I am much more the armchair quarterback than the participant when it comes to politics. I volunteered on an NDP campaign in Halifax back in the 80s, and I tried to help a friend become an Ottawa city councillor in 2006. Beyond that, I’m a dutiful voter and an active discusser. I don’t know many politicians. I’ve met a few, from time to time. But I don’t really know them.

So watching the assassination of a friend’s character in 24 hours has been a sobering experience.

Anthony Marco is someone I’ve met through PAB. I consider him a friend in the social-media sense of the word. We might not speak for months at a time. More likely, we might trade an e-mail, a tweet, or I might leave a comment on one of his several podcasts. Anthony is a dynamic speaker, he’s a great writer and a superb podcaster.

And he’s also the NDP’s candidate for the riding of Ontario PC party leader Tim Hudak.

And since yesterday, he’s been the subject of a story in the Toronto Sun, and now the smearing of the Liberal Party’s war room. The source of the outrage in the Sun story? Anthony said, in a podcast, that he was an atheist, that he thought churches were great examples of brand loyalty, and that he sometimes considered religion equivalent to a hobby. The comment thread at the Sun story quickly degenerated to juvenile and insulting personal comments.

Now the Liberal party, led by its prominent war-room blogger Warren Kinsella, has decided to paint Anthony as a “kook”, a “lunatic”, and to insinuate that he is somehow anti-Semitic and/or sympathetic to Nazism. By referring to one (I’m waiting to find out which one)  of his more than 300 podcast episodes at LoveHateThings.

Since I haven’t the time to listen to all 332 episodes, I can’t determine whether the quotes are accurate, or whether the context would have something to say about them. So I’m not going to try (at this point) to defend them, beyond saying I’ll wait until I know what the actual content tells me.

What I will say is this. I know enough about Anthony Marco to know a misrepresentation when I see one. And if this is how the game of politics is played, I pity our country. If political parties are willing to listen to hundreds of hours of audio to search out something to smear a fundamentally good man, to paint him as an anti-Semite, then I now see one reason for our country’s political disengagement.

Someone once said that you don’t want to see two things being made: sausages, and laws. I would now add political victories to that list. This is ugly, and infuriating, and nauseating, and sleazy. And it makes me wonder just how many other good, worthy people have lost elections because of this sort of nonsense. Sad, isn’t it?

UPDATE: I appear to have been banned from Warren Kinsella’s website. Mr. Kinsella posted a reply to me that read “Then beat it.” I replied with “Cogent.” He deleted that reply in the moderation queue. I then replied again, assuming that it was a mistake. The second reply was deleted, and he then added significantly to his comment. You can find the thread here. I suppose I should start emptying my closets. God knows what skeletons Mr. Kinsella will find there.

In any case, just to be sure that SOMEONE gets to read my reply to his comment, I’ll post it here.

Warren, I’m not sure what your issue is here. When it started, you said that this candidate  was deserving of censure because he was in some way denigrating those who “fought Nazis.” However, the direct quote suggests nothing of the sort. It argues that trying to change the mind of those who hold Nazi-like beliefs is futile. I agree. I’m not going to waste time trying to convince a lunatic that his Holocaust-denial beliefs are mistaken. Might as well tell Michelle Bachman that the HPV vaccine is safe. Now, you’re accusing this candidate of a “paean to Mein Kampf.” Again, I see nothing of the sort in the expanded quoted text. In fact, I read it as an argument against book-burning. As the organizer of an event called Censored Out Loud here in Ottawa, I tend to disagree with book burning. Even when the book is the product of a homicidal maniac. I would argue in order to understand such human monsters as Adolf Hitler, we need to read and comprehend their writings. When you wrote “Web of Hate”, an excellent and courageous book, did you read neo-Nazi literature? Perhaps even Mein Kampf? Does your reading it imply an endorsement? Of course not. We owe it to ourselves as a society to understand those we oppose. Even the loathsome. I’m disappointed that you would put your political ambitions above a commitment to honesty and fairness. 

Get enough public relations professionals together, and you’ll inevitably hear the conversation. The one I’m thinking of starts around war stories, then moves to why the corner office folks (or the C-suite, if you’re more modern than I am) don’t listen to us, don’t take us seriously.

You know why? Because we cheapen ourselves. We do things that we shouldn’t, and we suffer the consequences.

Case. In. Point.

In California, water is a big deal. The water 18 million people in southern California use to drink, wash, and take care of their sewage arrives in their houses via a 240-mile pipeline all the way from the Colorado River. So I’d figure that the topic of water there is discussed a bit more than it is here in my city of Ottawa, where a mighty river brings all the water we need to our figurative doorstep.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story yesterday about one of the authorities which manage the water supply for 2 million folks living south of LA, the Central Basin Municipal Water District.  The CBMWD apparently signed a $12,000/month contract with a consulting firm to write and place stories about them on a news site called “News Hawks Review.”  The documents around this were obtained by the Times:

Central Basin News Site Agreements

The selling point? That this would be indexed by Google News as a news outlet. Well, that door’s slammed shut — as of this morning, Google News has de-indexed News Hawks Review. In discussions with the LA Times, Coghlan claimed to have no editorial role with the News Hawks site. However, he was a frequent contributor to the site and was listed as a “reporter” with an affiliated “newshx.com” e-mail address.

Before I start opining, a caveat. I attempted yesterday to contact News Hawks Review, Coghlan (the company seems to not have a web site, which is curious for someone working in social media), and the CBMWD for comment and to ensure that the LA Times coverage was not inaccurate. None of those people responded to phone calls or emails. So if I’m extrapolating from incorrect information, be aware that I tried to verify the facts as reported.

There are two issues here, to my mind. The first is that what was done is, in my opinion, unethical. This was an attempt to create a simulacrum of news coverage without disclosing the financial interests.

I asked PRSA for a comment about this, and here’s what Prof. Deborah Silverman, the chair of their Ethics Board, told me by email:

“This practice is contrary to the Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics, which espouses honesty and accuracy in communication, the free flow of information, and disclosure of information. The Central Basin Municipal Water District’s use of a communications firm to create “news” disguised as media coverage is a serious breach of ethical standards, and the district is operating in a manner that does little to aid the public’s decision-making process.” I’m sad to say that I also e-mailed my professional association, the International Association of Business Communicators, and nobody responded.

Did CBMWD know their communications person or people were engaged in unethical behaviour? Did they endorse it? I don’t know.

Second, this is a ridiculously ineffective use of thousands of dollars. What is the measure of success here? What opinion was changed by these innocuous stories? A youtube video accompanying the story has a whopping 101 views:

Meanwhile the documents posted by the LA Times show the communications folks for CBMWD referring to this as a “unique and innovative utilization of an internet news service to distribute actual news.”

If we as PR professionals can do no better than to use the tools at our disposal in unethical and deceptive and ineffective ways, then why SHOULD the C-suite listen to us? And if the boss thinks this is what we do, why would he or she think of us as anything other than unethical shills?

UPDATE: Thanks to the PRbuilder blog, I discovered two things. First, Ragan’s PR Daily covered this issue, and second, that the LA PRSA chapter has sent a letter to the Times calling this an “egregious breach.” I don’t think the letter’s been published in the Times yet, but the Ragan story has it.

I can’t tell you how much selfish pleasure I get out of being associated with For Immediate Release. Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson have built the FIR podcast into a must-listen examination of PR news, issues, and controversies kerfuffles over the last six years. Their intelligence, wit, and openness to ideas — even those as lamebrained as letting me be their book reviews editor — do our community a great service.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the FIR empire than Shel and Neville. There’s Dan York, reporting from Vermont; there’s Michael Netzley giving a perspective from Asia; then there are regular contributors who have serious credibility, including Bernie Goldbach, Sallie Goetsch, Eric Schwartzman, the lovely Donna Papacosta — and who can forget Lee Hopkins?

All of these people and many more commenters and contributors make FIR an amazing — FREE and amazing — resource for those interested in communications and social media.

So why not do them a service by filling out their listener survey? They’ve done two in the past (2006 and 2009), and your feedback will help them shape the future of the FIR empire (the flagship podcast, FIR Live,

FIR Interviews, and FIR Reviews). Tell them what you think. And if you say nice things about the book review guy, you will be entitled to a big bear hug from me, to be redeemed at your convenience.

Now GO FILL OUT THE SURVEY. It closes September 20, 2011.

The Consumerist is one of my must-read blogs. But I don’t necessarily read it for solid marketing and communications advice. Until this morning, when I opened up my feed reader and found a post called “The Silly Hat Shop.”

It reminded me of a cool furniture store in my neighbourhood in Ottawa. They sell the sort of furniture that funky condos would have, as well as custom design services for furniture.

On their door, they trumpet that they’re on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. What’s that mean? For Twitter, they’ve posted 76 tweets in two years, with less than 50 followers. Most of those tweets are for sales on their products. On Facebook, a page with 133 friends and an unending series of sales. And on LinkedIn? Well, they have some employees there.

What does their online presence say to me? I’m NEVER buying full price from them, and they aren’t that different from a Leon’s, a “The Brick”, or other furniture stores.  In short, Ben Popken needed a hat and bought one at a new hat store. They then subjected him to a variety of marketing and loyalty techniques that, in his opinion and mine, don’t fit a hat shop. A frequent buyer card? Really?

I’d also wager that neither the hat shop nor the furniture store have put a second of thought into how they are going to evaluate the success of their frequent buyer club or their Twitter account.

Being a great buyer / retailer of hats, of furniture, of whatever, does not make you a great communicator of what you’re REALLY all about. If you sell great funky furniture that deserves premium treatment — and prices — why not treat it that way? And act as if you’re a trusted advisor rather than a salesman? If you sell hats, don’t treat them like they’re a cappuccino.

And if you can’t think this through because you’re too close to your store, too much in love with what you do — hire someone with a clear vision and trust their insights to do it for you.

(Photo CC licenced from Flickr user Slimmer_Jimmer)

Food giant ConAgra and its PR firm Ketchum found itself in a reheated soup recently, when an event for bloggers in which food bloggers were fed frozen dinners as a “secret surprise” went wrong. At least some of the bloggers took offense, and a retreat was hastily beaten.

The story is an interesting one, as written by Andrew Adam Newman in the New York Times. But I was most interested in the quotes by PRSA ethics expert Deborah A. Silverman.

Here’s what Newman’s story closed with:

The promotion was “unfortunate” and “struck me as being not quite where they should be in terms of honesty,” said Deborah A. Silverman, who heads the Board of Ethics and Professional Standards at the Public Relations Society of America.

In an e-mail message, Ms. Silverman added, “Ketchum has an excellent reputation for high ethical standards,” but “the social media realm (including bloggers) is new territory for public relations practitioners, and I view this as a valuable learning opportunity.”

I have some issues with this. First, Ketchum’s “excellent reputation” has at least one gigantic hole in it in the shape of Armstrong Williams.  I wrote about the Armstrong Williams scandal when it happened in 2005. It stank then and it stinks now.

They’ve also been sharply criticized for their use of Video News Releases (VNRs) — criticism serious enough to cause PRSA to issue a bulletin about their ethical usage.

Second, the idea that social media and blogger relations are “new territory for public relations practitioners” is hokum and hooey.

A quick Google on blogger relations found articles from Lee Odden in 2006 and John Cass in 2007 on doing blogger relations right. Neville Hobson wrote an article for IABC’s Communication World magazine in May 2006 about blogger relations (I’m not a PRSA member, so don’t have access to their resources as I do IABC’s). I pointed to some guidelines from Cory Doctorow in 2008 on this blog.

I asked Deborah Silverman, who is a PR prof at Buffalo State in New York,  if she wanted to expand on her view, and she did. Here’s her response:

“The social media realm, including bloggers, is relatively new territory for public relations practitioners, as evidenced by the large crowds who attend social media workshops. Social media have been around for only about five years. Although many practitioners may be familiar with social media, there are numerous new ethical issues that are arising; one of those is where bloggers fall within the consumer-advocate-journalist continuum. So I do believe that this situation was a learning experience for all of us. Above all, it reiterates the ethical tenet in PR that disclosure of motivations, intentions and/or sponsorship is paramount.”

First, it’s unfortunate that Silverman chose not to respond to the concerns over Ketchum. Second, I disagree with her on a number of points. First, the fact that social media training attracts crowds doesn’t necessarily mean it’s new. People still go to speechwriting workshops and speeches aren’t new; people learn to write news releases and the news release is more than a century old. And while this may be a “learning experience” for Silverman, ConAgra, and Ketchum, I think a lot of social media practitioners only learned a new way to screw up blogger outreach.

One could be charitable and say that it’s too soon to REALLY know how to do this. But it’s not true. There’s no reason to not know how to do this well, and to do it.

May have more about these issues soon.

UPPERDATE: Tonia Ries at the RealTime Report has more thoughts and references related to this story, as does the always readable Jen Zingsheim at Media Bullseye.

The Christine O’Donnell – Piers Morgan kerfuffle (thanks Shel and Neville) this week intrigued me. Here’s the video of the segment in question.

Now, there’s no doubt that this isn’t the first walk-out, or the first time there was distinct squirminess in an interview.

Cases in point: Paris Hilton, post-jail, on David Letterman:

Or, Mike Lazaridis on the BBC:

Ann Coulter on Fox News:

Carrie Prejean on Larry King:

So what’s going on here?

In my opinion, these incidents stem from agendas that don’t meet in the middle. In many cases, interviews have become nothing more than glorified promotional opportunities. Hollywood has this down to a science, flying dozens of journalists to junkets for movies with the tacit — or perhaps not so tacit — understanding that the coverage will be uniformly chirpy and positive. Angelina Jolie probably took this to its apogee when she had a lawyer write up a contract (which The Smoking Gun obtained) for interviews promoting her film “A Mighty Heart” (ironically, about journalist Daniel Pearl and his wife):

Another example? The US Federal Emergency Management Association held this 2007 news conference to talk about wildfires in California:

You’ll note that the reporters don’t identify themselves. That’s because they’re FEMA employees. There were no reporters, and when it came out, the head of FEMA was not amused.

The upshot of this is that celebrities and leaders — in Hollywood, politics, business — grow accustomed to dictating the terms under which they will be covered. To a certain extent, that’s all well and good. Hopefully, no PR practitioner would recommend doing every interview and answering every question.

But in celebrityland, the prevailing belief seems to be that all the questions will be softballs and that the intent of the interview is more or less entirely promotional. And, if you read Eric Snider’s “I was a Junket Whore“, you’ll discover that the revenge on those who break that contract — or even expose it — can be swift and intense.

The bigger question is what this means for you and me, the person who does interviews that aren’t nearly so visible, who isn’t recognizable like a celebrity. This means that regardless of what you THINK the conditions of an interview are, be prepared for them to change. Don’t assume that because you’re a good person, you’ll be treated fairly. Don’t assume that because you think your story is positive and interesting that the person on the other side of the pen or mic will as well.

One of the things that strikes me about the video examples above is that people handled the shifting interview agenda REALLY badly. They saw that the ground had shifted under their feet, but they were unable to regain their balance and respond, so they walked. One way to ensure the interview agenda never shifts is to fake it, as FEMA did. Another way is to do what San Francisco’s BART transit system did earlier this month, by uploading its own version of news about how they shut down a protest:

Control is good. But in the real world, it’s better to acknowledge the limits of your control and to prepare for interviews that go out of your comfort zone than it is to be rigid and break when the wind shifts.

Rob Ford is the mayor of Canada’s largest city. The dedicated Flacklife reader may note that I’ve covered Mayor Ford a couple of times here. The most notable post was the one in which I included audio of his interview (to use the term loosely) with CBC Radio’s national show “As It Happens” — an pre-booked interview which was 210 seconds of intense awkwardness.

That was October. This is August. And Rob Ford has worked hard on his media relations skills.

Today, he met with the Premier of Ontario, and afterward, met the Toronto media for a scrum. But this was a scrum with a difference. Listen and learn:

[audio:http://www.translucid.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/robford1.mp3|titles=robford]

This is taking the Donald Rumsfeld school of media relations to an entirely new plateau. News conferences are far more pleasant when in two minutes you can tell the gathered reporeters what they would be asking, answer those questions, and leave.

I don’t know whether to rejoice at the innovation or… jump off a bridge.

Audio from the National Post’s Youtube channel.

 

In July, a man attending a Texas Rangers baseball game died when he reached for a foul ball that was tossed to him by a player. He lost his balance, went over the left-field wall at the Texas Stadium, and fell to his death while his six-year-old son watched.

This is a tragic story, no doubt. But I’m a bit perplexed by the idea of a statue being erected at Rangers Ballpark to commemorate the man’s death.

Here’s what the president of the Rangers told the Dallas sports show Galloway and Company:

[audio:http://www.translucid.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/nolanryan.mp3|titles=nolanryan]

I’m trying hard to find a way to put this without being disrespectful. But to me, a statue commemorates some sort of act of bravery. The man in this case — I don’t name him on purpose, because this isn’t about him — died in a tragic accident, one that you could argue was his own fault.

A young Japanese woman was swept over Niagara Falls this week. She had straddled a railing meant to prevent people from falling into the Niagara River. She then lost her footing as she tried to return to the sidewalk, and fell into the river.

Where I come from in Nova Scotia, there’s a place called Peggy’s Cove, which is known for its picturesque lighthouse and its impressive waves. Gravely-written warning signs ring the cove:

And yet, this happens all the time:

Each year, especially during or after storms, people are swept from the rocks and either are or are not rescued.

Tragedies like this occur often. They are sad. But when does a tragedy — especially one caused by the behaviour of the victim — deserve or merit commemoration?

To the credit of the Texas Rangers, they have apparently been in regular contact with the family of the man who lost his life, and this statue has their support. That’s good. But I wonder if there was a dissenting voice within the organization. I wonder how one man’s tragic attempt to retrieve a souvenir of a night at a ball game is transmuted into a tribute to the fans of baseball.

It seems to me that this is an act that devalues the idea of commemoration. Celebrate the fan? Yes. Absolutely. Without them, there is no professional sport. Commemorate tragedy? Yes. But commemorate a death that resulted from the dead person’s mistake? Something just seems wrong. Let me give you two examples from the sport of bicycle racing. On a mountain in France, a plaque commemorates the death of Fabio Casartelli, who died in a crash on a descent in 1995. On another mountain, a plaque commemorates the death of Tom Simpson, who died while climbing a fearsome mountain doped to the gills on amphetamines.

Both deaths are tragic. But are both equally deserving?

I’m still not sure I’ve articulated my thoughts well. But maybe this is a start.

 

I’ve been writing over the last couple of days about how ideas — and those who create ideas — need to be stronger, more resilient.

But I think there’s one thing that those blog posts didn’t address that needs to be — the responsibilities of the critic.

If social media is to advance, we need to be vigorous critics of the ideas we see. Unquestioning acceptance of what someone says doesn’t advance thinking at all. But there are some ideas that I’d like to put forward that I think should guide us:

1. Punk the idea, not the person. There’s a difference between criticizing an idea and casting personal aspersions.
2. Think before you type. If you see something you want to respond to, don’t do it right away. This is (a) a good way to train yourself against social-media-attention-deficit-disorder; (b) a chance for your brain to actually think about the idea in question. Neither of those are bad things.
3. Choose your words carefully. I know how easy it is to scale the peaks of invective. The relative impersonality of online life allows us to forget there are other people on the end of our slings and arrows. But even if you follow the “punk the idea” rule, you still need to choose wisely. When writing a comment, blog post, or something that qualifies as criticism or debate, why not give yourself that extra opportunity to re-read it before hitting
    ”send” or “publish.” Walk away, then come back. One thing that I do — I’ll actually write in my word-processing program. Then I have to cut, paste, and hyperlink stuff. Those added steps are opportunities for me to rethink what I’m saying and ensure it should be said.
4. Don’t hesitate to contact the object of your critique. If you have a concern about something you read, why not contact the writer and ensure that your understanding is clear. It’s easy to misread things, especially if someone isn’t a good writer. That in itself might be a reasonable criticism, but if you do ensure that your criticisms are founded, you save a humiliating climbdown later, a la Emily Litella. Being in contact with the person whose work you’re going to criticize can also ensure that you’re not writing things you wouldn’t say directly to the person.

None of this should stop people from being critical. In fact, I would argue that if people only did things as I commanded, we’d have a more robust, topical, and PRODUCTIVE discussion of how this big thing called social media works and how it should work.

I look forward to you criticizing this — and anything else I write.

After I posted my little rant about social media ideas last night (Sunday late-night posting bad for traffic? IN YOUR FACE), there was some Twitter talk, including this from Scott Monty: “Au contraire. Social media *leaders* need to be strong enough to withstand criticism. #socialmedia”

I agree. Let’s test this: Scott Monty, YOU SUCK!!! Just kidding.

I think that Scott Monty and I are actually in agreement (as you’d expect from a guy who does a Sherlock Holmes podcast and a guy who does a Stephen King podcast), but that we’re coming to a place of agreement from two different directions.

While I argued that ideas must be strong enough to stand up to criticism, I read Scott’s tweet as saying that those who make the ideas must also allow their ideas to stand on their own merits.

There was a medeival French philosopher named Michel de Montaigne. He once apparently wrote “We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship.” 

True, dat.

When you’ve worked to develop a concept, a program, a web site, something — it’s hard to hear it criticized. The natural tendency is to protect it. And sometimes, the most accurate critiques are those that sting the most. We clutch our ideas in our metaphorical arms, desperate to keep them from harm. And we sometimes lash out. Or, in the case of social media, our friends lash out on our behalf.

I think we need to ensure that if we’re the target of criticism, we first take the time to recognize whether the criticism is of us or our work. Then, be courageous enough to decide whether the criticism has a basis of truth. If there’s something in it, then USE it. If there’s nothing, then choose whether to ignore it or to respond.

I think there’s one more post in me about this — about the rights and responsibilities of critics in social media. Maybe today, or possibly tomorrow.