In The Face Of Fake News, How To Keep Your Communication Legit

Several weeks ago I read a fascinating article by Bridget Botelho, a member of the ASBPE (American Society for Business Publication Editors) and an editorial director for TechTarget’s business information and technology media group. Via my public relations company I’ve worked off and on with Botelho and her team for years.
I was shocked by a remark in a panel discussion she was leading from TechTarget executive editor Don Fluckinger: “It’s been three months since I’ve written fake news.” Fluckinger is a superb journalist, Botelho noted, who’s written for various trade publications since 1990. It turns out he’d left journalism for a time several years ago for a stint in PR. As traditional publications falter, he, like many journalists, was curious about what it would be like to work in public relations. Furthermore, the PR job paid more.
What Fluckinger encountered, though, turned him cold: the responsibility to spin stories to promote clients’ products and services and pitch the stories as “exclusives” to editors and especially to cub reporters who would have a more difficult time discerning fluff from fact. The resulting condition: “Fake News.”
“This isn’t fake news in the sense of complete falsehoods such as ‘Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s,’ but it isn’t really actual news, either,” Fluckinger said. “They have a nice name for it: ‘Thought leadership.’”
As someone who strongly advocates for thought leadership — the non promotional stories that educate and engage readers instead of promoting — this prognosis stood my neck hairs on end. Here’s how Fluckinger’s PR experience had gone down: Approximately six months or so before a new product or service is scheduled, a PR pro like himself would ghostwrite a piece and publish it under the byline of the CEO or another high ranking executive, and make the case for the urgent market need for a certain technology. Then — surprise — the company would deliver the answer to the need six months’ hence.
“We’d hit up media outlets big and small, legit and sketchy, asking them to run the article,” Fluckinger was quoted by Botelho as saying. “Often, low-level blogs would pick something up first because they needed content to attract traffic, which was how they earned their revenue. Asian and European sites…would take most anything we wrote as long as the client was selling stuff in those markets or at least participating in industry conferences in their neck of the woods.”
As the PR-planted story gained traction, an increasing number of more legitimate publications would pick up the story as well, with minor re-writes, because the buzz was now too loud to risk missing. Sometimes the market interest and need is legitimate, Fluckinger noted, but the coup de grâce would be the delivery of a “market research report” the company had paid for, together with a quote in a trade magazine (and by now there would be multiple to chose from) that seems to validate the product’s legitimacy. That, according to Fluckinger, is fake news.
I completely agree. In Fluckinger’s case, he ultimately quit the PR job and returned to journalism, realizing he’d been “part of the problem and not the solution” during his temporary stint in PR. While the actions Fluckinger noted are not something I nor anyone who follows my line of thinking would condone, the process of “shifty pitching” is all too common in public relations today. (Editorial note — to be clear, this observation is not directed at any agency or practitioner, but at practices I believe are all too common and that the industry at large should make an effort to change.)
Says Eric Christopher, CEO of Phoenix-based startup marketing firm BizFamous, “The proliferation of PR being positioned as news is the subset of an even bigger problem. Legitimate news sources like newspapers, journals, and magazines are struggling to effectively monetize their business with the sharp decline of print circulation.”
A decade ago, people still paid for subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, whereas in today’s digital age, most people are getting their news for free via social media and other non-traditional websites, Chistopher notes. “The result is that real news outlets and legitimate publishers are struggling to pay the bills and attract top journalistic talent. The consequence of this challenge is that many news outlets and publishers are forced to rely on content from contributors and ‘social’ reporting, in order to have sufficient pages on their site to attract ad revenue….It’s increasingly difficult for the time-ravaged person to discern between what is real news and what is PR or fake news.”
What Thought Leadership Is.
In a nutshell, the concept of thought leadership has existed for many years more than the terminology has lived. It’s the genuine information you would give your best friend, as opposed to the hype a traditional PR team would provide.
From my earliest days as the PR lead for Novell, a pioneer in the concept of PC networking, my gut told me that press releases about the “speeds and feeds” of the idea would be near useless. The people who could really benefit from the idea of getting computer resources from shared file and print servers had no idea what “local area networking” was.
So with my team, we told the stories of the early participants in the PC networking realm. A law office. A medical practice. A university. What led them to consider a local area network? Who did they need to convince, and how much did it cost? What were the other alternatives, and how much difference did the new technology make? Was it hard to learn? Easy or hard to maintain and install? And if they had it to do again, what would they do differently now?
This is the information readers would be glad to receive. Equally critical is that any information generated be clearly identified as to the writer and source and any affiliation with the product, the company that produced the product, or the company telling the story about the installation. Furthermore, the story would need to accurately represent that the solution was likely a constellation of products, with no one component being the “silver bullet” of the story at hand.
Yes, valid and unbiased research is hard to find.
Research reports are hard to come by. Thus the emergence of corporate or even government entity sponsored reports. Also on Botelho’s panel was Roy Harris, former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a senior editor of CFO magazine. Harris notes that trustworthiness has fallen steeply in current years, especially around government surveys and studies.
When corporate money is behind published studies, the results of the studies aren’t exactly virtuous, he notes. The corporation may have been selective about which questions to ask. Data can be omitted or removed that doesn’t support the need for the sponsor’s products or service. Or the survey questions may have been written in a way to ensure favorable results.
“Whenever I receive a new ‘study’ in my inbox, I scour it for sponsorship info,” he said. “If the money trail leads to a company with a stake in the results, I hit delete.”
The solution for entrepreneurs: Try harder to find and to participate in legitimately unsponsored reports from trusted organizations such as Gartner, IDC or Forrester. (Forrester, as a good example in point, produces many reports that are strictly free of vendor involvement, and will take care to not give extra credence to interview sources who are Forrester clients when producing reports.)
As an entrepreneur if you must conduct or sponsor research to vet out information for which no independent findings exist, do so with care and be scrupulous about clearly identifying your company as the sponsoring source. There may still be a need for the information, but for the sake of credibility you should take extra steps to make your role clear.
As an example, consider the recent hubbub over the Juicero device that produces “fresh squeezed juice” by compressing a pre-ordered packet. Bloomberg reporters discovered the packets could be squeezed just as readily by hand, without the $400 machine. Juicero’s CEO responded within 24 hours with a direct and fairly effective communication.
But some readers were put off by the fact the author of the accompanying video showing proper use of the machine was identified as a Medium.com contributor (which she was) without also disclosing that she was the Director of Communications for Juicero as well. In the realm of sinking trust, these details matter more than ever before.
What about product comparisons and reviews?
Media watcher Sam Whitmore, of Media Survey, has long noted the plummeting resources in traditional journalism for product comparison reviews. This creates a dilemma, as readers value and want increasingly more comparative data. In some respects, this phenomenon has helped to spur the increasing power of customer reviews. On a site like Amazon, the reviews of confirmed customers can wield higher power than ever before. For entrepreneurs, then, the need to invite happy customers to share their authentic experiences is paramount.
However, there is a legitimate value in creating comparison charts of your own product when stacked up against others as well. Customers want this information and you are within your rights to provide it so long as you clearly identify yourself as the source and avoid misrepresenting any other products involved. And in the remaining cases where independent product reviews still happen, treat reviewing editors with the utmost attention and care.
Talk to them about where your product plays best, as correct positioning can be a critical part of your goal. Would you want your small business solution to be stacked up as an inferior player against an enterprise solution where you were never intended to play?
Following a published review, if the reporter has made any errors, follow up quickly with factual information that can allow them to correct their results. Show gratitude to reporters for the work they’ve expended (as it is massive, both in time and in stress). But don’t thank them “for naming us editors’ choice” as this impugns the integrity of their findings, which require them to call the results as they see them, not to follow a personal desire to name a vendor their favorite choice.
A tip from Christopher on getting authentic news coverage for your business: “A key component to a successful PR campaign is to have your content and story ready in advance, so you’re prepared to share your perspective when a legitimate news story arises. Additionally, have a couple pitches or angles prepared on how your content solves a problem or tells a compelling story, so journalists and editors can intuitively understand how your story can benefit them and their audience. Rather than trying to convince a journalist or editor to ‘brag’ about your business to the world, try to demonstrate how your content will benefit their audience in a meaningful way.”
Ultimately, Botelho concludes, reporters and readers must be increasingly skeptical of the sources of the information provided and do due diligence to avoid sharing false content. And in creating any content, whether as a reporter or a “thought leadership” writer, maintain ethical standards against the pressure from ill-advised marketing teams. Remember, the best content, always, is the material that serves your readers, first and foremost.
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