Flack's Revenge

Imagine that you work for a tech company, and just completed an interview for an important publication. You thought you nailed the briefing, but just to be sure, you decide to ask the reporter to see the article, or at least the section you are being quoted in, before it goes to print.

Sounds crazy right? In most cases, the audacious request would be denied.

What if you did not even need to go to the reporter, hat in hand, to ask for this – or send in your tech PR rep to do the same – but the notes were sent to you, as a matter of routine, so that you could edit those provocative sound bites and remove anything troublesome?

Not bloody likely, is it?

I thought about this as I read an article in the NY Times, earlier this week, while relaxing on the beach near my girlfriend's summer house. The article covered a practice that is now common in political reporting (I was already in a political frame of mind, as we had just watched the middling political campaign movie The Ides of March).

According to the NY Times:

The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative. They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.

Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree…The verdict from the campaign — is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.

The push and pull over what is on the record is one of journalism’s perennial battles. But those negotiations typically took place case by case, free from the red pens of press minders. Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.

So what is going on here? Why are the worlds of tech and political media relations so different?

It all gets back to supply and demand, or what I like to call the marketplace of information. In technology, it is generally a buyer's market for vendor news – there are so many companies, products and news releases. Reporters generally have their pick, unless it is the biggest news from the biggest vendors, and can call the shots.

However, in the heat of campaign season, everyone wants to know what is happening with the race and the top candidates. It is a seller's market for the news, and the ones with access and info have more sway.

Fusion PR CEO Jordan Chanofsky and I attended the July NY Tech Meetup, which featured a great mix
of demos, as always (there were no guest speakers this time around, so they managed to get even more demos in).

They ranged from quirky and cutting edge to mature and market tested, from consumer to B2B plays. Here is a quick rundown of each:

• Cnsmr – Get consumer ratings while shopping by scanning a bar code with your cell phone; it is kind of  like Yelp for consumer goods.
• Dashlane – One click checkout (but don't call it that, sounds too much like Amazon) from Android and iPhones or the Web, uses sophisticated semantic analysis to "understand" Web forms and help users fill them out, no integration required.
• Jirafe – Analytics dashboard for ecommerce websites; they seem to already have great marketplace traction, and were the one purely B2B play of the evening.
• Social Bicycles Combines a novel bike design, which is a feat of engineering – it has no gears, and a very secure locking mechanism, no special stations or kiosks required. Reserver your bike and map out routes via the Web, share info over your social networks.  This one wins my vote for coolest startup of the night, except for the unfortunate shorthand for the name, SoBi – not that there's anything wrong with that.
• Vook – Ebook content management and publishing platform, very cool.
• Skillcrush: A tech education and literacy site, helps you master geek speak and thus better mingle and shoot the breeze with the New York tech crowd.
• Appguppy: It lets you roll your own apps – and launch and market them without the usual app store shuffle.  Seems ideal for promoting and selling your own content, e.g. music.
• Shindig: Lets you run virtual events for thousands; a person, represented by an avatar can host it, and field questions; people can break off into groups and have their own conversations; truly amazing.
• Instinct: An app that helps you learn how to play guitar (other instruments coming soon).

The networking after party was fun too, it was at Sullivan Hall, in a cavern-like room; we had a chance to meet with some of the attendees, as well as the demoing company execs.

Long time readers of Flack’s Revenge know that I am a defender of the field and a little prickly when it comes to its image and treatment.  You may remember a post I wrote a few years ago: PR 2009: The Color of the Brand. It showed the words and phrases that surround PR in news articles, via a word cloud.  Here is an excerpt from that post:

If you are involved with PR, then you must be dealing with some kind of problem, right? Or do you have a crisis? Are you caught up in a PR meltdown or an issue?  These are the modifiers often used in conjunction with the phrase “public relations.”  Much less frequently do you hear words like boon, bonanza, dividend or benefit. 

When people think of PR, they most associate negative things like spin and problems.  I understand that in many if not most cases, the words relate to the situation at hand, not the profession or practice; still, there is a certain guilt by association that negatively colors PR as a result.

I don’t think much has changed since then. By way of example, I saw an article in the NY Times yesterday: Syria’s Assads turned to the West and Glossy P.R.  The article discusses how the royal Assad family of Syria used PR to burnish its image. Here is an excerpt:

With the help of high-priced public relations advisers who had worked in the Clinton, Bush and Thatcher administrations, the president and his family have sought over the past five years to portray themselves in the Western media as accessible, progressive and even glamorous. Magazines and online outlets have published complimentary features about the family, often focusing on fashion and celebrity.

Are the Assads, who are behind murderous campaigns against their own people, entitled to PR representation?  It is an interesting question, and one I am not tackling now, although I did write about ethical dilemmas for the PR field previously.

Hwoever I do want to point out that here the reporters repeated tired cliches and stereotypes about PR, and cut some slack for a compliant media in the process

How did the article editorialize (and irritate)?  Let me count the ways:

• The words in the title “Glossy PR” – what does this even mean?  A little too close to “slick” for my taste
• With the help of high-priced public relations advisers – what does the cost of services have to do with the story?  The amount of $5K per month is mentioned later; most in the field would not consider this to be “high-priced”
• This web of politics and public relations ensnared Barbara Walters recently. – “ensnared” makes her sound rather helpless, while PR is mostly to blame for her poor choices.
• [A PR agency] did not set up interviews for Mrs. Assad directly, but advised her on how to set up a communications office in Damascus to help shape her image. A few years later, positive articles began to appear. – tthis seems like the slimmest of threads and is laughable, for anyone who knows how PR works; c’mon Times!  You are a great paper and should not be so sloppy in your reporting.

It has been awhile since I wrote about extreme media relations.  An article in the NY Times today gave me fodder for a new post.

When you think of hardball, take-no-prisoners PR, you might think of a number of areas – politics, sure, the tech field, OK, sometimes.  But opera?

Yet there it was in the Times, an article about how the Met is trying to silence media and bloggers.  Here’s an excerpt:

Opera News… said on Monday that it would stop reviewing the Metropolitan Opera, a policy promoted by the Met’s dissatisfaction over negative critiques…The decision by the magazine, which is funded by a Met… affiliate… is the latest sign of sensitivity from the Met under its general manager Peter Gelb, in the face of criticism over its productions.

In an interview, Mr. Gelb defended his decision; the Times wrote:

…he never liked the idea that an organization created to support the Met had a publication that… “continuously rips into it”

I agree that Mr. Gelb has a point, and applaud his honesty. The topic raises interesting questions about editorial independence.  If you read further however, you might begin to wonder where internal politicking crosses the line and becomes thin skinned, maybe even extreme media relations:

Last month Mr. Gelb protested to WQXR over a blog posting that called his leadership into question… Last year the Met asked a blogger to stop revealing progamming choices… before the official announcement… the blogger complied.

Mr. Gelb has it in for bloggers that cause problems? Oh well.  A blog with the word Revenge in its name can’t tread lightly.  These are the risks we take.  If Flack’s Revenge goes dark for awhile, you will know why!