eastwikkers

I Objective – Reporting vs. Commentary

According to a new Zogby poll (thanks to The Future of News for the post):

“The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides.”

And no wonder. News programming today often makes little distinction between news reporting and commentary, and the journalist is often as important as the news itself.

But distinctions matter. Journalism can never be truly “unbiased.” By the time we read any news article or watch any news segment, even the most “objective” news has been run through a series of bias filters. Each news department selects which stories to cover and which reporters to cover it. Each reporter selects which aspects of a story to focus on and which details of all possible details to include in the story. And editors make selective changes to fit a variety of criteria.

But recognizing this inherent bias, doesn’t mean we should stop insisting on some objectivity. Journalists can still choose to report mainly on the who, what, when, where, and why, and refrain from subjective assessment. They can still do their best to be fair and cover both sides of an issue, reporting that some people disagree about reported facts, and quoting the subjective assessments of people on multiple sides of an issue. And news programs (and bloggers who report the news) can still make a clear distinction between news reports and commentary.

This distinction is an important one for me because it goes to the issue of trust. With the blurring of the distinction between reporting and commentary, to trust the news, we must place more trust in the news organization (with all its corporate influences), which can then lead to an abuse of that trust in the form of completely subjective reporting that serves only the bias. If we can’t trust the organizations, then we’re left only with individuals – whether reporters, commentators, or bloggers – and many of these have little credibility beyond zeal. Stephen Colbert’s incredible humor and influence come from playing off this so perfectly, and the fact that some people don’t recognize the Colbert irony is a testament to what they are not recognizing in actual news programming.

And it’s a good reminder for PR pros. While subjective assessment (“the leader in…”) certainly has its place, hype-free objective reporting encourages trust and ultimately coverage.

While I’d like to think the Zogby poll indicates healthy skepticism, I fear it indicates growing cynicism about an environment in which persuasiveness comes all too often from celebrity and the amount of noise one makes.

The Green Thing

Our former colleague Giovanni Rodriguez worries that “community” is under stress from commercial interests that would abuse the label. “A fair number of people in my world have wondered if marketers are using the word to whitewash their commercial interests.”

I say, take heart. Unlike fabricated labels such as “Web 2.0,” “community” is a real word with some clear definitions. Web 2.0 was coined to refer to a new generation of web-based services and tools, including social networking sites, wikis, and folksonomies, but was quickly adopted as a catch phrase referring to all sorts of things, including websites, businesses, business models, even completely unrelated technologies. And since few actually knew what it meant and investment dollars poured in, little could be done to stop the flood.

But “community” means something generally understood, and if folks start using it for something that isn’t in the spirit of a community, readers will more easily detect it. At the same time, it’s important not to force this broad term to mean only one type of online community. Perhaps we need to keep a modifier in front of it – something more specific and informative than “online” – so we preserve usefulness of the general term and encourage other types of communities, online and off.

Another word feeling the stress is “green.” Although we can all agree that one definition of “green” is “environmentally sound or beneficial,” agreeing on what is environmentally sound or beneficial is far more difficult—which means “green” can end up meaning just about anything.

We may well have reached a tipping point with support for environmental issues. Tim Dyson is hopeful. Hollywood has gone green. Evangelicals have gone green. And PRWeek is holding its first-ever green conference in San Francisco because “Corporations are going green like never before.” But that may also mean that many other companies will soon turn green with envy and start spending the green to convince everyone they too are going green. So while we may finally be planting the right garden, there will still likely be plenty of weeding to do.

Getting Emotional About Writing

In Really Bad Powerpoint, Seth Godin suggests a better way to use Microsoft PowerPoint. While I disagree with one of his conclusions (“No more than six words on a slide. EVER”—I don’t like any rule that makes me do math when I’m supposed to be writing) his core point cannot be repeated often enough. As Seth puts it:

Communication is the transfer of emotion.

His focus is PowerPoint, but his message is universal:

You can wreck a communication process with lousy logic or unsupported facts, but you can’t complete it without emotion. Logic is not enough.

And this truth goes far beyond sales, to politics, the law, and even science.

Getting emotional in writing scares many of us. Why? Too much emotion (except for enthusiasm for the boss/product/company) usually gets us into trouble. An angry memo or email can get us fired. Besides, many of us were taught in school by means of blood-red corrections to eliminate emotion from our writing—an unfortunate result of the belief that we can somehow separate our logical being from our emotional being.

But we can’t.

And we shouldn’t try. Instead we need to recognize that everything we write has emotional content for both the writer and reader. Even if we think we’re being completely unemotional (which is different than being objective!) emotion exists. First, writers have feelings about the topic and the intended readers. Not accounting for how we feel about our topic and readers will allow fear, awe, boredom, disrespect, and more to show. And readers have feelings about the topic and the writer. Not accounting for these feelings almost guarantees our writing will have the wrong impact or none at all. Even if we think we’re just listing facts, emotions help us decide which facts to include, their order, and sometimes how we phrase them. And if we’re communicating facts that readers don’t want to read, we need to understand how easy it is for readers to dismiss them—or dismiss the writer—rather than acknowledge them.

All this doesn’t mean that everything we write should drip with emotion. That doesn’t work for most readers in most situations. In fact, we often—due to responsibility or strategy—need to generate a feeling (professional disagreement) different than what we actually feel (outrage). But we do need to acknowledge all the emotion so we can then craft a communication that achieves the desired effect.

More Social Media

Steve Rubel has again called for the elimination of the label “social media.” And again I’ll disagree.

Rubel’s underlying premise is right:

“The fact is that everyone who is contributing to the dialogue - be it in video, text or photos - has earned the right to be called media.”

But I disagree with his rationale for eliminating the label:

“It’s like we’re a separate entity from the rest of the so-called “mainstream” journalists, filmmakers, photographers, etc. who do what we do and get paid more for it. We sit in a special dish like leftover meatloaf so we need a special name. If you use these phrases you're unintentionally perpetuating that myth.”

First of all, mainstream media and much of the public love (or have finally embraced) the social media phenomenon, so the “special dish” is clearly in the main course and there’s nothing “leftover” about it.

More important, we need the label to understand the phenomenon. We come to understand new things by looking at something we already understand (mainstream media) and explaining the differences (the social elements). For this reason, Rubel admits that “the phrases were helpful as the world began to take notice. But now, it’s different. We’ve arrived.” Well, Rubel has arrived. Mainstream media, Silicon Valley, and millions of people around the world have also arrived. But not everyone, and we certainly are not finished understanding how this arrival is changing the world. Imagine trying to write about how media is changing today without using “social media.” It can’t be done. The label is not a buzzword, and it will disappear from current usage slowly. And it will take up permanent residence in history books.

Meanwhile, I propose satisfying Rubel (I hope) by stating clearly that he and all bloggers are part of the media, without any limiting modifier. But I insist on saying that he got there by being very smart about and being a leader in the development of social media.