{"id":341,"date":"2007-10-22T17:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-23T00:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgillin.com\/2007\/10\/newspapers-have-been-own-worst-enemies.html"},"modified":"2007-10-22T17:54:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-23T00:54:00","slug":"newspapers-have-been-own-worst-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/newspapers-have-been-own-worst-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"Newspapers have been own worst enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">James Lee, senior VP and chief public affairs officer at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.choicepoint.com\/index.html\">ChoicePoint<\/a>, spoke at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prsa.org\/conf2007\/\">PRSA International Conference<\/a> today about ChoicePoint\u2019s experience with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/6979897\/\">theft of 145,000 customer records in 2005<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It was an interesting study in crisis management, but what stuck me the most was comments by him and the audience about their lousy experiences with reporters. Examples: <\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0in;\" type=\"disc\">\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">The      Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story four days after news of the theft      broke that claimed that ChoicePoint\u2019s CEO was hiding from the media. In      fact, Lee said, the CEO had been unusually open to the media, compared to      executives at other companies in that situation. He had given several      media interviews, but was unavailable when the Journal-Constitution      reporter called. The paper\u2019s story was the only one to accuse the CEO of evasiveness.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">ChoicePoint      wanted to make a careful distinction between theft of data and a hack,      because the latter term implies a computer security vulnerability. This is      an important distinction to investors and regulators. However, one west      coast newspaper had a policy of referring to all information thefts as      \u201chacks,\u201d regardless of the nature of the breach. This made ChoicePoint\u2019s      problem look worse than it really was.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">Pressure      to file on deadline forces reporters to seek opinion instead of facts      because opinion is easier to get. \u201cIn the real world, it takes time to      find facts,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have facts immediately, they\u2019ll find      some [pundit] with an opinion.\u201d Early impressions tend to stick, which means      that subsequent facts are buried or ignored.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">Media      outlets throw business stories to inexperience reporters, who don\u2019t      understand the fine points of an often complex story and need to be      educated under deadline, leading to errors and misunderstanding.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">News      outlets nearly always stick by their story, even when the evidence is      overwhelming that they\u2019re wrong.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">These      problems are only getting worse as newsrooms cut staff and competition      compresses deadlines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">PR people have to deal with the media constantly and so are more likely to have gripes with the media, but the level of frustration surprised me, nevertheless. This is one reason mainstream media gets so little sympathy for its current woes. Years of arrogance have left it with very few friends at a time when it could use a few.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Lee, senior VP and chief public affairs officer at ChoicePoint, spoke at the PRSA International Conference today about ChoicePoint\u2019s experience with the theft of 145,000 customer records in 2005. It was an interesting study in crisis management, but what &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/newspapers-have-been-own-worst-enemies\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[20,23],"tags":[89],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-5v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}