The Wax Blog

100 million years ago I worked as an executive at a publicly held tech firm. We knew that in order to bury bad news (ie a poor quarter) we would send the release out at 4 pm on Friday. By the time Monday rolled around there would be two to three more days of news covering ours.   Now more companies have become much more ingenious ways at burying their bad news – rather than addressing it properly. (For more on that, read my post on  “Crisis Communications in a 2.0 World“)

Wondering how they do it? Here are just a few methods I’ve seen. Comment with more examples, please!

1) Flood the Internet with alternative messaging. Piling on the social media releases, blogs and Twitter posts can help bury a negative opinion or story quickly by using SEO. Studies show about 60% of Internet users click on a result in the first page. Keeping that page inundated with positive information – particularly if it appears to come from sources that are not your own – can easily bury negative opinions. I agree with the Online Marketing Blog, though, that using this to address a real crisis is not a long-term fix.

2) Bury it on a holiday. At the end of 2009, a story came out about Goldman Sachs selling mortgaged-based CDO’s to clients and at the same time  selling the securities short themselves. Goldman Sachs supposedly made it quite hard for reporters to reach executives for comment and further blocked the story so that it came out Christmas Eve in the New York Times. Thereafter it’s received little press.

3) Make it impossible to fact-check the article. Although bloggers can write pretty much whatever they want, traditional media still needs to check facts in order to run with a story. Keeping CBS or as in Goldman Sachs “allegedly” keeping the New York Times from verifying aspects of a story can bury it too.

4) Divert the issue.  Although most of the messaging surrounding the Toyota recall focuses on sticky floor mats, the real problem may be the pedal or as Steve Wozniak asserts, it could be a computer glitch. (If you haven’t heard, the Woz ‘s Prius gets stuck at 97mph while in cruise control) Although Toyota states there “may” be a problem with the pedal in its latest update, much of what we’ve seen in our media is concerning the floor mats. The Woz asserts its a software problem, not a pedal or mat issue. Since the main issue is sudden acceleration – something we haven’t seen in any of Toyota’s messaging – this is probably a good example of a diversion tactic.

5) Lie. It almost worked for Martha and it definitely worked for OJ.

Bottom line is that the organizations with true investigative journalists are dwindling. TV and print media no longer has the budget to spend months on uncovering stories ala Watergate. Companies have learned the game and crisis communications firms have become much more adept at the spin.  And that could be a very bad thing for us.

It’s a common rule that in the media, fear sells and good news doesn’t. Or does it? One of the things that may be changing is that sensationalism is no longer selling papers. These days, it’s just too easy to figure out what’s hype and what’s right.

Perhaps the manner in which media is covering major stories like the swine flu is going to determine who stays and who goes. I’ve always liked the Detroit Free Press. Their story on the first case of swine flu in Michigan was headed “Michigan Ready to Fight Swine Flu” with the subhead “Should swine flu spread in Michigan, state health officials will have 1.25 million doses of antiviral medication ready.” Today the New York Times moved swine flu to an inside page with a fairly objective report including the information that swine flu deaths in Mexico only totaled 16, not over 100 as originally reported.

Let’s look at some of the other headlines from the past few days that may not be quite as objective:

“New York Swine Flu Forces More Stadium Closures” – New York Post

“Airlines waiving change fees amid swine flu scare” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“LIving with Swine Flu’s Uncertain Threat” – BBC News

Our ability to see through the hype and do our own investigating online has made the sensationalist headlines much more transparent. One only has to read the tweetchat on swine flu on Twitter to see the cynicism riffling through the various tweets of other media links and disinformation. And I think media, in particular newspapers, that continue to try to sell through fear and sensationalism are the ones that are getting left in the dust.

Print is losing readers across the board, everyone knows that. But perhaps one way to weed out those that just may succeed is by looking at who’s reporting responsibly and who’s still selling fear. According to a story in Wired that quotes numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations The New York Post’s circulation is down nearly 21% this year. Atlanta Journal-Constitution is down over 20% as well. And the Detroit Free-Press? Down, less than 6%. The New York Times has lost just 3.5%. Guess what? I think responsible journalism is winning.