Learning Opportunities
Fine Line Between Spin & Sin
April 2012
There is no question that a balanced approach to media training — in which spokespeople are taught the skills of pausing, answering the question in clear, concise terms and stopping as their primary skill — makes it easier for spokespeople to understand the fine line that exists between deception, lies and spin.
In her book LYING: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, contemporary philosopher Sissela Bok expresses her belief that lying is a subset of deception. She defines deception as that which occurs when “we communicate messages meant to mislead … meant to make them believe what we ourselves do not believe.” She defines a lie as “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.” To lie, you must make some form of statement; you cannot lie by simply omitting facts. If you omit facts to create a false impression, you are practicing a form of deception.
While we believe that the vast majority of media trainers and public relations practitioners never counsel clients to lie or intentionally deceive when they face reporters (with the possible rare exception of extreme cases of foreign policy or national security), it is useful to examine the lines between deception, lies and spin as a means of fine-tuning the advice we provide to spokespeople.
In a presentation to the American Political Association, John J. Mearsheimer provides a definition of spin that clearly delineates it from both lying and deception. Spin occurs when someone links together facts in a way that attempts to portray an individual or organization in the best possible light.
Chances are, if you’ve ever sent out a résumé, you have practiced a form of spin. Spin involves downplaying or ignoring certain facts that could create a negative perception. The emphasis is on making yourself look as good as possible by focusing attention on information that creates a positive impression.
The thin line between spin and sin lies somewhere between the creation of a true impression and a false impression, resulting from which decisions or facts are included, which facts are omitted, and how the facts are structured. In other words, if the facts are true and the impression left by those facts is true, you're on the safe side of spin. However, if the facts are true but the impression left by how the facts are selected or structured is false or misleading, the precise location of the ethical line needs to be discussed or reviewed by all those involved. If the facts are untrue, and people in the organization know them to be untrue, the organization is lying.
Spin is not necessarily a form of deception, provided that the story created by the facts is not intended to mislead and the facts underlying the story are true. But the line between spin and lying is definitely crossed when accuracy and/or truthfulness are compromised.
In her book LYING: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, contemporary philosopher Sissela Bok expresses her belief that lying is a subset of deception. She defines deception as that which occurs when “we communicate messages meant to mislead … meant to make them believe what we ourselves do not believe.” She defines a lie as “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.” To lie, you must make some form of statement; you cannot lie by simply omitting facts. If you omit facts to create a false impression, you are practicing a form of deception.
While we believe that the vast majority of media trainers and public relations practitioners never counsel clients to lie or intentionally deceive when they face reporters (with the possible rare exception of extreme cases of foreign policy or national security), it is useful to examine the lines between deception, lies and spin as a means of fine-tuning the advice we provide to spokespeople.
In a presentation to the American Political Association, John J. Mearsheimer provides a definition of spin that clearly delineates it from both lying and deception. Spin occurs when someone links together facts in a way that attempts to portray an individual or organization in the best possible light.
Chances are, if you’ve ever sent out a résumé, you have practiced a form of spin. Spin involves downplaying or ignoring certain facts that could create a negative perception. The emphasis is on making yourself look as good as possible by focusing attention on information that creates a positive impression.
The thin line between spin and sin lies somewhere between the creation of a true impression and a false impression, resulting from which decisions or facts are included, which facts are omitted, and how the facts are structured. In other words, if the facts are true and the impression left by those facts is true, you're on the safe side of spin. However, if the facts are true but the impression left by how the facts are selected or structured is false or misleading, the precise location of the ethical line needs to be discussed or reviewed by all those involved. If the facts are untrue, and people in the organization know them to be untrue, the organization is lying.
Spin is not necessarily a form of deception, provided that the story created by the facts is not intended to mislead and the facts underlying the story are true. But the line between spin and lying is definitely crossed when accuracy and/or truthfulness are compromised.
"You're Just Blowing Smoke"
March 2011
This is the second instalment in a series on media relations measurement.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
To help shed some light on what the state-of-the-art in media relations measurement should be, I thought I'd turn to Wilma Mathews, ABC, a long-time colleague and friend, and author of Media Relations: A Practical Guide for Communicators. Wilma has been practicing media relations for ... well, let's just say quite a few years.
When it comes to media relations evaluation and measurement, Wilma says our industry is certainly better off than it was even five or ten years ago. For many years, media relations practitioners relied on the simplistic output measures of counting clips and adding up circulation.
From there, the process evolved into impressions which, from her perspective, means pretty much the same thing as circulation and viewing audience. Next, the advertising value equivalency (AVE) was born, which she points out is a term that's not even listed in theDictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research.
"But over the years, as PR people, agencies and companies have gotten a little savvier, they've said that what we're asking you as media people to do is sell a product, get people to come to an event, change their minds or vote for someone," Wilma explains. "In short, we're asking you to change behaviour of a certain audience. And that's a little harder to do than counting clips."
She believes the AVE was adopted as a matter of convenience (and I suspect she would say something similar about Media Relations Rating Points). It was a simple way to state some perceived value of media relations to management groups. But to her the AVE is a completely abstract number that has no correlation to any activity because advertising and media relations simply cannot be compared.
"You control everything about advertising," she explains. "You control nothing about the editorial side of the media. But (the AVE) was a way to say to clients 'if you had purchased advertising, it would have cost you X amount of dollars, and we prevented you from having to do that.' And it sounded good at the outset."
She makes a clear distinction between evaluation and measurement in media relations. "You can evaluate your media relations work and still not measure whether or not it worked," she explains. "In other words, if a media relations practitioner wanted a positive story on the front page of the business section with a quote from their CEO — and they wanted it to appear before the product launch — if they got all of that it says their process worked. It says nothing about whether that helped sales."
To her, measurement is the end outcome — from an attitudinal or behavioural perspective. Did people buy the product? Did they vote the way you wanted? Did they form an opinion or change their minds?
"If that didn't happen and all you've got to show for it is advertising value equivalents or impressions," she points out, "you're just blowing smoke."
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
To help shed some light on what the state-of-the-art in media relations measurement should be, I thought I'd turn to Wilma Mathews, ABC, a long-time colleague and friend, and author of Media Relations: A Practical Guide for Communicators. Wilma has been practicing media relations for ... well, let's just say quite a few years.
When it comes to media relations evaluation and measurement, Wilma says our industry is certainly better off than it was even five or ten years ago. For many years, media relations practitioners relied on the simplistic output measures of counting clips and adding up circulation.
From there, the process evolved into impressions which, from her perspective, means pretty much the same thing as circulation and viewing audience. Next, the advertising value equivalency (AVE) was born, which she points out is a term that's not even listed in theDictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research.
"But over the years, as PR people, agencies and companies have gotten a little savvier, they've said that what we're asking you as media people to do is sell a product, get people to come to an event, change their minds or vote for someone," Wilma explains. "In short, we're asking you to change behaviour of a certain audience. And that's a little harder to do than counting clips."
She believes the AVE was adopted as a matter of convenience (and I suspect she would say something similar about Media Relations Rating Points). It was a simple way to state some perceived value of media relations to management groups. But to her the AVE is a completely abstract number that has no correlation to any activity because advertising and media relations simply cannot be compared.
"You control everything about advertising," she explains. "You control nothing about the editorial side of the media. But (the AVE) was a way to say to clients 'if you had purchased advertising, it would have cost you X amount of dollars, and we prevented you from having to do that.' And it sounded good at the outset."
She makes a clear distinction between evaluation and measurement in media relations. "You can evaluate your media relations work and still not measure whether or not it worked," she explains. "In other words, if a media relations practitioner wanted a positive story on the front page of the business section with a quote from their CEO — and they wanted it to appear before the product launch — if they got all of that it says their process worked. It says nothing about whether that helped sales."
To her, measurement is the end outcome — from an attitudinal or behavioural perspective. Did people buy the product? Did they vote the way you wanted? Did they form an opinion or change their minds?
"If that didn't happen and all you've got to show for it is advertising value equivalents or impressions," she points out, "you're just blowing smoke."
MRP Alone Not Good Enough
March 2011
This is the first instalment in a series on media relations measurement.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
I’m going to say something that could be perceived as sacrilegious among Canadian media relations practitioners.
I'm not a fan of Media Relations Rating Points (MRP).
For those who don't know, MRP is a uniquely Canadian innovation. It is a relatively simple and inexpensive system for measuring publicity.
Anyone can download a free Excel spreadsheet from www.mrpdata.com, and for a relatively inexpensive subscription fee, can generate audience reach data, which is supplied by News Canada.
At the end of your campaign, you insert the names of newspapers, magazines, blogs, radio stations and television stations that picked up your story. The basic spreadsheet also has cells available for tone (whether positive, neutral or negative) and five other potential criteria that media coverage can be scored against, such as exclusivity of the story, the use of a picture, or prominence in the publication or newscast.
My complaint is not about the tool. My concern is about how it's being used. And, quite frankly, it's leading to a laziness among Canadian media relations practitioners in the way they evaluate the effectiveness of their communication programs.
During the past six months, I have judged some of the most prestigious awards programs in this country. I coordinated the media relations category for IABC's Silver Leaf awards last fall. I participated as a judge in the media relations category of this year's CPRS Toronto's Achieving Communication Excellence (ACE) awards. This past weekend, I participated as a media relations judge in IABC/Toronto's OVATION awards program.
I have been judging media relations entries at local, national and international levels since I coordinated the entire Silver Leaf program in 1992.
Over the past few years, I have witnessed a distinct deterioration in the discipline of media relations measurement since MRP was first introduced. Increasing numbers of entries at all levels are only submitting MRP "results" as their sole source of evaluation.
Honestly, that's not good enough.
Our profession is about outcomes, not inputs. I have no qualms if your client is happy with MRP data as a sole source of measurement. As someone who has operated a successful business for the past 25 years, I understand the concept of giving clients what they want.
But if you're asking your peers for evaluation in awards programs (or in portfolio submissions toward earning your ABC or APR designations), MRP alone isn't good enough.
It's not enough to say that 16,000,000 people may have been exposed to a message at a cost of one-third of a penny each. Did they get the message? And how did it influence their attitudes, opinions and behaviour?
Did the program reinforce existing positive opinions? Did it encourage audiences to form opinions? Did it neutralize negative opinions? Did the media relations campaign move specifically-identifiable audiences to action in ways that support the organization's objectives? And how do you measure all of the above?
In my mind, finding answers to those questions separates a practitioner from a professional.
If you want to use MRP, fine. But please don't try to convince a fellow professional that MRP alone is good enough.
Quite frankly, it isn't.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
I’m going to say something that could be perceived as sacrilegious among Canadian media relations practitioners.
I'm not a fan of Media Relations Rating Points (MRP).
For those who don't know, MRP is a uniquely Canadian innovation. It is a relatively simple and inexpensive system for measuring publicity.
Anyone can download a free Excel spreadsheet from www.mrpdata.com, and for a relatively inexpensive subscription fee, can generate audience reach data, which is supplied by News Canada.
At the end of your campaign, you insert the names of newspapers, magazines, blogs, radio stations and television stations that picked up your story. The basic spreadsheet also has cells available for tone (whether positive, neutral or negative) and five other potential criteria that media coverage can be scored against, such as exclusivity of the story, the use of a picture, or prominence in the publication or newscast.
My complaint is not about the tool. My concern is about how it's being used. And, quite frankly, it's leading to a laziness among Canadian media relations practitioners in the way they evaluate the effectiveness of their communication programs.
During the past six months, I have judged some of the most prestigious awards programs in this country. I coordinated the media relations category for IABC's Silver Leaf awards last fall. I participated as a judge in the media relations category of this year's CPRS Toronto's Achieving Communication Excellence (ACE) awards. This past weekend, I participated as a media relations judge in IABC/Toronto's OVATION awards program.
I have been judging media relations entries at local, national and international levels since I coordinated the entire Silver Leaf program in 1992.
Over the past few years, I have witnessed a distinct deterioration in the discipline of media relations measurement since MRP was first introduced. Increasing numbers of entries at all levels are only submitting MRP "results" as their sole source of evaluation.
Honestly, that's not good enough.
Our profession is about outcomes, not inputs. I have no qualms if your client is happy with MRP data as a sole source of measurement. As someone who has operated a successful business for the past 25 years, I understand the concept of giving clients what they want.
But if you're asking your peers for evaluation in awards programs (or in portfolio submissions toward earning your ABC or APR designations), MRP alone isn't good enough.
It's not enough to say that 16,000,000 people may have been exposed to a message at a cost of one-third of a penny each. Did they get the message? And how did it influence their attitudes, opinions and behaviour?
Did the program reinforce existing positive opinions? Did it encourage audiences to form opinions? Did it neutralize negative opinions? Did the media relations campaign move specifically-identifiable audiences to action in ways that support the organization's objectives? And how do you measure all of the above?
In my mind, finding answers to those questions separates a practitioner from a professional.
If you want to use MRP, fine. But please don't try to convince a fellow professional that MRP alone is good enough.
Quite frankly, it isn't.
Welcome to Media Relations Matters
February 2011
We’d like to welcome you to Media Relations Matters—the blog specifically for media relations practitioners.
Our goal is to bring you professional development insights to help you build sustainable relationships with traditional and social journalists, and apply those relationships to the challenge of supporting organizational objectives.
To get there, we will touch on topics like coaching, media relations measurement, crisis communication, pitching, body language and others. If you’d like us to examine a specific issue or topic, please contact us.
We plan to publish two or three articles per month. To receive them automatically, please use the subscription form to the left, or the RSS feed down below. Subscriptions are tracked via FeedBurner but, as per our Privacy Policy, we will never use the e-mail addresses there to solicit you in any way.
If you’d like to participate in conversations related to these topics and others, please search for us on LinkedIn.
Our goal is to bring you professional development insights to help you build sustainable relationships with traditional and social journalists, and apply those relationships to the challenge of supporting organizational objectives.
To get there, we will touch on topics like coaching, media relations measurement, crisis communication, pitching, body language and others. If you’d like us to examine a specific issue or topic, please contact us.
We plan to publish two or three articles per month. To receive them automatically, please use the subscription form to the left, or the RSS feed down below. Subscriptions are tracked via FeedBurner but, as per our Privacy Policy, we will never use the e-mail addresses there to solicit you in any way.
If you’d like to participate in conversations related to these topics and others, please search for us on LinkedIn.