who investigated this independantly. Having said that I am impressed with your insights into this issue. I think that there is a solution to this issue but I don't know that we can leave it up to the industry to fix it itself. Let me explain what I mean:
People like yourself who are trying to find a solution need to be commended, but as we have seen there are big issues with trust on all parties. I think that efforts within the industry are a good idea and carry some weight, however it is not enough to bring trust back. The american people have this attitude, such as I did 5 monutes ago, that all PR firms are propoganda machines. The only way to get past this trust issue is if there is an impartial voice that the public trusts involved.
A good start might be for the reputible firms to call out the firms that are doing these government VNR releases without proper disclosure, or maybe the new organization that is basicly plagerizing the material.
Thanks for your time and I will bookmark you blog so that i can get your perspective on things in the future.
-matt
Posted by: Mattlock at April 27, 2005 3:47 PM
Matt
Thanks for writing
I am going to push for an industry summit latest after Memorial Day We have to agree on standards on VNRs and some enforcement mechanism with teeth Appreciate your taking another look at PR as an industry
Posted by: Richard Edelman at April 27, 2005 5:23 PM
I read with interest your proposal for an industry wide agreement on standards, but I'm confused. The Public Relations Society of America, on whose board of directors I sit, went to great lengths to host an industry wide summit of PR practitioners and professional organizations last month in New York, and yet Edelman did not participate, despite being asked.
What will your summit accomplish that the summit already held by leaders in the industry did not?
PRSA has had a code of ethics and professional standards for more than 60 years, and there are significant barriers to effectively "enforcing" such standards beyond being a moral compass.
(My blog/podcast is at http://lubetkinsotherblog.blogspot.com or RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/lubetkinsotherblog)
Posted by: Steve Lubetkin at April 28, 2005 4:56 PM
Steve,
Thanks for sending me a note
Edelman should have sent a person to the confab on ethics...i am not sure we knew about it PRSA has taken a leaderhip position for sure But there are other initiatives on going such as Council of PR Firms et al If we have a cacaphony at the end, nothing is improved That is what I was trying to avoid.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Edelman at May 6, 2005 2:29 PM
Richard, I don't think we had a cacaphony at all. From the documents I have, you were invited personally to attend on behalf of Edelman. Why you don't recall the invitation, I can't say.
Council of PR Firms was there, as were leaders of many major PR firms, including Ray Kotcher, Tom Hoog, Larry Moskowitz from MediaLink, and even journalists, represented by Kevin Smith from SPJ.
We had all the players in one room to discuss the issue.
It's one thing for a PR industry leader like yourself to miss the opportunity to be at a true industry-wide summit on PR ethics because of missed communications. These things happen. So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that.
But then -- without doing any basic fact-checking that would have told you that there already HAD BEEN a PR industry summit on ethics -- you posted a blog entry suggesting that somehow the industry was ignoring this issue. You made it sound like you are going to wave a wand and call a summit to fix the problem. Well, pardon me, but that's just a little ingenuous, and it's the kind of factually inaccurate hyperbole that raises credibility problems for us all. That's why I commented on your blog posting.
We'd love to have you on-board in this industry-wide initiative. Please join forces with us. We will all be more credibile if we can achieve alignment on ethical behavior throughout the industry. It's not going to happen in the blogosphere.
Posted by: Steve Lubetkin at May 10, 2005 4:47 PM
Steve, I accept Matt H will be my proxy as he is running our ethics task force I don't want to be a pain or to solve this in blog land I do want to tell you that the Council of PR Firms for one is going its own way We want to be part of the solution for sure Thanks for making sure we are in
Posted by: Richard Edelman at May 10, 2005 4:49 PM