Posted by Mike Bawden under Journalism Comments Off
“Free Speech” can be a tricky thing … especially for journalists. And Helen Thomas, the esteemed columnust for Hearst Newspapers and long-time fixture in the White House Press Room found out today that saying what’s on her mind – even if it’s her right to do so – can come with a price.
Whether you agree with Ms. Thomas’ opinion that Jews in Isreal should “get the hell out of Palestine” or not, what’s important to note here is that controversial opinions like these carry both implied and real consequences when they’re utterred in a public forum and captured for re-broadcast via YouTube, CNN, FOX and scores of other news and non-news venues.
The firestorm resulting from Ms. Thomas’ comments and weak-kneed apology are understandably political and, in many cases, incindeary bombs of their own. But it’s the reaction from her agent and both the White House Correspondents Association and Hearst Corporation that really left no choices for Ms. Thomas other than immediate retirement.
On Sunday, Ms. Thomas’ agent, Nine Speakers, Inc. dropped her and her writing partner, Craig Crawford (who co-authored “Listen Up, Mr. President” with Thomas) annoucned he would no longer work with her.
The respect Ms. Thomas earned over fifty years of working the White House didn’t provide enough cover for the 89 year-old journalist’s bombshell with her peers, either. The WH Correspondents Association announced a special meeting on Thursday which, in all likelihood, would have resulted in Ms. Thomas’ demotion from the front row in the WH Briefing Room – a seat she has occupied for decades.
The entire kerfuffle put Hearst in a position where it could do almost nothing to help. The immediate retirement is, in all likelihood, the best way to extinguish the problem before it becomes a longer-term problem for Ms. Thomas and Hearst.
So, what’s the problem?
Ms. Thomas’ opinions, no matter how outrageous, are certainly protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. But the nature of the comments, and the way they were delivered, cast a shadow on the credibility and “assumed” relative objectivity of her analysis as an opinion columnist and member of the White House press corps. Certainly the standards of objectivity are relaxed for a columnist – but as the ONLY columnist with a seat in the White House briefing room, Ms. Thomas had a higher standard to meet.
Ironically, it’s a standard that she set as a leading member of the press corps for the past five decades.
Political backlash aside, there was really nothing else Hearst could do but accelerate Ms. Thomas’ retirement and hope that this will all blow over leaving nothing but charming memories of an “institution” of the White House beat.
Welcome to the regular world, Helen. Your First Amendment rights are still protected – but now you’ll get paid for your opinion at the same rate the rest of us do. Zip.
Certainly there will be some companies, somewhere, who will step in and take up the available inventory … but as the New York Times reported on Friday, some of the larger brand advertisers have found the heat in Glenn Beck’s kitchen a little too hot and have pulled their advertising following the right-wing commentator’s comments about President Obama late last month.
Con Agra, Geico, Progressive and Proctor & Gamble all pulled ads – or shifted ad spending on FOX following the controversial remarks. Con Agra went as far as to issue a statement on Beck’s statements:
“We are firmly committed to diversity, and we would like to prevent the potential perception that advertising during this program was an endorsement of the viewpoints shared.”
Other advertisers kept their buys on FOX but distanced themselves from Mr. Beck’s show in particular. According to the article in the Times:
Other companies also said their spots had been scheduled during “Glenn Beck” by mistake. Ads for Procter & Gamble and S.C. Johnson appeared on a weekend repeat of Mr. Beck’s program by mistake, Fox acknowledged. Progressive said that its advertising order had specified “no Glenn Beck,” but Fox said it had bought a block of time with the channel that included Mr. Beck.
One of the issues raised by the article in the Times, however, centers on exactly how the attention of these advertisers – and their resulting media spending decisions – were brought to bear. Some credit has to go to ad mogul Donny Deutsch who also serves as a talk show host on FOX’s rival, MSNBC. Deutsch named names of brands who advertised on Beck’s show and rightly pointed out that corporate leaders often don’t know exactly where every ad dollar is going, so if angry consumer reached out to the companies who advertise on shows like Beck, those advertisers are likely to respond.
I found it more than just mildly humorous that Duetsch’s co-host couldn’t believe that the CEO’s of company’s like Chrysler and Campbell’s Soup don’t watch Beck’s show or have any idea where their ad dollars are spent. Deutsch, plowed on – condeming neither FOX or the sponsors but urging consumers to action.
An ad promoting NBC’s edgy, new copy show, “Southland” has set journalistic purists and other media watchers on edge by not only appearing on the front page of the LA Times but showing up in the guise of a newspaper article strategically placed next to a display ad for the show. The article/ad was designed to look like a report about the series’ hero.
While running ads on the front page is nothing new for the LA Times (they’ve been doing that since 2007), this is the first time the paper has run mock news article on page 1.
Posted by Mike Bawden under Journalism Comments Off
Interesting piece in the Cision Navigator this month. Jason Falls writes about how media pitches need to change with the evolution of media.
Jason blasts PR’s who were “lulled into laziness by technology” and relied on fax blasts, email marketing and blind cc’s on emails to push releases and information to journalists by the hundred (or thousand). It was, as Jason aptly describes it, a numbers game. Then bloggers started “outing” lazy flacks:
Bloggers changed the dynamic. They not only were not lulled into tolerating the mass mail mentality like traditional media, they discovered they could combat it by publicly humiliating public relations pros who did it.
Good for them. Without that shock to our system, the public relations industry would still be spiraling down a path of journalists as numbers, not as people.
Astroturfing is bad … and there are plenty of published floggings of PR firms guilty of “over-enthusiastic” shilling for clients. Enough, in fact, that many PR folks are viewed with disdain by journalists and bloggers.
There’s no doubt that PR firms that plant good reviews on blogs, write letters to the editor in support of their clients, etc. – and don’t identify themselves as agents for their clients are stepping over an ethical line. But what do you do when you find bloggers (and journalists) who offer to provide positive reviews and/or coverage at a price?
Danny Brown, social media maverick and PR guy, posted an example of this on his weblog yesterday and it deserves further review and comment.
A young Peter Arnett when he was a field reporter for the AP in Vietnam
Richard Edelman writes about his recent conversation with Mike Oreskes, the US editor for the Associated Press. While PR gurus like Steve Rubel write about the end of media as we know it (especially print), Oreskes and the folks at the AP are finding ways to add value to their service and make the digital transformation that will be required of all media at some point or another.
Most interesting part of the entire conversation bewteen the two though (at least to me), was the insight that the AP has more than 800 reporters and editors in the US alone – there to fill in where local media is cutting back. Oreskes refers to a need for “hyper-local” coverage as part of the reason why the AP is working to establish a national footprint beyond New York and Washington, DC.
Richard has asked us to provide our experiences with AP reporters – if you have one, do him the favor of replying (the “online conversations” Richard has with readers of his blog are sometimes more interesting than the original posts, themselves). View the blog post here.
It’s an interesting journalistic question brought forward by Steve Rubel in this post on his Micropersuasion blog. Steve refers to this piece on the Editor’s Weblog which lays out the issues surrounding the use of Wikipedia by newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.
The problem, of course, is that sites like Wikipedia are tempting resources for journalists precisely because they serve as a repository for interesting and offbeat information you can’t usually find through more carefully vetted resources.
Other, more specialized wiki’s might serve as a more reliable source of information for a reporter, though. Wiki’s built around special interests can attract very specialized experts and, because of their extremely narrow focus, aren’t attractive targets for mischief (after all, how much fun is there in pissing off a few thousand Trekkies?).
It seems wise to keep in mind the following about all wiki’s (from Wikipedia’s “About Wikipedia” section):
“… it is important to use Wikipedia carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in standard and maturity.”
Crain’s NY Business reports the New York Times will be cutting 100 positions out of their newsroom by the end of the year. From the sound of things, it sounds like some of the editorial leadership will have to leave, too:
“[The] low-hanging fruit is gone, and so is some of the high-hanging fruit,” said Times executive editor Bill Keller.
Late last year, the Times cut half a dozen support positions and instituted a hiring freeze. The paper’s ad revenue dropped 4.7% in 2007, compared with about 7% industry-wide. For the year, the company reported earnings of $209 million on revenues of $3.2 billion.
The Crain’s article credits this piece on Gawker for the tip.
Do you hate that guy that seems to be an expert on everything? Well, thanks to the Creative Generalist, we’re able to give you this link to a guy who isn’t an expert on anything.
It’s a humorous series of information (or is it misinformation) about a wide variety of topics. Which begs the question: “What kind of questions do the Non-Expert(s) answer?”
Well, for starters:
“My understanding is that the term “begs the question” has essentially been bastardized, whereby laymen (i.e., us) have misconstrued or broadened its meaning, and in the process have pissed off a very small group of anal-retentive, scholarly types (i.e., them).
Now, I assume that when you use the phrase, like most other people, you use it to mean something like, “Well, that opens up another can of worms.” For example: Your 16-year-old son gets in a fight with a bouncer at a strip club. Sure, it’s bad enough he’s rumbling with bouncers—and you are probably in need of some parenting books—but you might say the whole situation begs the question: How did he, being underage, get into the strip club in the first place? And did he at least get a lap dance before he was thrown out? (Let’s hope so.)”
According to this article from Editor & Publisher, traditional medias (i.e. newspaper and television) are still trusted more than web sites and blogs – based on research recently conducted by the British interactive marketing company, Telecom Express.
These findings seem to support earlier findings reported by HarrisInteractive and the PRSA Foundation. That survey, conducted last fall, found that American’s attitudes toward news sources skewed mostly toward television first and then print media.
What’s behind this general mistrust of online news sources? Judith T. Phair, president and CEO of PRSA explained:
“It’s easy to read the headlines in trade and business press about all of the hot ‘new’ media channels and start to believe that the traditional press is passé, but this survey confirms that despite some new entrants, Americans still use news, seek news and place their trust in the traditional sources.”
One can assume that a good bit of the mistrust stems from television’s ability to tie a moving, visual (and often live) image to their story while print’s long-standing history of serving in the public interest generally helps bolster its credibility. Web sites and blogs, on the other hand, are generally incapable of tying a live or moving image into a story and lack the history of “journalistic integrity” employed by more traditional forms of media.
This situation is not unique to media-rich markets like the US or UK, either.
A report on the American Press Institute’s Media Center provides an interesting look into how conventional media fares against other channels with regard to their respective credibility. The survey results were taken from a variety of other markets including Brazil, South Korea and Egypt (among others).
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