Pop Culture Invades the News Media

Even though I pride myself on being a “news junkie” I have a confession to make.  Until last night when I tuned into NBC’s Dateline program, I knew very little about Jodi Arias.  If you’re in the same boat I was until this week, here’s a quick summary:  She’s the woman who was convicted this week of killing her former boyfriend by stabbing him 27 times, cutting his throat and shooting him in the head.  In her defense, her attorneys she said this was done in self-defense.

The trial has gone on for the past four months and was televised.  Judges, jurors, former jurors, attorneys, witnesses and even some regular members of the gallery were made celebrities as a result of this trial. The testimony was so rich in sex, lies and intrigue that cable networks, book publishers and Hollywood will surely create a mini-industry out of the content here for those “based on a true story” productions and novels.

And that is why I didn’t pay attention to it.  When the news media began to cover the story, I sensed it was going to be a media circus around the kind of day-to-day courtroom drama that doesn’t interest me.

To be sure, the Jodi Arias story is a news story that really did happen.  Its attraction is understandable in that it is somewhat unfathomable that someone could not only do what this slight woman did, but that she could lie about it so convincingly. 

But when the media circus starts, that’s when I start to lose interest, because the coverage itself becomes a distraction.  This is also the case for just about every story featured on programs like Entertainment Tonight or on TMZ. 

What’s somewhat worrisome to me as one who has worked in and with the media for many years, however, is how the lines between reality and entertainment have been blurred in recent years. 

Charles Ramsey is the man who is said to have rescued Amanda Berry from that home-made prison in Cleveland where she and other young women were kept against their will for the past ten years.  In one colorful media interview that went viral on YouTube, Mr. Ramsey is now a media celebrity, something he certainly didn’t anticipate one week ago.

Jeff Bliss is a Texas high school student who lectured his teacher on what he believed were her lazy teaching methods while being captured by a smart phone on video. That rant went viral and now young Mr. Bliss is a celebrity.

A.J. Clemente is the right-out-of-college TV news broadcaster who in his first minutes of his first job got himself fired for dropping the F-bomb and a few other vulgarities while live on the air.  His reward was to become a YouTube sensation and a guest on the late-night comedy shows. The visibility will likely help him, not hurt him in his hunt for a new job. 

These viral celebrities are starting to make reality TV personalities like the stars of Duck Dynasty (another show I have yet to watch, and am not in a hurry) look like trained entertainment professionals.

Traditionally, when it came to the media, you had pop culture and news media, and the lines between them were very clear.  News coverage centered mostly on real happenings involving real people, whether the story was a feature or hard news.  Pop culture was relegated to the feature section of the newspaper or broadcast, where it was assumed that radio, TV, theater and other arts activities existed for entertainment purposes only and were therefore not held to the same standards of truth.

Thanks to the Internet and the evolution of the media, most notably reality TV programming, not only do you not need an achievement to become famous, but you really no longer need talent.

As a result, pop culture and entertainment media are no longer what they once were.  Pop culture has invaded the news media.

Studies have been conducted that have revealed that a large segment of the news viewing population think comedian Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Channel’s The Daily Show, is one of the most credible “journalists” on TV. 

The irony is not lost on Mr. Stewart himself who told Fox News’s Chris Wallace in 2011, “The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict and laziness. The embarrassment is that I’m given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does.”

Chances are as you tune in to your favorite local or network newscast, or read reports from your most respected newspapers, more and more of what used to be considered news is being squeezed out to make room for updates from pop culture.

I’m going to go out on a limb and presume that musical diva Beyonce is likely more recognizable and more respected to a larger share of the American public than U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan or Sonia Sotomayor.

An account of how a fan stormed the stage at a recent Justin Bieber concert in Germany will more than likely move “above the fold” in your local paper or on its Web site, and to make room, that story about the federal budget or the latest news on the stock market will be cut or eliminated.

While such trends are not new to local news story selection, what is becoming the norm is that public knowledge and understanding of the substantive events affecting their lives is falling to a level best described as current events illiteracy.

This trend of pop culture dominating the American consciousness may in fact be one of the biggest challenges those of us in the PR profession face in the coming years.  To date, our work to deliver our messages to the public has been rooted in the traditional journalistic model.  In the future, to break through the pop culture clutter, however, we will no longer be able to count on the same level of news media curiosity, a demand for facts, substance and information people need. 

It’s hard for that kind of thing to compete against the spray tanning secrets of Dancing with the Stars.

The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. "Obamacare," Enters the Employee Communications Arena

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently conducted a health tracking poll that found an unbelievable number of Americans do not know that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is now law.  More to the point, the poll found that 42 percent of Americans do not know the ACA is law - 12 percent of Americans believe the ACA has been repealed by Congress, and seven percent believe that the United States Supreme Court had overturned the ACA.  And another 23 percent are unsure of the ACA’s status.

As for the ACA’s popularity, 35 percent of those polled expressed support for the law, while 40 percent said they had an unfavorable view. 

The fact is, the ACA is law, its implementation is under way, and related changes will affect everyone.

One of the chief challenges for business as a result of the ACA’s passage is the requirement that most employers provide health insurance to employees.  More specifically, under the ACA, organizations with over 50 employees must provide health insurance to full-time employees.  Employers who do not cover those employees will be fined $2,000 per employee above the threshold of the first 30 employees.

The ACA draws a red line that any employee who works more than 30 hours a week is considered full-time.

To be sure, this has rocked companies that maintain work forces whose hours fluctuate due to business demand.  Retailers, restaurants and the hospitality industry are the hardest-hit.  But many other industries will feel the pain as well.  Seasonal industry sectors from landscapers and construction, to tourism and recreation will all feel the effects.

Some employers have already indicated fundamental changes in their approach to staffing.  In order to manage costs, more employers will add more part-time employees and eliminate full-time positions.  Others will seek alternative, less expensive, health insurance options for employees to remain in compliance with the ACA, while managing costs.

In the end, these employers have some explaining to do to their people.

That’s the employee communications component.  It won’t be business as usual this year.  For companies planning to introduce change, it’s never a good idea to blindside your employees with the news.  It’s best to communicate early and often, working to educate the employees and make them aware of their options.

If this is a topic that merits further discussion, please feel free to contact me.  I’ve written a position paper on this issue and would be glad to provide it to you and discuss it with you.

Boston Coverage Puts Spotlight on Struggle Between Emotional Aspects and Critical Thinking

As the hunt for the Boston bombing suspects took control of my television last week, I switched from one network to the next, captivated by every new development throughout Friday.

When I was paused on one particular channel, I found myself distracted by two distinct narratives coming from that network’s anchors.  One anchor tried repeatedly to cover the facts and details of the manhunt, supplementing this with bits of information that might help the viewer better know what information to expect in the coming hours. 

His partner, on the other hand, kept calling the viewer’s attention to the expressions of fear, anger, puzzlement or confusion on the faces of anyone who happened to be on screen.  Since the station kept running loops of video from the marathon day bombing, this anchor kept retracing the emotions and only emotions from the day of the bombing and interweaving it with the emotions of the moments at hand for Bostonians.

To exacerbate the reporting, the two anchors kept interrupting each other with these competing narratives.

Any old news hand knows the reason for this.  Viewer surveys have indicated some viewers - a growing number actually - watch TV for an emotional outlet, while others want information, the facts.

TV news producers encourage reporters to try to draw the emotion out of interviewees, and to try to put the emphasis in the report on the emotions involved, thus making the report somewhat more dramatic.

For those of us in PR, it is well understood that sooner or later in a TV interview, no matter what the subject matter, the reporter will ask the person being interviewed, “How do you feel?”  All too often, that’s the only line of questioning, and as a result, the facts get lost.

A newspaper reporter I know often says, “That’s why you’ll always have newspapers.  Sooner or later, people what to know what’s really going on.”

I’m not so sure.  In the days following the Boston bombing, I’ve continued to follow the media coverage from every angle, from the crime story perspective, to a business story, a local story for Bostonians, to a world and political affairs story.

The one constant is a battle between the emotional play and critical thinking.  And emotion seems to be winning.  To be sure, the killing of three at the marathon and a police officer a few days later, the traumatic injury to hundreds, all due to the actions of two terrorists is inherently dramatic.  But as facts start to come out, they seem to be forced through an emotional filter in the media that can easily distort the story.

As a consequence, in some corners, the killers are emerging as sympathetic figures, which can be hard to fathom when you consider what they did after considerable pre-meditation. 

I had a journalism professor who addressed the conflict between emotion and critical thinking among journalists this way.  To paraphrase:  If you set out to write a story based on your own emotional attachments, you stand a good chance of writing fiction.  But if you have courage and base your reporting on critical thinking, be careful for you may not like what you have to write but it will be true.

Some New Realities for Crisis Communicators in the Wake of Two Explosions

Two terrorist-planted bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on Monday.  A fertilizer plant exploded in West, Texas on Wednesday.  People died.  People were injured.  The events were captured as they happened on smart phone cameras, portable video cameras, surveillance cameras and by live, professional media news-gatherers.

There wasn’t one second of delay between the time of these catastrophic events and when the media began to report.

We not only live in a 24/7 news cycle, but because of the ubiquitous nature of electronic recording devices, it seems access to raw information on breaking news events is the standard.

Against this backdrop, crisis communicators need to understand the following:

·         The media does not need to come to you for information in the earliest stages of a crisis. They have access to witnesses and witness video and photos and will go live with that content before they will verify or flesh out coverage with additional facts.

·         They will come to you to for details and will immediately expect additional information and verification, oftentimes using source material you or your organization hasn’t seen because it’s so fresh and could have been provided by witnesses.

·         Video of any crisis can and will find its way to YouTube almost as soon as the individual recording it can upload it.  Minutes.  Video of the fertilizer plant explosion was recorded by an individual and posted on YouTube before most of the country knew of the event.

·         The media will speculate and will make mistakes, sometimes big ones.  They will base their questions on their own speculation and the speculation of others.  They will get leaks from official law enforcement and other local, state or federal agencies.  They will come to you for confirmation. 

·         If first responders are involved, their organizations and other government leaders will likely take the lead on early phase communications.  Companies involved will likely be expected to cooperate, but if the event involves public safety which could be at risk, police fire and other like agencies will take the lead.

·         Hospitals and healthcare workers will serve as secondary sources of media information.  While some hospitals may be well trained at handling breaking news, some hospitals in rural areas may not be so prepared. 

·         In the first minutes of any major news event, particularly where public safety is at risk, politicians and others may give into the temptation to politicize the event. 

While most crisis situations involve a range of factors beyond our control, crisis communicators have never faced an environment where so much is beyond the control of our organizations, while at the same time, the expectation for immediate answers is equally strong.

This is a new age where in the media facts and accuracy have taken a back seat to dramatic images and video.  And the demands of the 24-hour news cycle, along with the pressure for media to draw viewers and readers is stronger than ever.

Unbeliebable

If I had not majored in Journalism, I most likely would have chosen to study history in college, but as it turned out my interest in history has been more that of a “buff” over the years.  More to the point, I’m a history buff with a focus on the Civil War, World War II and the Cold War years.

For me, the latter part of the Cold War and everything that’s happened since started as current events, and so most of my knowledge of that history is from memory and the news coverage I’ve consumed over the years.

So if you were to ask me about the Spartan and Persian wars, I might give you a blank stare.  Or if you want me to tell you something I know about World War I, I may end up drawing from what I learned in reading “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

However, based on what I’ve seen over the years, I sense that my education on history and that of most in my generation was much more well-rounded and in-depth than what schools are serving up today.

That’s why it puzzles me when I see anyone explain away their lack of historical knowledge with such statements as, “That was before my time.” 

Of course it was, but the importance of understanding history is to know the lessons of history, and hopefully to make decisions today to avoid the mistakes of the past.

This is particularly true in public relations.  One of the most effective ways to develop good PR strategy going forward is to have an understanding of the past.

For instance, anyone in crisis communications should have studied the Tylenol recall from 1982.  That was when Tylenol, the leading over-the-counter, pain-killer medicine in the U.S., was at the center of a situation where seven people in Chicago had died, apparently after taking Tylenol Extra Strength capsules.  Someone had tampered with the product, inserting cyanide into the capsules, causing the deaths.   What investigators learned was that the tampering happened after the product had reached store shelves.

The company’s response was unprecedented.  The CEO decided to remove all Tylenol Extra Strength capsules from all stores across the country until the root of the problem could be identified and addressed.  This was at major financial cost to Johnson & Johnson, Tylenol’s maker, but the precautionary measures in the end saved the company’s reputation and the company itself.

While there are many lessons to be learned from this situation, the main one was that it's not possible to over-react when public health and safety is at stake and the threat is imminent.  Ever since, this understanding has guided crisis communications thinking.

Societally, the lessons of history are more broad.  We learned from the Industrial Age that communities can’t fully benefit from economic and industrial growth if the environment suffers as a consequence.  Since then regulations, best practices and common procedures have been established to ensure that industry can survive and thrive while protecting the environment. 

The PR tie-in comes when those of us in PR work to help organizations communicate on issues related to sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility.

For anyone who gets their news from sources beyond People magazine and the TMZ network, much of what I just covered is self-explanatory.

But thanks to a substandard emphasis on history in the schools and the ability through technology to self-select almost all media we consume, there is an alarmingly growing number of insulated people who just haven't been exposed to the most basic history lessons.  Because of this, they can't relate or appreciate the value such knowledge brings.

Unbeliebable

Here’s a bizarre example.

Justin Bieber, the teenage pop star who really needs no introduction, recently visited the Anne Frank  House in Amsterdam. 

Young Anne Frank became famous for penning a diary during her time in hiding in Holland from the Nazis during World War II.  Her family had to live in hiding because they were Jewish.  Her diary’s entries are touching in how they captured the innocence of youth, while detailing what life was like in constant fear of Hitler’s Third Reich.  As history has documented, Anne Frank died of typhus in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen near the end of the war.

The seriousness of Anne Frank’s story apparently was lost on Bieber, who toured the museum, and presumably learned something of Anne Frank, but then wrote this in the guest book at the house:

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.” 

Apparently, “beliebers” are his fans.

Justin Bieber is 19, and on his path to fame and fortune, one thing he didn’t have access to was a good and comprehensive education.  But what can be disconcerting about this incident is that many of his fans may be about as appreciative of the lessons of history as their idol. 

But equally important is that the pop star’s handlers who should know better, didn’t interject when Justin wrote in the guest book to make sure that whatever he wrote was in the spirit of the place and the moment.

Opportunity lost.

It’s in the best interest of any PR professional to have a solid knowledge of history, because you never know when it might be important. And everything we do in PR requires context.  Something as simple as taking a tour of a historical site with a celebrity can serve to reinforce the lessons of history, or as in Justin Bieber’s case, expose an embarrassing level of ignorance.  That’s something any PR person should try to avoid.

If you're curous, here's a link to the Anne Frank House's Web Site.  Very interesting.

Spring Cleaning Tips for Your PR Program

In Pittsburgh you wouldn’t know it by the weather but it’s Spring!  One of the most common annual activities in most households this time of year is to get started on those Spring cleaning projects so that you can more peacefully enjoy the summer months.

Have you ever considered Spring cleaning for your PR program?  That’s right.  Spring cleaning.  It’s not that hard, but it does require taking time out of the day-to-day grind to restore order to the process.  Here are four Spring cleaning tips for your PR program:

1.                   Revisit Your Plan – Take stock of the plan you created at the start of the year. Review your progress against goals and reprioritize so that those items that fell to the bottom of the list are addressed between now and the end of the year.

2.                   Eliminate Distractions – Because distractions can range from the clutter in your office, to the daily routine you’ve established, the process for eliminating distractions can cast a very wide net.  However, to help you focus, it’s good to clean up your physical space. File materials you don’t need in your day-to-day routine.  Throw away things you haven’t used in a while. Still have a Bacon’s Directory from 2005 on the shelf? Get rid of it.  At the same time, take a look at your calendar. Perhaps log your day for about a week to see which activities suck the most time from your work.  Rethink your time management and start fresh. Those are just two sources of possible distraction.

3.                   Rethink Your Tactics – Do you travel to meetings instead of use video conference or teleconference?  Is that necessary?  Do you have piles of printed brochures when most people want electronic versions?  Have you analyzed the time and resources you’re allocating to that old newsletter that could be better spent elsewhere?  Now may be a good time to assess whether everything in your plan is worth doing the way you’ve always done it.

4.                   Consider Research – One way to reassess everything you’re doing is to do attitude research.  This can be done through focus groups, surveys and other means.  In the end, you’ll have a better picture of what’s working, what isn’t and perhaps some ideas and strategies you haven’t been using.

Spring is a great time for cleaning and to give your PR program a fresh start.

A Shooting Star

One of the most avid readers of this blog was a good friend of mine who not infrequently sent me notes after she read it, providing additional insights or just sending positive reinforcement.

There have been times that I alluded to her in blog posts about projects where she and I worked together.  One time, I wrote a whole blog post about my own need to send “thank you” notes more often, and without mentioning my friend’s name, I described her habits in this area as something I sought to emulate.

Not surprisingly, she followed up with a “thank you” for noticing her good habits, and for not mentioning her by name. 

My friend was a very accomplished PR person.  She and I worked together on crises and major projects. We shared many a laugh with associates and with our families as well.  And in every situation – every situation – she never lost her even keel.

Always gracious, always polite, always very smart and always a model of class.  She was how we all would like to be, good at what she did and good at making it all look easy.

This morning we got the news that Debbie left us after a long battle with breast cancer.  She will be missed, but her impact will continue to be felt by those she touched.