Disturbing Television Media Trend Bonus #8: Bad Imitation is Not Flattery
It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But in television news, imitation is usually the sincerest form of panic and desperation.
Case in point: On June 3rd the Today Show’s Al Roker planted a prize in a park in Dallas, Texas, then gave out clues on Twitter and on the Today Show. This was a sad, weak attempt concocted by some producer to try to imitate the wildly successful and highly publicized good deeds of a mystery person in San Francisco. With the Twitter handle @HiddenCash, the mystery man hid cash in envelopes all over town and gave out clues via Twitter. He then moved on to other cities and other people copied his generous actions.
But the copycat effort by the Today Show made me truly embarrassed for NBC. Imagine the humiliation of knowing that very few people actually participated in the Today Show scavenger hunt. This dumb copycat imitation reconfirms my decision to leave television news in 1993.
The original mystery man told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had just closed a half-million dollar real estate deal and wanted to create a social experiment for good. The Today Show, however, was only attempting to create a social experiment for good ratings.
The lesson for those of you in PR and communications is that if you can be the first to imitate the success of someone else, you can likely get easier media coverage for it. If something big gets publicity at the national level, you can bet your local television news media is looking for a local angle. Just be warned, do it right, because doing it as poorly as the Today Show did it is just embarrassing and sad and opens you to mockery.
For proof of mockery, watch my favorite television program, The Daily Show. Here is a perfect example of The Daily Show observing some of the same ridiculous behavior that I observe.
The biggest difference between The Daily Show and television news is that The Daily Show has a better research team and is more committed to accuracy than any television news outlet on the planet.
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.
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.
