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Disturbing Television Media Trend #7: Unconfirmed Reports
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If the story of Chicken Little was told today, there is a strong likelihood that it would quickly be picked-up by, and reported by, the television news media.
It would go like this: Chicken Little would have an acorn fall on her head, she would scream, “The sky is falling.” Minutes later the news media would be reporting that we have unconfirmed reports that they sky is falling.
I can hear it now: “CNN has not yet confirmed that the sky is falling, but reports from the barn yard indicate Chicken Little said, ‘The Sky is falling’.”
I’ve been hearing the phrase, “has not confirmed,” much too often as I scan the dials of television news each morning. CNN’s sister network, HLN, uses this phrase much too often. Research by I.Q. Media found the phrase was used 187 times on HLN Morning Express with Robyn Meade, the program where I first noticed this disturbing trend. I’m a regular morning viewer of the show, but the phrase has turned up too frequently lately on stories about the Korean ferry accident, the Donald Sterling controversy, the Malaysian Airlines 370 story, and reports in the realm of entertainment and social media.
When I hear the phrase, “We have not confirmed,” what I really hear is, “Our producers are too incompetent and lazy to know how to confirm something before they put it in the teleprompter.” As a former reporter and anchor, I’m embarrassed for the anchors who have to read the story, knowing that many are good journalists who must do what the boss says if they want to keep their job. In my career, I reached the point at which I could not ethically and in good conscious do the dumb things and say the dumb things my bosses wanted me to do.
By comparison, during the Water Gate investigation by the Washington Post, nothing was ever reported until it was confirmed by at least three sources. Let me shout that: THREE SOURCES.
For 20 years I’ve been observing the silly ritual of, “CNN reports that ABC reports that NBC reports the CBS reports that CNN reports the sky is falling.” For 20 years, media has gone from attributing facts and stories from their own sources, to facts reported by a competing network, to only rumors being shared by some source, which is not verified or known to be reliable.
It gets worse because the story containing the unverified and unconfirmed information is recycled in online sources that simply aggregate and repeat the reports. Search most news topics and you can find the identical story with the identical words on thousands of websites.
So how does this affect you if you are in PR and communications, working for a corporation, non-profit organization or government agency?
It is easier than ever before for someone to intentionally or inadvertently destroy the reputation of your employer or client, while simultaneously damaging revenues.
Winston Churchill has been paraphrased as saying a lie can be half way across town before the truth puts on its boots in the morning. In today’s modern digital age, a lie has circled the globe countless times by unreliable sources and then circulated more by so-called reliable media sources, before you even know the lie is out there.
This disturbing trend means you need a skilled staff or vendor who can monitor online content every minute of the day, so you can respond quickly.
And because the online trend will be reported by the mainstream media, more than ever before you must have well trained spokespeople who can respond quickly and a crisis communications plan created on a clear sunny day that fully addresses such crisis scenarios. Failing to prepare and attempting to wing it in the middle of the crisis will make the crisis much worse and further damage reputations and revenues.
To watch “7 Disturbing Media Trends and How You Can Combat Them” On Demand please click here.
A case in point of social media opinions run amuck, is the story that came to light on April 6, 2014, when a mother and father on a round-the-world sailboat trip sent out a distress signal because their one-year-old daughter was ill and their boat had lost steering 900 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Four California Air National Guard members parachuted into the water to rescue the family and bring them safely aboard the USS Vandergrift, which was headed to San Diego.
The sad reality is the media, for nearly 20 years, has laid inflammatory opinions out for the public to hear, just to fuel a degree of outrage, so that people keep talking about what they heard on the news and where they heard it. News Talk Radio pioneered it and I’d say Rush Limbaugh turned it into an ugly ratings bonanza, copied by local talk radio, which has then been copied by Fox News and CNN each time they assemble a group of pundits who scream at each other with opposing views.
Long term, your company could see serious damage to both reputation and revenue because of social media pressure. You could be forced to apologize for harmless acts or actions that capture the ire of social media.
But also in the realm of crisis communications and media relations, you must realize that if an employee or eyewitness captures a compromising video of one of your executives, employees, or a mishap, it could be featured on the news. Hence, you must be prepared with your crisis communications plan to know how to respond quickly to any emerging crisis. Your crisis communications plan must be able to move at the speed of social media and not at the slow pace of traditional corporate communications.
outlets don’t have it, even when the information is insignificant to the audience or fails to reveal any groundbreaking information.
If you are in public relations or communications, this trend could impact the company, non-profit organization or government agency you work for. You must be aware that any ordinary interview might get blown out of proportion by your local television station. This means a rather insignificant amount of information might get more attention than it deserves.
Exclusives are a growing problem. Proceed with caution.
ous, faceless, social media world feels compelled to pass judgment upon.
Your legitimate news may not get covered at all because producers have already filled their allotted time in the newscast with fluff.
The reality of what gets news coverage is really based on the point of view of a producer, who has a limited amount of time in a newscast and fills it with the things they think the audience will talk about the most. Producers can be fickle. I fought with them daily in the newsroom when I was a reporter. Often, they were Jeckle and Hyde; I never knew which I was getting on any given day.
Sadly, this new disturbing trend slaps the breaking news moniker on whatever the first story of the newscast is, even if the event happened hours before. In many cases the issue is already resolved with no new information.