eastwikkers

A Simple Deception

Another deception is getting play in this New York Times article (as noted in GMSV today). The problem this time is with Wikipedia. In short, a respected editor who used the name Essjay and was supposedly a tenured professor of religion at a private university and an expert in canon law turns out to be a 24-year-old who attended a number of colleges in Kentucky and apparently has no relevant degree.

Most curious, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales initially defended Essjay, accepting the editor’s claim that he’d hidden his identity to protect himself from reprisals for mediating disputes between Wikipedia contributors. According to the NYT article, Wales also stated that the editor “is now, and has always been, an excellent editor with an exemplary track record.” Wales later reversed himself saying that his “past support of Essjay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on,” which really doesn’t at all explain his initial defense or his reversal.

Protecting ourselves by hiding our identity can sometimes be a smart thing to do, and anonymity is often debated in PR. But anonymity is not the same as deception. If I reveal I’ve chosen not to disclose my identity, then it’s up to readers to choose whether or not to take me as credible. I haven’t deceived anyone. Wikipedia’s Essjay lied about his credentials, pretending to have experiences he never had in order to assume a position of authority. The difference is huge, and it’s hard to see what part of this Wales didn’t get immediately.

And what about lying about one’s identity for career advancement? George Eliot? I don’t think so. Actually it’s closer to the fraud perpetrated by Stephen Glass. Essjay was not writing fiction. He was pretending to be an authority on religion, and he used that authority to mediate arguments. Even if Essjay is as knowledgeable about religion as a tenured professor, his readers should have known the truth about what that knowledge was based on.

This deception sits at the heart of social media and our online interactions. How can we ever know that a person or company we encounter on the Internet is honestly represented?  Initially, we can’t. In the offline world, eye contact, a handshake, a feeling we get when we enter a building all help, but even with these, we are often deceived. As more and more of our lives are conducted online, we’ll need to develop new ways of sensing deception, whether through new technology or through social media mechanisms that allow us to get feedback from the crowd – some of these are already emerging (though how can we be sure they are legit?).

The ramifications for PR are clear. Our weapons against a heightened fear of being deceived – and its consequence, cynicism – are more transparency and less hype, a lesson that needs to be passed on to clients as well.

Edelman's "Republican" Strategy

On the eve of the PRSA/Puget Sound event, I met with the organizers for dinner.  At our end of the table, a young PR pro led a discussion about the recent Edelman/Wal-Mart blogger "scandal."  She thought it was strange that the now infamous Edelman blogger had been doing outreach to the already converted -- a preaching-to-the-choir strategy.  Wouldn't it be more effective, she argued, if Edelman/Wal-Mart tried reaching out to the unconverted?  I quickly pointed to the elephant in the room.  Sticking with the converted has worked very well for Republican political campaigns, given the Democrat's historic struggle to find a single voice (this is the central point in George Lakoff's book, "Don't Think of an Elephant").  So practically speaking, wasn't the blogger's strategy smart if not ethical?

The table sort of agreed, but I later realized why I was wrong and my younger colleague was right:  Wal-Mart is not running for president.  It is attempting to rehabilitate its image in a medium where there is hyper-transparency.  How do you think the unconverted and the "MSM" (the mainstream media) felt reading the blogger's email, posted for everyone to read in The New York Times? I doubt Wal-Mart profited from last week's publicity.    

A number of PR people appear to be OK with the Edelman/Wal-Mart team's approach (Shel Holtz is one), and it's because the debate has mostly revolved around whether what the team did was wrong or right.  Putting aside ethics, we can still agree that what the team did, in retrospect, was counter-productive.  I wouldn't call it a scandal (worse things have happened, and the Edelman agency has a well-deserved reputation for integrity), but I would call it a communications crisis, and it was caused in part by the people who are supposed to handle crisis communications.  Lesson learned, I'll bet.

UPDATE:  In another story this week (New York Observer), Richard Edelman talks about the shift of power from reporters to bloggers:

“It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack,” said Mr. Edelman, whose firm netted about $260 million in 2005. “Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave The Journal; let’s show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show.

“You’re not God anymore,” he said.

Tis true.  Along with transparency comes the democratization of influence.  Tough new world, and I applaud Richard Edelman for traversing it, and for taking a few of the bruises along the way as we figure things out.

We used to talk about 15 minutes of fame.  In the new world we will all have 15 minutes of shame. 

Outing the Outer

Now that the secret's out -- Karl Rove was the source that outed CIA staffer Valerie Plame -- many people in and out of the blogosphere are wondering if Bush will keep his promise:  to punish the perpetrator of this year's most famous anonymice case.  Democrats are demanding Rove's resignation, but so far the word at the White House is mum.  We predict an even more strident debate on the subject of anonymity, a debate we have contributed to (most recently here). 

Toxic Blogs

ComputerWeekly: malicious code corrupts blog sites.

Websense, a provider of employee internet management solutions, said it has discovered hundreds of instances of blogs involved in the storage and delivery of harmful code.

The company said cyber-criminals are now taking advantage of blog sites that allow users to easily publish their own web pages at no cost. Blogs can be attractive vehicles for hackers for several reasons, it said.

For instance, blogs offer large amounts of free storage and do not require any identity authentication to post information. In addition, most blog hosting sites do not provide anti-virus protection for posted files

Phishing and Bogus Blogs

From ZDNet:

Malicious virus writers are attempting to lure people to malicious blogs using enticing e-mails and instant messages, according to a new report from Websense. Once a person arrives at the blog, which can be posted on a legitimate host site, the victim's computer becomes infected with software designed to steal sensitive information, such as passwords and bank account information.

"These aren't the kind of blog Web sites that someone would stumble upon and infect their machine accidentally," Dan Hubbard, Websense senior director of security and technology research, said in a statement. "The success of these attacks relies upon a certain level of social engineering to persuade the individual to click on the link."

On Anonymity

A post on the Electronic Frontier Foundation site advises folks on how to blog anonymously. Bad idea -- not only does this violate the code of transparency that regulates behavior on the Web, but it also discourages people from using effective channels for voicing their complaints.

Self-Inflicted Blog Wound

Was Wordpress wrong to use content-spam to boost its search rankings? Should open-source projects be held to higher standards of transparency? Check out the debate here.

Gelf on Delio

Three journalists-turned-bloggers are conducting their own investigation into Michelle Delio's work on their webzine, Gelf.

Michelle Delio

It's taken us a long time to post on this subject. A respected freelance journalist is undergoing a thorough examination of her career. Why? Because two stories that she posted for the MIT Technology Review were corrupted by false testimony provided by an anonymous source. The Review retracted the stories -- the right move -- and an investigation into Delio's oeuvre has ensued.

We've hesitated to write about this because we are a long-time fan of Ms. Delio's work, and we are most inclined to believe that she is innocent. The media/PR blogger world has been quite silent on this subject, and we think we know why: Ms. Delio's record suggests that this is not Stephen Glass territory, and as media bloggers we must pause before fanning the flames that threaten to consume yet another journalist.

POSTSCRIPT:

Adam Penenberg, a contributor to WiredNews.com and a journalism professor at N.Y.U., will be conducting an investigation into the hundreds of article that Delio wrote for that publication. Penenberg, you may recall, was the Forbes.com reporter in 1998 who broke the story of Stephen Glass's fabrications in The New Republic.

POST-POSTSCRIPT:

Infoworld has modified its online version of Michelle Delio's cover story this week, noting that "certain quoted material has been removed because its veracity could not be confirmed." The subject of the cover story? Corporate blogging, as noted here. A strange twist of fate: one of the most important stories on corporate blogging -- the new engine of corporate transparency -- is collateral damage in the war for transparency.