They’re Still Doing It!

Posted on by Marc Jampole

They’re still doing it!  Corporations are still saying no comment, or worse yet, not being available for comment.  I just did a Google news search for both “no comment” and “not available for comment” and found pages of recent examples of both. 

  • No-commenters included the TNA Wrestling Association, the German Economic Ministry, New York Police Union, New York Racing Authority and Hicks Sports Group, among many others.
  • Those unavailable for comment included Whirlpool, a Michigan school district, several Indian ministries, the South Korean government and the head of the Minneapolis Labor Federation, among many others

Those people should just stop not talking.  Not talking to the news media today is a bad business move.  Whenever a reporter calls an organization, that organization has a golden opportunity to enhance its reputation and say something it wants to say to people to whom it wants to say it.

And when the news is bad, the news media are giving the organization the means to defend itself or give its point of view.  The news media are likely going to report the bad news no matter what.  In most cases it will be in the organization’s best interest to tell its side of the story.

Even if you can’t give a comment because the subject is confidential or related to a lawsuit, you can at least tell why you can’t comment.  When you say “no comment,” the organization comes off as secretive.  But when you say why you can’t comment, you evoke empathy, because most people intuitively understand that sometimes constraints exist.  They just want to know what the constraints are.

Sometimes the news media will call with what they think is bad news, but which really isn’t.  By responding with accurate information, the organization can persuade the reporter not to cover a story or to see that it’s really a positive development.

Often when the news media call, the news is good, or neutral — a reporter may need an expert to comment on a news event, for example.  If it’s good news, the organization can enhance its reputation, using the story as a platform to present the good news and to make some basic messages about its mission and objectives.  And there is no organization that will not benefit from one of its staff being proclaimed an expert by the news media.

In short, there is never a reason not to respond to the news media when they call, as long as the organization treads carefully.  It is all too easy to turn a golden opportunity for positive media coverage into a disaster.

Let’s Focus on the Objectives

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I suspect I agree with Bob Herbert more than any other mainstream print columnist I read, but I disagree with his assessment that the now likely health care reform will be a bad thing.

First Herbert’s description of probable health care reform from today’s column:

“If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan — well, that’s reform the insurance companies can believe in.”

But doesn’t that description accomplish one of the two goals of health care reform: to cover more people?  Who really cares who is covering whom, as long as everyone is covered with a decent set of health care benefits?  The fact that insurance companies will make profits may matter on other non-health care related issues, but on the issue of coverage, it does not.  Most health care insurance profits are regulated already in one way or another. I’m therefore not opposed to the solution that Herbert describes. 

Of course, there is still the other objective of reducing costs.  Universal coverage, technology fixes and new regulations, all in proposed health care reform, will take care of some part of the funding problem.  But the U.S. won’t really be able to cut health care costs until we as a nation live a healthier lifestyle.  Again, that has nothing to do with insurance reform.

FYI, Herbert’s comments on drug manufacturers in the same column are on point.

How About Some Fact-Based Thinking?

Posted on by Marc Jampole

 

Why are so many of the bedrock principles of the rural-suburban right wing based on misinformation, distortions or bald-faced lies?  Consider these following cornerstones of current conservative thought:

 

  1. That global warming does not exist and that what warming is occurring does not result from human actions
  2. That private sector solutions are always better than the intervention of government
  3. That people are safer when everyone carries a loaded handgun around
  4. That locking people up deters crime more than rehabilitation
  5. Everything in the U.S. is better than in Western Europe and the rest of the developed world

 

Repeated studies by multiple groups have disproved all five of these conservative beliefs:

  • Global warning is occurring and human activity is a primary cause
  • The government has done a better job than the private sector in several areas, including prison management, pensions and health care.
  • Studies show that more people are killed by ordinary citizens or friendly fire than by robbers and other criminals year after year, meaning people are less safe with more guns in society
  • Again, study results virtually always favor rehabilitation, just as they favor therapy over prison for drug offenders
  • We have the worst health care system in the developed world, more expensive than any western European country, with higher infant mortality rates and lower life spans.  Europe also has better mass transit and more secure pensions for its workers.

I understand the old-fashioned “black” propaganda that religiously tinged right-wing broadcast and Internet media constantly spew: that concoction of anecdotes, scenarios, provocative questions, inferences, innuendoes, invalid studies financed by right-wing interests and quotes from so-called experts like Charles Krauthammer, Juan Williams, Michelle Malkin, William Kristol, et. al., all of whom are paid by right-wing interests.  Yes, it’s a deeply stimulating if pernicious brew.  But why do so many people zero in on these lies, shoddy facts and arguments and ignore or reject the mainstream natural and social sciences?   Why do so many people believe what so many facts disprove? 

Dumbing Down

Posted on by Marc Jampole

The description of “The Marriage of Figaro” in the Pittsburgh Opera’s season ticket solicitation marks a new low in dumbing down the arts.   Here it is:

“What is this thing called love? 

Imagine protecting your fiancée from a lecherous rival, finding your long-lost son, and healing an ailing marriage – all in one day! Most of us would pull out our hair, but this is Mozart, and on Figaro’s dizzying wedding day, love is in the air, behind a door, under a chair, and in everyone’s hearts. And you thought your wedding day was chaotic.”

Now let’s disregard the fact that there is no connection between the headline and the paragraph that follows it.  And let’s also disregard that there is absolutely nothing in the description about the magnificent music, nor about this most literary of librettos, based on Beaumarchais’ play, one of the most subversive, anti-establishment works of the past 250 years.

Let’s focus on the way the paragraph tries so very hard to connect with those who regularly read and take seriously fashion and bridal magazines.  Arts organizations, and especially serious music ensembles, have been engaged in this kind of dumbing down for about 10-15 years now, despite the fact that it doesn’t seem to work.  I can’t say specifically what the Pittsburgh Opera’s financial situation is, but most arts organizations have not been helped by dumbed-down marketing gimmicks; ticket sales are still down for virtually all arts organizations.  But these gimmicks do manage to piss off those core customers who don’t like the anti-intellectualism and mindless consumerism that are the ideological bedrock of fashion, bridal and similar periodical fluff.

For the record: I would be even more perturbed if the description of the opera took a smutty or Sinatra-cool laddy-mag approach.

Or Maybe it’s Occam’s Razor

Posted on by Marc Jampole

The New York Times has another great example of ideological subtext in a story on the front page of the August 7, 2009 business section titled “Trickle-Down Costs” and again it had to do with the selection of photos.

The story concerned the pressures on state governments to cut Medicaid costs and focused on Medicaid challenges and cutbacks in the state of Washington.  There was one photo on page B1 and another on the continuation on page B4 (all national edition).  Both photos were of African-Americans on Medicaid in the state of Washington.  Keep in mind that only 3% of all Washington state Medicaid recipients are African-American and only 12% of all recipients nationwide are African-American, according to the latest study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.  The possible ideological subtext that we can infer from this selection of photographs is odious and clearly plays into some old and ugly myths, to say the least.

Remember that as with the Times article described in my August 7 post, the writer of this article, Clifford Krauss, and the editor made a conscious decision to run just these photographs.

But maybe there is another explanation:  Maybe both reporters were cutting corners—grab a few case histories and take a few photos in one city and don’t be concerned with what subtext they might communicate.  Cutting corners or saving on costs or both—that would be the “Occam’s Razor” explanation.  (Occam’s Razor is the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.)  While I’m reasonably sure that the Times does color its stories to convey, and overestimate, the centrality of Christianity to contemporary society in the U.S., I’m also fairly certain that the Times absolutely does not routinely trade in inaccurate racial stereotypes.

Ideological Subtext – Part 1

Posted on by Marc Jampole

One of the things I want to do in this blog is to share my analysis of ideological subtext in the news media. Ideological subtext consists of the messages that a journalist and media outlet make in developing story details, e.g., who or what to feature as the case history example, what comments are selected or simply the unstated point-of-view narrating the news story. The ongoing pattern of decisions creates the media outlet’s ideological subtext. For example, peruse the non-business pages of any newspaper specifically looking for examples of the writer taking for granted that free markets are preferable to regulated ones. I’m sure you’ll find many.

The photos in a story that began on the front page of the August 4, 2009 New York Times titled “Years After Layoffs, Many Still Struggle to Match Old Salaries” betray a Times ideological subtext that I believe is relatively new: support of an overtly Christian lifestyle. The story reflects the headline and focuses on a few people in a networking group laid off by Pratt & Whitney in 2000. The captions to two of the three photos on the page A12 continuation say it all: “Chuck Dettman arriving at his Christian counseling service, Today’s Promise, in Jupiter, Fla.” and “Jim Clark, with his wife, Jeanne, outside St. Paul of the Cross Church in North Palm Beach, Fla.”

Now the writer, Micheal Luo, chose to ask the photographer to take photos in a religious setting and the editor chose to use them. The decision to let religious environments dominate a story about jobs and economics was consciously or unconsciously ideological. Even if the subjects of the case histories all wore their religions on their sleeves, the photographs still could have avoided interjecting religion into the context, for example, photos in front of their homes or at their current lower-paying jobs. Or, the writer could have selected a more diverse group of subjects, which is what we have come to expect from the Times in any case.

(In fact, years ago I used to exploit the Times’ desire to use a diverse set of case history subjects to get stories placed about Pennsylvania economic development programs. I would send information about a Pennsylvania case history to reporters stationed in Detroit and Washington, D.C., who would use the information to round out stories they were doing on economic development that focused on case histories in their regions.)

I wish I had started a blog in 2000 because that’s when I started to notice the Times using religious contexts to depict stories on a wide range of economic topics, social issues and even foreign policy beliefs. I can’t prove it, though, unless I could somehow go back and analyze every Times article over the past 40 years. Let’s call it an impression I have.

Organizational Uncommon Sense

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Two recent news stories in Pennsylvania demonstrate how very difficult it is for an organization to impose its version of reality on the public and the news media if it runs against the common sense reality of the situation. 

As reported in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mylan Inc., a generic drug maker, and its chief executive officer, Robert Coury, have said repeatedly that a Federal Drug Administration (FDA) investigation into manufacturing procedures has been completed, even as the FDA has repeatedly said that the investigation is not over yet.  (I should disclose that Jampole Communications worked on a project for Mr. Coury more than 10 years ago when he was a financial planner.) The investigation follows a July 26 Post-Gazette report that Mylan employees had overridden automated quality control mechanisms and falsified reports.

Based on my experience helping companies communicate about investigations by the FDA, OSHA, EPA, state consumer bureaus and other government agencies in a large number of states, I believe that I can construct a scenario in which Coury and Mylan may have inadvertently come to believe that the investigation was over.  For example, perhaps an on-site inspector made some comments to company officials or maybe they saw a preliminary report or recommendation. 

But once the FDA said the first time that the investigation was not over (see July 28 story in the Post-Gazette), Mylan should have backtracked, and said that Coury misspoke or that had meant that the FDA had completed the inspection part of the process.  By digging in its corporate heels, Mylan has lost a great deal of credibility with anyone who has read or heard the continuing news stories on this issue.  And Mylan has kept the story in the media: The coverage of most inspection and inspection violations typically make one or at the most two 24-hour news cycles. By repeatedly contradicting the FDA, Mylan has kept what is basically a bad news story for the company in the news.

The other recent Pennsylvania example of an organization trying but failing to run against the grain of common sense is a bit subtler.  In a news release on July 17, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department (PID) said it was launching an investigation of the state Blues.  As many people know, there is less competition for health care insurance in Pennsylvania than virtually anywhere else in the U.S.  The investigation is part of PID’s recent efforts to bring more competition to health care insurance in the state.

Only the commission didn’t call it an “investigation,” but used the term “examination.”  In fact it repeated “examination” twelve times!  It’s as if the commission was going out of its way to say it was not conducting an investigation, which always has negative connotations.  The problem is that to most people, the use of examination in this context is just a squeamish way of saying “investigation.”  And that’s how the major media saw it as well.  The Philadelphia Inquirer, Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh/Greensburg Tribune Review all called it an investigation.

Anytime an organization goes against the common sense definition of a word, it risks losing credibility or losing control of the information it gives the public.  For the PID, the way around this challenge would have been to define your terms right up front, for example, “examination is a standard insurance term that describes…..” If the PID had explicitly told us why they were calling it an examination instead of an investigation in the second paragraph of the news release, then all stories would have called it an examination, many also including the definition.