The New Policy Battlefield: All Eyes On Coca-Cola and Social Media PR (2/22/2010)
The goal of food companies in the “global marketplace” is to sell more product, and if it takes more refined sugar to do that, then that’s what they’ll do.
It’s why corn refiners want to sell you sugar… grocery stores want to sell you sugar… beverage makers want to sell you sugar… bakers and cereal makers and dairy producers and convenience store owners and Burger King and the Hospitality Association and vending machine operators and movie theaters owners… they all want to sell you sugar… as much of it as you’ll eat.
Preferably a hell-of-a-lot more than you need. And preferably in food that you don’t even know it’s there. That’s their goal in the “global marketplace” and they’re not going to let any “obstacle” stand in their way, not even your health.
Will they be successful in harnessing Social Media PR to get customers (who should be eating less sugar) to mobilize in “communities” in defense of companies who want customers to do just the opposite and eat more sugar?
The Perino Conundrum: Tyranny of PR’s Expert Inexpert (2/19/2010)
The issue with the Perino Conundrum, as I call it, goes far beyond the tyranny of authoritative-sounding inexperts in high places – e.g., “Heck of a job Brownie.” Brownie was hardly an expert at anything.
The problem is that lots of folks who have become expert at something very narrow and tactical think it qualifies them to subsume everything larger under their purview – e.g., putting undergrads in Brooks Brothers suits and calling them “consultants.”
The problem with PR, specifically, is that PR’s expert inexperts dominate public debate on many of the nation’s most crucial issues. And their tactical demands for winning – indeed their undeniable expertise in winning – is squeezing quality, substance and nuance from all public debate.
The autocratic, control-the-story-at-all-costs approach to “communications” of these inexperts has taken hold all down the PR food chain. As far down as local city government.
Tank Warfare: Alaska PR Initiative Targets Polar Bears (1/12/2010)
Public Relations is a funny business. And when I say “funny” I don’t mean hilarious. I mean the same thing as your grandmother did when she told you to “sit down there and behave and no funny business.”
She was talking about something that used to be called “shenanigans.”
Well, the PR business gets up to a lot of shenanigans. One of their favorites is using sponsored “experts” (through independent-sounding Think Tanks, Institutes, and Conferences) to spin public debate.
And the worst thing about it isn’t even the dishonesty; it’s the effluvium. After decades of marinating in it, the public has developed a kind of a hard-boiled, resentful skepticism. Their default position is believing that everything is cop-opted surreptitious propaganda. (And you’d be better off with that as your default position than believing its opposite.)
It’s depressing. And the PR profession has a lot to answer for. You know the old saying “caveat emptor?” (Buyer Beware.) Well our new hyper-cynical millennium might best be summed up with a new and very sad slogan: “Believer Beware.”
That, dear reader, is one of the chief legacies of “professional PR.” And it should give you a shiver, even in thawing Alaska.
Palin & Stalin: What Do We Believe? That PR… Thou Art a Shameful Fraud (12/06/2009)
It’s tough to pinpoint when the PR profession “jumped the shark.” But it has, and in spectacular fashion.
Outsiders are seldom privy to the inner workings of the global spin machine. But every once in a while someone leaves the door ajar and you can peer in to see just how twisted are its guts.Such is the case with newly released documents in the ever-widening Sarah Palin ethics quagmire.
As a result of PR’s Machiavellian misadventure, the public is all the poorer… Public discourse corrupted for a pfennig, a corner office, and a lucite memento of the deal. It’s a shame really because there is such potential for good.
But maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill. Perhaps it’s just human nature. After all, manufacturing a vice presidential candidate or rehabilitating a vicious dictator is small potatoes compared to American conservatives’ efforts to rewrite the Bible.
WordPlay Weekend: Cut “Workers’” Wages?… A Vector of Orthogonal Dimensions (12/05/2009)
Economists treat “workers” akin to vivisection subjects only because they don’t identify with them. The word “worker” has a precise cultural meaning that splits them off from all of us who “work” for a living, but whose jobs are not mobile enough to be vulnerable.
All of that is changing. For those of us lucky enough to have jobs these days, “work” is a blessing. But it’s also a source of angst. Even many “workers” of the executive variety are now finding themselves just as vulnerable as workers of every other kind.
Figuring out a solution to our employment, wage and quality of life issues requires dropping our current limited concept of “worker” — as well as its narrow implications. Everyone is vulnerable, even Ms. Pratch and her fellows in the consultant class. Have you seen the quality of the robots coming out of Japan these days?!
BS of the Month Award: Why I’m Not Fit For GoldmanFlacks (12/03/2009)
in reality, championing a rotten idea because the C-Suite wants it is often the best career move in PR. Sad but true. But it still doesn’t make a rotten idea into a good one.
And so Goldman Sachs… for your corporate arrogance, your cynicism, your anachronistic faith in propaganda, and your outright shamelessness, we grant you the BS of the Month Award, for November 2009.
Use it liberally. Use it often. But just remember that it won’t fool anybody, because it still…
Fuck You Barack Obama (11/04/2009)
You’ll never get another vote. Never get another dime. Never get another minute of my time. I did that once already and what did I get from you and all your promises? Fuck all.
All the empty talking heads on TV say that Obama is the consummate, calculating pragmatist. Well, here, calculate this…
The White House News War: Forget Glenn Beck. Barack Obama is “Howard Beale.” (10/25/2009)
More than 3o years ago, in the movie Network, the fictional network boss Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) cringed at the idea of putting a screaming, delusional nut-bag on TV. He said to Diana Christiensen (Faye Dunaway), head of the network’s “Entertainment Division”:
“For God’s sake Diana we’re talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man on national television!”
Howard Beale was so angry he went on national television screaming “Bullshit!” In response to her boss, Diana just smiles a creepy, glassy-eyed smile and nods gleefully… as if to say “Um… hell yeah. Isn’t it GREAT!”
The movie is worth watching just for that one scene alone. It’s the tipping point at which the fictional (?) network descends into “shrieking nothingness” and hysteria, all in pursuit of ratings. The relevance to Obama is: just a year ago HE was the “anger candidate.” He got elected because he channeled people’s ANGER.
Whether he wants to admit it or not, it wasn’t hope that got him elected. He harnessed the public’s anger and discontent, essentially saying: “Throw the bums out and make room for new people like you who understand your needs… and maybe you won’t have to be so scared and angry anymore.”
He promised to take it to “the man”… so to speak. And millions of American’s of all stripes cheered him on his crusade. But once in office he forsook that anger in favor of pragmatism, and he left a huge swath of the “anger contingent” (which includes millions of independents) unrepresented and ripe for FOX to pick it off and gin it up.
“Safe Sex”…. is there such a thing? (10/26/2009)
As LiteralMayhem is very interested in language, and its potential to wreak havoc on human civilization, we offer some thoughts on the quintessential “hot” topic: sex. And more precisely “safe sex.”
Nowadays, at least in much of the Western world, the term “safe sex” is tossed off as easily as one might say… “a side of fries with that?” It’s a given for most sexually active people. And for those who don’t subscribe, it’s a conscious choice, an opt-out. That’s how taken-for-grated the notion has become.
But for millions… maybe even billions… there is a deeper sense in which sex itself will never ever ever until Hell freezes over… be “safe.” As a topic. As a biological function. As a form of intimate personal expression. As a questions of legality and regulation. As a Platonic essence. As absolutely anything.
Brain-Dead PWC… Maybe I’m Not Cynical Enough (10/18/2009)
After my last post on the total impotence of PR, I felt a twinge of guilt. “Am I just too cynical? Too bitter? Surely there are flacks with integrity out there. Surely someone somewhere in the dark corners of the profession cares about it. Somewhere, surely, some company takes it seriously.”
Then I did some reading up on the recent PriceWaterhousCoopers (PWC) debacle — i.e., the AHIP study. What a mess… and so instructive as to the points made in my last several posts, which spanked the PR profession for being so constantly impotent and wrong.
PWC, like so many companies before them, will likely have to spend millions more on repairing their reputation than they earned on one stupid project in the first place.
It will cost them gobs of time, money, energy and indigestion to overcome a perception that every piece of PWC business advice now comes with an automatic disclaimer: “We’re greedy idiots.” So much for the value of PR as a corporate conscience…
Whatever Happened to “No Comment”? (10/17/2009)
PR people hardly have any incentive to be real. All their incentive is geared toward spewing hokey PR pablum.
Looking back on what PR pros said about the crisis a year ago, it’s hard to imagine them burping up anything other than happy talk about values and authenticity and brand greatness. It’s the vocabulary of the profession, and it conjures up the old saying that “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
So do us all a favor. Shut up, do your job, protect the company and its agenda, collect your check. And when you get a call from a reporter asking about the ethics and values of the PR profession, just say “no comment.”
Flashback: P.R. Pros on the Financial Meltdown… Impotent and Wrong (10/13/2009)
We are now just a week or so past the one-year anniversary of the financial bailout. And as I was sorting through some old files over the weekend, I came across an issue of O’Dwyer’s from October 1, 2008… the week of the TARP vote, which was held on Oct 3, 2008.
In that issue, there was an article titled Wall Street Meltdown Rattles PR. In it, several p.r. heavy-weights discussed the affect of the crisis on clients. They also offered thoughts on how the financial services industry would react.
The titan who was most wrong in his prognostications was Manning Selvage & Lee CEO Mark Hass, who said that, “The economic crisis… will accelerate the trend we’ve been seeing among companies to be more authentic, and that’s a good thing.”
Hmmm… ‘authentic’ you say? Looking back on the past year, can anyone say that they have seen a single industry be more consistently and disastrously tone-deaf to public outrage than financial services in 2009?
From outrageous sales junkets, to executive pay, to bonus madness, to lack of financial transparency, to their opposition to consumer protections, to exorbitant fee hikes, to their cavalier return to business as usual in the derivatives market, to spending taxpayer money lobbying Congress to thwart regulatory reform, to a dozen other thumb-in-the-eye fiascos… the industry has been Exhibit A in bad corporate behavior.
Hair on Fire: Banks Fight Consumer Protections (Again) (10/11/2009)
Right now, banks and other financial services companies are in a mess. Their reputations are in tatters, and deservedly so. They are getting pummeled in the press, and deservedly so. They are being hit from every angle to provide consumers more help, and take a breather from fleecing them for every possible nickel and dime — e.g., having to roll back overdraft fees.
They are losing the war. But if they were smart, they’d admit the limits of “messaging” and address the weaknesses in their business model. They’d also take a lesson from the past and see that “threats” to their way of doing business might actually be opportunities in disguise.The odds of that happening are pretty slim. But one can always hope…
Ballsy Little Squirrels: McCain Campaign Stumps LiteralMayhem on Ghost Writing Ethics (09/25/2008)
It goes like this:
- an intern writes a “letter to the editor” in whatever assumed identity she wants
- she makes up all the details, none of which are true… for her
the details would technically be “lies” if the letter was signed either by her or with a fictitious name
But here is the squirrelly bit: the campaign shows these letters to actual real people, and if the letter sounds like something they would have written themselves, then they sign it and send it in. [The article does not say whether any incorrect details are corrected to reflect the truth of the new “author”] But in fact, there is now a real person willing to put his or her name to a piece of fiction, to drag it back into the realm of “truth.
Is this ethical?”
Financial Crisis for Dummies: Lies, Bailouts, and Hank “Fudgie the Whale” Paulson (09/21/2008)
The financial crisis that’s convulsing Wall Street and Washington can be offered up as Exhibit A in what we mean when we say “Literal Mayhem.”
The situation is quite literally mayhem: economically and politically. But there’s a bigger fish to fry here: what we might call mayhem of the literal.
This crisis is, in many respects, the culmination of years and years of “perception management” and manipulation of language (by powerful, monied, self-interested parties) around key public policy issues such as “regulation,” “free markets,” “ownership society,” and “private investment.”
Our common language around these issues — and taken-for-granted understanding of their meanings — shapes how we perceive (or don’t perceive) the current calamity (and it is a calamity), as well as our instinctive responses to the language of the proposed “solutions.”
That’s the “literal” part of Literal Mayhem. It’s this manipulation of language — and consequently perception — that leads to large-scale misunderstandings of purpose, apalling lack of foresight, and piss-poor decision making… all on the part of those who are most responsible for looking out for our interests… namely ourselves.
And the current bailout plan is nothing more than a continuation of the talking-point kabuki dance that has been going on for decades.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Spokespeople… Why Do We Even Listen to Them? (09/11/2008)
Whom does it help to undermine the idea that objective reality even exists? No one, least of all our own profession, which REQUIRES objective references and authoritative sources to establish credibility.
By undermining shared reality, these people undermine the validity of PR itself.
Why do they even get airtime?
The Palin PR Lesson: When Your Narrative Diverges from the Facts, You’re in Trouble (09/03/2008)
The roasting of McCain and Palin continues. Just this afternoon former GOP strategists (now media commentators) Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy were caught on an “open mic” disparaging the Palin pick.
Murphy calling it “gimmicky” and “cynical.” Noonan calling it “political bullshit:”
“I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and that’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.”
It didn’t take long for pundits, bloggers, and other riff-raff to call Peggy out on her blatant hypocrisy, having penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this very day which states bluntly:
“…[Palin] is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.”
What we see here is the blatant dishonesty that has come to define our national public dialogue on a whole range of issues, because people like Noonan (and PR pros, and CEOS alike) get paid millions to essentially lie to the public.
Vogue En-”Lightens” the World: The Consequences of Flogging Cultural Spin (09/02/2008)
Vogue has caused a bit of a stir with the August issue of Vogue India.
The issue contains a fashion spread with pictures of destitute Indians posed with exorbitantly priced luxury goods, like this child in a $100 bib from Fendi… probably about three months salary for the woman holding him. (Yep… three months salary just for the kid to spit-up on it.)
The views of Vogue’s critics are best summed up by Pavan K. Varma, a former diplomat and author of ‘The Great Indian Middle Class,’ who told the UK Independent:
“People [in India] who have money or who aspire to have money become totally immune to the deprivation around them. The problem is that the wealthy in our country have become blind to the poverty. To use people like this shows a complete callousness to genuine suffering. These people have been used as commodities to sell fashion.”
Orwellian Olympiad (II): Ministry of Truth Revises Gymnast’s Past and Gets Caught… THIS TIME (08/14/2008)
The latest Olympic development is not just that the Chinese government falsified a gymnast’s birth date on her passport, but that they went back and altered PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED NEWSPAPER REPORTS about her age!!
To quote Orwell…
“Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy… The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
When you look at some of the BS perpetrated by high-profile PR pros these days, Orwell doesn’t sound very far off the mark, particularly in the political realm. Could it escalate to the kind of continuous rewriting of the facts that Orwell describes?
Who knows. Who ever seriously thought it could go THIS far?
Orwellian Olympic PR Deception: Are We Too Dumbed Down to Care? (08/11/2008)
Stuck for nearly half a day in an airport this weekend, I was browsing the itty-bitty bookstore and stumbled on George Orwell’s 1984. If you haven’t read it in a while, I’d highly recommend it.
We are so inured to the machinations of politicians, business leaders, spin doctors, and even the media that we tend to think of their antics as tragicomedy. After re-reading 1984… mmmm, not so much.
It’s part of the reason I was so blown away by the revelation that part of the TV broadcast of the Olympic opening ceremony — the firework “footprints” — was faked, according to news reports.
“It is one of the most characteristic and destructive developments of our own society that man, becoming more and more of an instrument, transforms reality more and more into something relative to his own interests and functions.”
Fabrications large and small, perpetrated every day, with fewer consequences and even less awareness… a scary reality, but one that is increasingly common.
BS of the Month Award: Gray Lady Calls Out Freddie Mac CEO Syron for Being Two-Face (08/05/2008)
As the new movie The Dark Knight is breaking box office records and capturing the popular imagination, it’s only fitting to riff on the theme for this month’s award… and yes, it’s only the 5th of the month, but I can’t imagine that anyone will top this one in the next few weks (political surrogates aside).
A NYT article today calls out Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron for a sin that’s been all too common among the insider set in Washington D.C. over the past 7 years: not listening to anyone except your political dark angels.
It got us into a war. It’s what put us over a barrel (literally), on energy. It’s what busted the budget. The current Administration has left dozens of bodies in its wake. Smart, dedicated people who were pushed out of their jobs because they did not toe the line. (Remember Paul O’Neil… anyone?)
Ideology got in the way of rational policy and now… all you have to do is pick up a newspaper any day of the week to see the consequences.
Cock-a-Doodle-Doo-Doo: PR’s Secondary Lies and Tacit Approvals are Lies All the Same (07/31/2008)
These examples, though they number only three, give some insight into why people assume PR pros are all liars. And we do ourselves, and our profession, no favors by either perpetrating or tacitly condoning conduct like this.
We run off at the mouth about how we are “strategic advisers to the executive suite,” how we “add value to the organization,” how we promote “integrity and authenticity.”
Well, these three organizations (IOC, Merrill Lynch, and the Pentagon) represent the pinnacle of global professionalism in their respective fields. And there is no way you will convince me that their communications teams are not similarly endowed.
Which is why the steady drip-drip-drip of high-profile public misrepresentations like these reveal us to be either ineffectual or complicit. Either way, it’s not the kind of professionalism that wins us any points. And it happens all the time, in big ways and small.
So while we may not be guilty of “lying” – the big, flat-out, honking untruth – if we practice communications at the level we claim, then all this hemming and hawing, and failing to remember, and massaging of the facts happens in our full view.
Crowing about PR’s ethics and integrity don’t make it so. And let’s not pretend that we don’t know, or at least suspect that something’s amiss.
That really would be a lie.
Press Releases We’d Love To See!!… “Scientology Acquires Kabbalah to Form World’s Most Famous Secret Religion” (07/09/2008)
Girl Power vs. Feminism: An Interesting Juxtaposition at the Brooklyn Museum (06/04/2008)
I think this little juxtaposition sums up a key problem of our pandering, co-dependent, identity-base culture. It’s too self-conscious… dare I say self-obsessed?
PRSA Gets it Wrong Again: CBS Rant Against PR Wasn’t an Attack, It Was an Obituary (06/02/2008)
So it’s OK to use press releases, spokespeople, pressure groups, op-eds, hardball assaults on image and reputation… all in the name of winning for your client. Unless someones uses them against you. In that case they’re criminal racketeering: “the same thing as what John Gotti used to do,” according to a Smithfield lawyer’s talking point.
That example nails it for me. Facts are facts; and the facts are these: our profession has become a bastion of stealth, disinformation (e.g., the Pentagon talking head program), obfuscation, avoidance, diversion, distraction, and every other kind of trickery and hucksterism.
PR is eating itself alive, and PRSA’s response to the criticism — their complete denial — is emblematic of the profession’s long-standing trend away from straightforward engagement.
Jim Abernathy Gives China a Big Sloppy Kiss, Gives PR a BIG BLACK EYE (05/19/2008)
Just when you thought the PR profession could get no more immoral, unscrupulous, or just plain asinine, along comes Jim Abernathy to take us down to a whole new low.
O’Dwyer’s re-ran quotes of Abernathy’s interview with Business Week about how to deal with China’s PR woes surrounding Tibet, and its overshadowing of the Olympics.Ever the statesman, Abernathy said he’d “find attractive, English-speaking Chinese women and a ‘couple of sweet little 19-year-old gymnasts’” and put them on the talk-show circuit.
Mahiavelli Fingers Bush: Touching Moments and an Occasion for Tears, a National Groundhog Day (04/11/2008)
A couple of days ago President Bush “blinked back tears” at the funeral of a Marine who threw himself on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers.
It’s tough to believe anything that comes out of the White House, given its seven-year history of… dissembling… a history in which Herr Karlmiester recreated reality to suit Bush’s political ambitions.
“When we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Karl Rove 2004
Bear Stearns CEO Wins BS of the Month Award: Can One Authentically Claim to be a Victim of Suicide? (03/30/2008)
If women do end up someday being equals to men in business, let us all pray that the girls of the Aber-zombie generation are at least a bit less dangerous than the men currently in charge. (Even if it looks like they will be just as ignorant of their own failings.)
Which brings us to Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz (let’s also hope he’s always been too busy to participate in “take your daughter to work” day). In a recent internal meeting to discuss the spectacular failure of the investment bank he ran, Mr. Schwartz made the following, stupefyingly moronic pronouncement:
“We here are a collective victim of violence,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s natural to be angry, and you’re not sure who to be angry at. But we have to put it behind us.”
“Victim?”… “Not sure who [sic] to be angry at?”…
Anyone got a mirror handy?
Fans Want More Gay Kissing!! What Can a PR Person Say to That?? Seriously… What Do You SAY? (03/10/2008)
Hmmm…. it seems that some un-Godly fans of the P&G sponsored afternoon soap opera “As The World Turns” have started a letter-writing, protest campaign because they want to see more gay kissing, according to a recent article by the Associated Press.
It provides an interesting PR challenge and juxtaposition against today’s absolutely stunning! and shocking! revelation that a GOP Congresswoman hates the gays… she has revealed to the world that “gays” are more evil, and more of a threat to “our children” than Eeeslamist Terrorists.
Wherein We Offer a New Philosophical Framework for Understanding the Imperatives of PR (03/04/2008)
PR is not just a business, or even a profession… PR is an epistemological assertion.
National Assoc. Of Manufacturers Wins B.S. of the Month Award: The Gander Cries Foul, Demands Cone of Silence! (02/14/2008)
Earlier in Feb., the NAM filed suit to block a federal disclosure law that would require naming all donors who contribute more than $5,000 to finance lobbying efforts. The NAM suit alleges that the new law threatens members’ First Amendment rights. Free speech rights! How… quaint.
U.S. Chamber’s Lawsuit Abuse: A Rorschach Test for PR Ethics? (02/11/2008)
In a foreword to the Chamber’s latest project – a code of conduct for State Attorneys General – they complained that State AGs did not want to respond their questionnaire. The AGs refused to believe that the Chamber wasn’t running a “gotcha” program. (Is it any wonder lawyers mistrust them?)
So with this question on the table – Is their PR program ethical? – I conclude with a snarky quote from the Chamber, which takes State AGs to task for non-cooperation. The Chamber complained: “…the problem is, sometimes when you want to find out something, people don’t want to let you know.”
Indeed.
Ghost Writing Ethics 2.0: PR Firm Caught with Pants Down, Public Outraged, Politics as Usual? (12/26/2007)
Why do people need ghost writers? (It must not be obvious, or people would not be so shocked over the practice.) The answer is: Ghost writers are necessary because most people suck at writing.
That’s a no-brainer. The bigger issue is this: sophisticated PR programs deliver their messages through surrogates, whose affiliations are deliberately disguised in order to mislead as to their ultimate loyalties and intentions.Superficially people seem to have issues with “ghost writing,” but their real issue is most often honesty in public debate – particularly in a realm as anonymous as the Internet.
Free Market Malarkey II: Reductionists Gone Wild, the Theorists Want the Lobbyists to Run Your Life (12/27/2007)
My biggest gripe with the extremist free-marketeers (just add mouse ears and suspenders and you get the picture), is not even that they want to apply “free markets” to non-market contexts (e.g., healthcare and education), but that they think economic self-interest is the sum total of human motivation and we should build our entire social order around maximizing it. An absolutely corruptive and psychologically corrosive force if there ever was one.
The Case of the “Intifada” T-shirt: Don’t Be Niggardly with That Gay Swastika! (08/13/2007)
Consider the following sentence: Don’t be niggardly with that gay swastika!
That earthquake you feel in your brain is symbolism grinding against literalism. Beyond the benign literal meaning of words [“Don’t be stingy with that happy good luck symbol!”] lies a powerful psychological and symbolic realm [“nigger, faggot, Nazi!”]. Here, language is freighted with so much symbolic weight that it squashes all other possible meanings and interpretations.
Symbols of power provoke the same response as power itself. Symbols of intolerance function in the same way and provoke the same reaction as intolerance itself.Unfortunately, this is the psychological and linguistic default by which we now live. Symbolic power governs how we relate both to each other and the world around us, and it’s quite unhelpful and immature to deny it.
Given this woeful state of public discourse, we need to learn how to better use, interpret and respond to the power of symbols. Rhetorical brinksmanship and symbolic scorched-Earth policies are no-win situations for all involved. We need to fess up to that, and then find a way out of this linguistic corner into which we are painted, before we slaughter each other – or are all brain dead from inhaling the fumes.
Rudy & The Race Card: NY Times Punts the Story, Lands in the Lap of “Sources” (08/02/2007)
I know that “piling on” is generally a cheap shot, and piling on the NY Times is seldom necessary as there are so many other more worthy targets out there. But there can be no better example of what’s wrong with journalism today than two recent articles on Rudy Giuliani – a NY Times piece specifically about race and politics, the other from Harper’s Magazine about the larger political messages of Giuliani’s mayoral and presidential campaigns.
The former: The New York Times, July 22, 2007, by Michael Powell: “In a Volatile City, a Stern Line on Race and Politics.”
The latter: Harper’s Magazine, August 2007, by Kevin Baker: “A Fate Worse Than Bush: Rudolph Giuliani and the Politics of Personality.” (subscription required)
What’s clearly on display here is the damage to journalism done by conservatives’ “liberal media” hand grenades, hurled ceaselessly at the press for over two decades. Traditional journalism appears shell-shocked (especially mainstream political journalism), as reporters hide under the closest bushel-basket to avoid being attacked for bias. That bushel-basket, more often than not, is a “source” whose comments can be quote-marked, thus relieving the writer of any obligation to draw conclusions, either from plain facts or analysis thereof.
Aromatherapy: Catch a Whiff of This PR Obfuscation (07/26/2007)
The next time you hear bon-mots like “surge” or “free trade” or “reform,” or hear some newfangled term that puts old wine into new casks, take a long pause.
Ask yourself what people want you to believe by using this word; who benefits from you believing it; are they encouraging you to ask more questions or fewer; aiming to get you to inquire and engage with the debate or disengage and shut up? Consider whether the demonstrable, objective facts actually support their claims.
Then, finally, take a good deep breath through your nose and check if it has the whiff of “bio-solid” about it.