Author: fxshaw

From the LA Times, an op/ed from Neal Gabler questioning the role of the media, in particular the mainstream media, as it pertains to healthcare, although his point is certainly much broader. His key point:

Maybe Americans should know better. Maybe they shouldn’t fall for the latest imbecilic propaganda and scare tactics. Maybe. But a citizenry is only as well-informed as the quality of information it receives. One can’t expect Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or the Republican Party or even the Democrats to provide serious, truthful assessments of a complex health plan. Truth has to come from somewhere else — from a reliable, objective, trustworthy source.
That source should be the media, and there has been, in fact, some excellent coverage of healthcare, especially by our better newspapers and especially lately when the untruths have become a torrent, rousing reporters to provide a corrective. But overall, the coverage has not been exactly edifying. According to the Pew Research Center, 16% of the stories in its media sample last week were devoted to healthcare, but three-quarters of that coverage was either about legislative politics or the town halls. Tom Rosenstiel, who heads Pew’s Center for Excellence in Journalism, said that if the healthcare debate is a potential teaching moment, that “moment is passing us by.”

Ah, the truth. I covered this some time back, with this point:

What we should be asking for is the media to do more of what it is good at — take a great pass at determining who real experts are in a given arena, ask the right questions, do the right research, then present the results. Annotate better. Share more. Post more transcripts. Ask hard follow up questions. Don’t let people in power get away (again) with lying to us.
We rarely live in a binary world, where things are either zeros or one, right or wrong, no grays, all black and white. The power is being able to see the gray more clearly, not to see more of the black and the white.

Maybe I was too optimistic, seeing the declines in real reporting and the increase in shouting that have happened since then. It’s not a left/right thing, it’s the fact that more people get their news from sources that they trust and keep them comfortable. These news ghettos exist to a degree never before seen, and make it possible to completely avoid having to deal with ideas/facts/information that don’t directly support what you already believe. Is it the role of the media to puncture those ghettos? I think not, and I don’t believe they have credibility currently to do so. We’ve all seen talking heads absolutely skewered by the “facts” and by their own words (paging Rep Bachman, line 1) with absolutely no impact, and we’ve seen politicians and business leaders blatantly lie with no short term consequence. We have ‘birthers” and ‘truthers’ and a society where a strongly held opinion is as valid (apparently) as vetted and proven facts.

In this environment, the onus as seekers of truth lies more on us than on anyone else. And the first step is the hardest – open the mind to the idea that we may be wrong. There is a saying, “doubt is the essence of faith,” which applies in matters beyond faith as well. It’s good to remember.

Update: the WaPost makes a similar point today.

An excerpt from an upcoming book, “The Tyranny of E-Mail,” appeared in the Journal today. It reminds me somewhat of the extended screed by James Gleick that came out some years back, but both made valuable points – there is wisdom in slowing down. As the communications world whizzes madly from one (faster) model of getting the word out to the next, this can seem counterintuitive, but is worth considering. The heart of the slow communications manifesto is this:

In the past two decades, we have witnessed one of the greatest breakdowns of the barrier between our work and per­sonal lives since the notion of leisure time emerged in Victorian Britain as a result of the Industrial Age. It has put us under great physical and mental strain, altering our brain chemistry and daily needs. It has isolated us from the people with whom we live, siphoning us away from real-world places where we gather. It has encouraged flotillas of unnecessary jabbering, making it difficult to tell signal from noise. It has made it more difficult to read slowly and enjoy it, hastening the already declining rates of literacy. It has made it harder to listen and mean it, to be idle and not fidget.
This current model includes email, a phone, camera and video camera.
This is not a sustainable way to live. This lifestyle of being constantly on causes emotional and physical burnout, work­place meltdowns, and unhappiness. How many of our most joyful memories have been created in front of a screen?
If we are to step off this hurtling machine, we must reassert principles that have been lost in the blur. It is time to launch a manifesto for a slow communication movement, a push back against the machines and the forces that encourage us to remain connected to them. Many of the values of the Internet are social improvements—it can be a great platform for solidarity, it rewards curiosity, it enables convenience. This is not the mani­festo of a Luddite, this is a human manifesto. If the technology is to be used for the betterment of human life, we must reassert that the Internet and its virtual information space is not a world unto itself but a supplement to our existing world, where the following three statements are self-evident.

Over the years, I’ve hit one theme several times in this blog – the idea that tools are not good or bad, but are simply tools. Blogs weren’t evil or good, twitter, youtube, etc. and so on – they were simply tools. And anytime a single tool becomes the answer to every question (for example, got a crisis? start a blog!) we’re heading the wrong direction. And so in some ways I agree with John Freeman – there is a need to slow down, but it is situational, not systemic. Yes, we have to remember that there often are meaty, complicated issues, and these require discussion and persuasion, which requires time and length. Brevity and speed matter less here, but can’t be ignored, and I would say this is the area where we have more to re-learn than we might expect – watching the U.S. try and have a discussion about healthcare that doesn’t devolve into screaming has been a sobering experience.

So speed is good, speed is bad. Slow is good, slow is bad. That great gray space in the middle, and the ability to combine speed and thought? Good all around.

Mike does a good job of sniffing out where the truth may lie in the Google v. Apple debate re: Google Voice. I’ve previously written about what it takes to rebuild trust, with the very clear POV  that Apple had become a hollow brand from a trust standpoint, at least to many members of the media. Well, this latest episode certainly is not doing much to rebuild that trust, and is a good lesson that shows trust lost *does* have a price. In this case, the price is that essentially nobody  is giving Apple much of the benefit of the doubt in what they are saying. Heck, Mike takes a brickbat to them.

Corporate communicators of the world – pay attention. Insist on honesty in all forms of communication, protect the trust of the brand and keep making deposits in the trust bank. Don’t let your brand become brittle from a trust standpoint.

Technorati Tags: apple

In general, if you find yourself arguing that you are not getting what you want and then say that you aren’t getting what you want because you “don’t have as good spin doctors” as the other side does, well, you are scraping the bottom of the barrel in the argument department.

To whit, in today’s NYT is a story about water rights, and how Atlanta recently lost a pretty big court case against its neighbors. Now, water rights and water in general are going to pop up more and more as the focal point for state/national/city arguments, so this is one to watch. Lots of issues, but apparently PR is one of them. So sez Atlanta:

“The only motivation is political,” Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, said of the fight. “We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”

And then later in the story, it turns out that Atlanta *has* been investing in PR:

Atlanta has responded with a major public relations offensive, painting the city as a good steward that has carried out a water plan, treats its sewage until it is drinkable and, during the recent drought, put conservation measures in place when downstream users did not. (Environmentalists concede these points but say that they are half-hearted at best and that the metropolitan area could save millions of gallons through more aggressive conservation.)

Having read about this dispute in a few different publications over the last year, I’m pretty sure that PR is not at the center of the problem set. Atlanta lost the case on the facts, and because they made a bet some 20 years ago that they have now lost. That’s not a PR issue, that’s a reality issue. If I were advising them now, I’d say look at the facts and change the tone and manner of the debate and look for a way to compromise – saying you’ll “fight to the death” as the Georgia gov did is not generally a good way to get what you want.

Let’s examine this NYT story (about how technology is changing breakfast) for the signs of an trend craziness:

• Story pegged around a small sample (‘normal’ families), thus announcing trend? Check.
• cute soundbite? Check (‘this is morning in the internet age’)
• Quote from professor? Check.
• Set of data from third party sources to confirm trend? Check (internet traffic data by hour).

And, of course, no real news. In fact, I’d bet that if you went back 20 or 30 years there would be a NYT story that talked about how TV was changing breakfast, and before that how radio was changing breakfast, etc.

In general, I have a high tolerance for faux trend stories. But I always wonder when seeing them…is nothing else happening in the world that I should know about?

This isn’t really my first blog post, nor is it a “hello world” post – it is simply the next chapter of my ongoing blog conversation, one that started here, while I was on sabbatical nearly seven years ago. Lots of pixels have been killed since then, and I’ve been right about some things (hello second life) and wrong about others (wikipedia, for example). I’m not as frequent as I once was in terms of posting, mostly, I’m sure, because there are so many smart/interesting people who are doing a better job of touching on the same topics! I’m going to keep at it, though.

I always giggle when I see blog posts that say – I’m going to be traveling, posting will be less frequent, with the implied assumption that hordes of people needed to know this in order to prepare for the famine that approached. But since this *is* post one on a new site, I’ll break my rule, giggle, and say I’m going to be on vacation for two weeks. I am sure there will be a post or two. But maybe not. And I’m sure everyone will be just fine. 

It’s a new start, and I can’t help but think of the very sad and very sweet ending to one of my favorite comic strips of all time, still framed somewhere here in the house, when Calvin and Hobbes ceased publishing. Here it is….enjoy.

fxs