You’re never going to believe this, but Business does not trust the media. I know, shocking! But that is the lament that The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein has given us. His story begins with what at first seems like a fairly reasonable lament:
Recently I went looking for a well-run company to write about — the sort of corporate profile that used to be the bread and butter of business reporting. I quickly hit upon Clorox, which regularly shows up on the list of best companies to work for and recently walked away with an unusual number of awards for its marketing campaigns. I was also intrigued by the challenge of writing about a company in a “boring” industry like consumer packaged goods (Clorox bleach, S.O.S. scrub pads, Burt’s Bees lip balm, Brita water filters, Kingsford charcoal) rather than tech or finance.
Recently I went looking for a well-run company to write about — the sort of corporate profile that used to be the bread and butter of business reporting. I quickly hit upon Clorox, which regularly shows up on the list of best companies to work for and recently walked away with an unusual number of awards for its marketing campaigns. I was also intrigued by the challenge of writing about a company in a “boring” industry like consumer packaged goods (Clorox bleach, S.O.S. scrub pads, Burt’s Bees lip balm, Brita water filters, Kingsford charcoal) rather than tech or finance.
Responding to an email, the associate director of corporate communications called back to get a better idea of what I had in mind. I offered to come out to Oakland, Calif., and spend time talking to some of the top executives and a couple of brand managers, and perhaps visit a manufacturing plant closer to home in Maryland. I explained I didn’t know enough yet to have an “angle” for the story other than trying to understand why the company was so admired. She seemed interested and offered to mail me some material to get started.
A few days later, I got a short email back saying that “we’re going to have to decline to participate” because Clorox’s executives were too busy.
Such is the sorry state of corporate media relations these days. Even the prospect of a positive story can’t crack open the door to the executive suite. Alan Murray, who spent years at the Wall Street Journal as a reporter and editor before taking the reins at Fortune magazine, summed it up this way: “One, they don’t trust us. And, two, they don’t need us.”Responding to an email, the associate director of corporate communications called back to get a better idea of what I had in mind. I offered to come out to Oakland, Calif., and spend time talking to some of the top executives and a couple of brand managers, and perhaps visit a manufacturing plant closer to home in Maryland. I explained I didn’t know enough yet to have an “angle” for the story other than trying to understand why the company was so admired. She seemed interested and offered to mail me some material to get started.
A few days later, I got a short email back saying that “we’re going to have to decline to participate” because Clorox’s executives were too busy.
Such is the sorry state of corporate media relations these days. Even the prospect of a positive story can’t crack open the door to the executive suite. Alan Murray, who spent years at the Wall Street Journal as a reporter and editor before taking the reins at Fortune magazine, summed it up this way: “One, they don’t trust us. And, two, they don’t need us.”
And whose fault is this? Take a guess. Go ahead, guess!
Indeed, what’s happened in the corporate world is not all that different from what has happened in politics and government in the era of Donald Trump, whose administration has set new highs in terms of distrust and hostility toward the press.
Yep, like any good Leftist who knows how to take responsibility for his actions, Pearlstein goes straight to the “Well it all started when the other guy hit me back” excuse! He goes on to wax nostalgic about the good old days when companies viewed outreach to the press as an important part of doing business and they had representatives who were willing and able to talk to the business press. Fast forward to today where obtaining an interview with someone at a corporate office is now akin to The Quest for The Holy Grail. And I don’t think that this is an unreasonable lament. If I worked for a once respected profession that is now trusted as much as a Carnival Barker I’d long for the good old days as well.
“When you call now, it’s battle stations,” reports David Segal, a longtime business writer at the New York Times. “There’s no longer any assumption that we are looking for enlightenment or understanding. The hostility is palpable.”
“You often get the sense their job is to prevent access, to keep you at arm’s length,” agreed Ellen Pollock, a veteran of the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek who is now at the Times as business editor.
Pearlstein then discusses some research as to which companies and industries in general are the best/worst and proceeds to name names among companies that refused interviews over a six month period (emphasis throughout this post is all mine).
With the help of Post researcher Magda Jean-Louis, I did an unscientific search of the Times Business section for the past six months looking for instances of companies that declined to comment or were rude enough to never respond to a reporter’s questions. The list includes LVMH, First Data, Career Education, Theranos, Dodge & Cox, Qualcomm, Universal, Warner Bros. and Fox, Tiger Brands, Tesla, Google, Twitter, Toyota, Exxon Mobil and Lyft.
Not every company has reduced media relations to a grudging game of defense. Some industries, such as banking, aerospace and hospitality, are better than others, with tech being the worst, hands down. A number of communications professionals I contacted expressed surprise and dismay when told of my own experiences and those of my colleagues and assured me that they were not reflective of industry best practices.
I’ll come back to the part that I emphasized in a bit. Pearlstein shares the thoughts of a leader in the field:
“This is not what we stand for as a profession,” said Roger Bolton, a veteran of IBM and Aetna who now heads the Arthur W. Page Society, the leading organization for corporate communications professionals. “Media relations is a critical core responsibility, and companies should seek to build trusting relationships with the media.”
In fact, said Aedhmar Hynes, who leads the global PR firm Text 100 and is chairman of the Page Society’s board, in the age of social media and fake news, the journalism produced at “legitimate news outlets is more important to us than ever because these are trusted, independent sources of information.”
Even Bolton and Hynes, however, acknowledge that in many companies, what is widely referred to as “earned media” now takes a back seat to “owned media”— companies using websites, Internet search engines and social media to build their brand identities and communicate directly with stakeholders.
Trusted and independent? Delusion certainly is not limited to the press! The article goes on to point out how corporate communications has shifted from outreach to the press to managing all communications internally to communicate directly with the public.
He (the head of a major PR firm) cites the results of his company’s 2018 “Trust Barometer,” which found that global consumers now view the news media as the “least trusted institution” because it is elitist, biased and oblivious to the needs of most people.
Pearlstein seemingly gives us some introspection:
To be fair, we in the media are at least half responsible for the sorry state of corporate press relations. Gone are the days when major newspapers and wire services deployed beat reporters whose entire jobs were to cover one industry or one company, with time to develop expertise, sources and relationships. Business staffs and business coverage have been cut way back, and business magazines are a shell of their former selves — what’s left focuses mainly on technology companies and consumer issues. When the media does come calling, it is too often inexperienced writers who know little about the company or the industry and are spread so thin that they have hours, not days, to report and write the story.
I think that this is a fair point, but misses a key point. This last paragraph came just a few lines after the bold text I just cited about how the media is seen as elitist, biased, and oblivious. Did the recent debacle that was The Washington Correspondents’ Dinner teach him nothing?
“I have definitely seen the interactions become more transactional and less based on the kinds of relationships that create trust,” said Kelli Parsons, senior vice president and chief communications officer at United Technologies, one company that continues to engage with reporters. “And without trust, there is going to be a belief [on the part of corporate executives] that the risk of engagement is higher than any potential reward.”
Risk, in fact, is the word that comes up repeatedly in conversations with corporate communications veterans.
Top executives “live in an environment where they can’t tolerate a whole lot of risk,” one told me. “A negative story, if it is picked up by social media, can be more damaging than ever. That’s why they have become so nervous about engaging the press.”
Exactly. Given the efficiency of being able to take their messages directly to customers, why wold corporations take their chances with the media? Even the most innocuous comment can be taken out of context and twisted – anyone who’s worked in the corporate world for a few years has been warned about talking to reporters and seen real examples of quotes taken out of context just to create a false negative impression. Or what if the journalist interviewing you decides that they want to make a name for themselves and ask you a question regarding some political issue? Just look at The Radical Left’s complete freakout over Chick Fil A’s CEO publicly affirming the radical notion that marriage is between a man and a woman? No matter the issue you end up angering half of the customer base. And then you choose to anger the one that won’t be screaming in the streets but will boycott your business and crash your company’s value, or do you set off the side that will dox you and deploy their thugs to terrorize your family at your home? How is talking to a reporter worth this chance? And going back the the first portion of this post where I used emphasis, maybe the way to reagin trust from Corporate America isn’t to start by naming and shaming a few companies who committed the heinous offense of not wanting to speak with reporters?
“There is this real risk-avoidance mentality that has caused too many companies to effectively abandon media relations,” another said. “What they don’t realize is that by not responding, by not engaging, that is communicating a message that [the media is] not worth their time. And when the time comes that they need the media to explain something important and complex, they will have no credibility. They are kidding themselves if they think they can get that credibility through websites and social media.”
Need? And that’s the arrogance of the media. If things have gotten so bad that the public won’t trust you what makes you think that they won’t dismiss the press as some media flaks? And exactly who should they trust? The kind of unbiased journalist who writes crazed pieces like The business lobby’s chance to do what’s right for America (Hint: It involves condemning President Trump’s tax cuts), The middle class doesn’t want a tax cut. It wants better government (Actually, it wants both. Since the leaders of both parties won’t give us better government, letting the American people keep their own money has turned out to be surprisingly popular), Now is the time for business leaders to dump Trump — for the good of the country, or The Republicans’ Obamacare repeal is one big lie. While that last headline is 100% accurate, the bi-line of “The Obamacare repeal is really a Republican war on the poor and the sick.” is not.
If the press wants more trust from the public as well as corporate America, maybe a good starting point would be to be more trustworthy?
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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
The “distrust” is long overdue. I was an undergrad when Savio and his thugs were beating the shit out of conservatives. the Press reported the bloody attacks as “peaceful ” protests! The Press lied in ’64; it still does 54 years later.
The big difference, and it is BIG, is thatDon fears not and “tells it like it is” (That Orwell Speak from ’64 honestly translated meant LIE; maybe the Press knows very well that their lies of the last 60 years are “coming home to roost!”!), Don call a spade a spade. Presidents have not done so since 1988! Don is abandoning tradition,
I saw “Antman” and there are several shots of the Gate where Savio and his thugs used to patrol. The first time it was on screen, I said to myself,”That cannot be The Gate; there are no goons with weapons!:, But the next few times I said it is the Gate either the thugs have their weapons hidden or the studio kept them away.
Funny… prominent liberals go overseas or before cameras here and pronounce that Trump is an embarrassment to the majority of Americans and this majority does not trust him. Yet, all he has to do is say “fake news” and everyone suddenly distrusts the honest, open-minded, unbiased, heroic media just trying to do its job. That’s sort of contradictory.
Ardent liberals seemingly never get tired of being lied to, but most people object to it. So, when liberal media lies are exposed, along with the liberal media’s agenda, people logically turn away. It isn’t healthy to simply distrust the media because they are reporting the story, but they themselves have left objective people few other choices.
“Top executives “live in an environment where they can’t tolerate a whole lot of risk,” one told me. “A negative story, if it is picked up by social media, can be more damaging than ever. That’s why they have become so nervous about engaging the press.”
Since the media is now driven by agenda and/or ratings, the negatives of controversy and conflict are the sole substance of business reporting—and that’s not good for business.
The media is all propaganda and yellow journalism now. I doubt if it will EVER regain its credibility.
@David Horning: But… it’s Trump’s fault, because he pointed it out.
@David Horning: They won’t. Leftism is a religion, so if they fail suggesting that is because their ideas were bad suggests that their belief system might not be right. Ergo, it must always be someone else’s fault
Geeze I wonder what is going on here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/22/epa-chief-pruitt-met-with-many-corporate-execs-shortly-before-making-decisions-in-their-favor/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8875c0c676e2
Why wont corporate PR people chat up their companies with this bird cage liner of a paper?
@kitt: Of greater curiosity is why the media is now a full-on overt propaganda arm of the Democrat party?
@Deplorable Me: It has been for many years, but like previous admins were better at hiding corruption these assclowns are just to damn stoopid to cover it up.