A Fire Chief’s advice for social media “newbies”

Bill Boyd, Fire Chief for Bellingham, WA, is becoming a well-known friend to crisisblogger readers. I’ve included several guest posts from him, particularly appreciating his perspective on crisis and emergency communications from an Incident Commander’s perspective. But Bill is eager to jump in and learn about the emerging communication technologies, if anyone who is a friend of his tweets will know. He considers himself a bit of a newbie on social media, but it’s not true. He’s pretty advanced in his use (puts me to shame, that’s for sure) but more than that, his insights into common sense approaches for public officials as well as private communicators are exceptionally valuable. I gratefully publish his thoughts:

“Newbie” Social Media tips for emergency response folks

Like many other of my middle aged emergency response colleagues, I am still trying to get a grip on how this whole social media (SM) thing works, and how to use it to communicate inside and outside my organization.  But, it is like trying to pick up a jellyfish with one hand.  It slips through your fingers and plops back down onto the beach coming to rest in a different shape.  Navigating the morass of evolving SM tools, self proclaimed experts (which I am clearly not!), skeptics and snake oil vendors can be pretty frustrating. My first emergency responder media blog posting generated a lot of interest and questions about how SM works and how it can enhance communications.  Truthfully, I am still trying to figure it out too.  But, I thought I would share a few things that may help others in the emergency response world take the first steps in enhancing their communications strategies.

Use today’s most popular SM sites. Twitter and Facebook seem to be the rage right now, and major news organizations have integrated them into their operations, exponentially increasing their visibility and reach.  But, stay agile.  It wasn’t too may years ago that MySpace was “it”. But, its popularity is plummeting like the glide path of a toolbox.  While I predict Facebook and Twitter will be around for quite a while, social media tools will come and go.  Don’t become entrenched.

Download a SM aggregator. A SM aggregator is program (typically free) that allows you to manage your various social media subscriptions, favorites, bookmarks, posts, etc..  This is important to do if you have more than one active SM account.  Although there are dozens of similar applications out there,  I use TweetDeck, a tool that allows me to set up columns of individual tweeters I follow. Each column tracks a tweeters message thread.  I can easily edit/comment and retweet to my followers.  HootSuite is another tool, which appears to have more organizational capabilities, and doesn’t require downloading client software onto your computer. But, given my unsophisticated and newbie status I have yet to try it out. Be careful if you use a SM aggregator to post messages.  If you set up your account to tap into a wide range of SM sites that mix business and social uses, your messages may be misunderstood, or worse, appear inappropriate for posting on the site you link to.  Allowing a post that says “Man, did I tie one on last night” on your LinkedIn profile as you are in the middle of job search will make you look like an idiot.

Don’t get sucked in. SM tools are great for enhancing gathering an dissemination of information during an emergency.  But, they should not be the focus of your information distribution.  You need to have a wide range of tools available, including web sites, 3rd party emergency notification systems that contact the public via phone, email lists, sirens, procedures for door to door “knock and blocks” and emergency alert system access.  SM is simply another way to get the message out.  The great thing about SM is it allows you to evaluate how well the message has been understood and if was effectively communicated and distributed.

Determine your SM identity.  I must admit, I am struggling with this one. SM gurus are preaching about the need to identify your “brand” before launching into the SM world.  I took the “ready, fire, aim” approach.  I am slowly migrating my messaging towards my main interests and personality traits; Connecting with the community I serve on a personal level, sharing important safety and incident information, promoting my college Alma mater, and disseminating crisis communications and fire service information. Determining your brand can be difficult, unless you already work for a company that has a defined brand and values system.  If you work for an organization that has mission/value statements or a defined strategic vision, evaluate these statements and how your personal interests and passion can help sustain your SM messaging efforts.

Don’t be afraid to steal followers.  By this I mean find someone interesting on a SM site, then take a look at the profiles of those who are linked to the same person.  Chances are they share similar interests, professional contacts and information links.  Start linking and following those folks too.  It’s a great way to quickly build your list of contacts.  Also, share their posts if they have something interesting to say.  They, and others who learn from the post will appreciate it.

Don’t type stupid stuff. As soon as you hit send, your message is out there and can be spread around the world in a heartbeat.  Public officials (me included) must be strategic and careful in how we share our emotions, opinions and perspectives.  SM messaging is almost too easy.  At times I have wished they had a pop up “nag box” that would remind me – “Hey Dim Bulb! Do you really want to say that?”  Some no-brainer topics to avoid;  slamming your employers-including the citizens you serve, sexual/ discriminatory statements or jokes, confidential business information (including information that can be tracked back to help identify a medical patient).

Let them know you are human.  Some of the largest Twitter accounts belong to individuals who not only share important and relevant business information, but also provide insight into their personal lives; their family triumphs, tragedies, milestones and personal interests. Along with fire and emergency services related content,  I sprinkle in my feelings and activities unrelated to my work.  Followers seem to enjoy the levity and insight, and it often results in two way exchanges about life in general.

I will continue to share my lessons learned in this ever changing environment.  Given what I have learned so far, I do not ever think I will be a SM expert.  But, I’m going to have a heck of a lot of fun trying to get there!

Washington Post: “Crisis PR–PR’s evil twin–can’t keep up” Is it true?

This is a very intriguing analysis by Matthew DeBord in the Washington Post, titled: How crisis PR hasn’t kept up with the turbulent times.

His overall point is that the Internet has made it impossible for the $700 an hour (are you kidding me??) crisis PR people to avoid destruction in a crisis. What used to work, a call to Burson Marsteller or Sitrick and Company, just doesn’t work anymore.

Here’s his summary: The lesson now for companies that screw up is that you really have no chance: The currents are against you from the get-go. The courts of Twitter and online video sites, along with Facebook groups that deplore the transgressions, will overwhelm even the most elaborate crisis battle plan. The profession, quite simply, is at a crossroads. And it isn’t in a position to ride out the bumps, because it’s up against the kind of high-altitude turbulence that can shred the airframe.

Here is where I think he is right:

1) Crises of the nature of a 90 day plus endless spill are beyond PR strategies–this crisis is not just about BP’s PR failures (there are those aplenty) but about the fact that if there is this kind of damage to the environment and to people’s lives and you are the one (right or wrong) standing in the crosshairs, it just ain’t going to be pretty.

2) Speed matters–the Internet along with other instant news technologies means that it is virtually impossible for large companies (and highly bureaucratic ad-hoc response organizations) to react fact enough, and slow response is a killer.

3) Social media is playing a huge, if not the largest role, in the way in which today’s crises play out, and social media will play a huge, and perhaps dominant role, in how organizations respond. In this DeBord sees the potential salvation for crisis PR–I think that is too simplistic.

4) Most of yesterday’s crisis PR thinking doesn’t work well in this environment. Particularly when it is focused on spitting out the occasional press release or putting up a press conference and thinking that your job is done.

But overall, DeBord’s analysis is too simplistic. Using the examples of BP and the spill, Toyota, Tiger Woods, Al Gore and Stanley McChrystal, he comes to the conclusion that all the PR expertise in the world can’t prevent the damage and destruction left in the wake of a major public crisis. The problem is that our situation in crisis PR is much more complicated than that.

Starting with the loss of trust. From Congress, to the president, to the major industries, to almost anything big, powerful and in the news, we Americans tend not to trust. Big Oil is derided and hated, with only the media as an industry having a lower trust rating. We don’t trust CEOs, PR folks, lawyers, and reporters. With this kind of environment, when someone is accused loudly, frequently and vehemently of doing actions that undermine what little trust there might be, is it any wonder that we believe the accusations? Why is no one asking the question as to why we are experiencing this historic loss of trust? What are the causes?

I think these are important contributors to this loss of trust:

- Bad behavior made known.  I don’t think for a minute that behavior at the corporate or government (church or education or anything else for that matter) has suddenly gotten a lot worse. I think the level of people doing bad things has probably stayed pretty much the same through most of our few ten thousands of years of human history. But the big difference in this “information age” is that bad behavior is very hard to hide. The truth will out and it is often ugly. We have probably more rules, regulations and ethic standards than ever, but we also have unprecedented ways of sharing information about bad behavior. And our interest in these things is very high, particularly when we feel we are victimized by it.

- media competitiveness. There have been times in our history when the political attacks and venomous punditry in our media was likely greater than it is now, in fact at one time (during President John Adams administration) it was extreme enough to result in one of the worst pieces of legislation in our history, the Alien and Sedition Act. However, we are not that far behind in terms in the kind of journalism we have today and this is more than evident in the examples that DeBord mentions. It is not surprising that as a journalist he does not include the hype-negativity and attack journalism as part of the problem with crisis PR. The fact is that mainstream media is fighting for its life and their very difficult job is to gain attention for without that they die. No readers or viewers, no ratings, no ads, no revenue. As I commented in my previous post, this phenomenon was elegantly described by an Economist columnist when he said the media (referring to British media) cultivates provocation rather than analysis. Yes, it is very much their job to provoke. Provoke or die. Get attention or die. And if McChrystal’s, or Gore’s or Woods or Hayward’s or Toyoda’s lives and careers are destroyed in the process, well, “and so it goes.”

Education. I am intrigued by the cultural values of our educated young people. Every generation brings new thoughts, ideas, priorities and visions to the world. There is much positive in the generation of new young leaders emerging from our universities. But it is also true that they are remarkably anti-business and to a large degree anti-big and powerful everything. They don’t trust a lot. That is based more on personal observation than a detailed study, but challenge me if you think me wrong. I visited a university class a few years ago and asked what they thought of oil companies. Though this community is surrounded by four refineries and many in the community make their living in the oil industry, the students were almost universally angry and bitter about big oil (again, well before this spill). Their level of passion was stunning. Where did they get this? Then I remembered a study done by an economics professor that showed at any university in the nation, the chances of a student getting a professor with a positive attitude toward business, toward free enterprise, toward anything remotely conservative in the humanities departments was almost nil. We have developed a very ideological and nearly one-sided education system when it comes to important issues of economics, business, politics, religion, etc. Perhaps a legacy from the 60s and 70s, this overwhelming bias in our higher education (I suspect is goes into lower education as well) likely plays a very significant role in the development of attitudes in our young people relating to business.

- social media and “toxic talk” — Everyone of the situations DeBord mentions included a tremendous amount of social media chatter. Certainly the spill did and that continues. But the chatter is dominated by voices that are exceptionally strident, vengeful, angry, and hate-filled. There is a cultural phenomenon at work here as well. I would have to ask the question as to how some have all the time for this and is there a connection between these kinds of attitudes and the people who spend so much of their lives living in a social media world. Regardless of the causes, the impact is very predictable. Imagine you went to a cocktail party and all you heard was angry people spouting off against BP, or Toyota, or Al Gore. You turn this way and you get more of the same, you turn that way and it is even angrier. Would not come away from this thinking that there was rationale behind this passion and rage? The toxic talk that dominates our political blogs and so much of social media is toxic. It’s toxic to those who supply it and those who simply observe. The toxicity feeds the extremes the media needs to go to compete. Social media and mainstream media play off one another in a fascinating dance of interaction. But if it is your reputation at the heart of the discussion, this toxic talk becomes not only dangerous but deadly.

If this analysis is correct, what can crisis PR people do about it? How to advise clients? What strategies might be effective?

Mr. DeBord quoted Ira Kalb from USC: For PR firms, the key is to get back to focusing on trust. “One you’ve lost trust, you’ve lost just about everything,” Kalb says. “You can’t put spin on it. You’re dead if the public thinks you’re spinning.” Kalb stresses that it’s important for companies caught in the crisis spiral to propose solutions.

I’ve repeated this mantra for many years: trust is based on two things–doing the right things, and communicating about them well. I see no reason to alter from this basic approach. But the underlying lack of trust in our culture, and the extremely powerful forces that by their nature are determined to undermine trust when you are caught in a major crisis make building trust exceptionally challenging.

While it may be tempting to cast about for new ideas and new strategies in this kind of environment, I think the answer is in the basic things that work because, well, they are just the right things to do:

1) Make sure as much as you can that everyone in your organization makes choices that are in the best interest of serving all those impacted and understand that without trust your organization dies.

2) When actions taken by those in your organization clearly violate that trust, expose it, apologize for it, fix it and try to prevent it in the future–and do all these things out in the open as much as possible.

3) When you are responding to a big problem (like a recall or an endless spill) stay focused on clearly communicating what you are doing to solve the problem and what you will do to prevent it in future. Don’t get distracted by the endless attacks, rabbit trails, and so-called experts the media will trot out to try to destroy your credibility.

4) Effective communication means challenging lies, rumors, poor reporting, and misstatements of facts. You can’t allow lies to be often repeated and go unchallenged. In all major events a sort of meta-narrative evolves that all media seem to get locked into (Katrina–Bush failed, Toyota–no concern about safety, BP–rogue company run amuck). Accept the truth it it, apologize, but when the attacks are unfair, inaccurate and simply wrong they need to be challenged.

5) Engage, engage. Yes, social media is one place to engage, but not the only place. It is difficult to engage positively given the toxic talk, but essential. And the more personal and direct the engagement the better. Public meetings, face to face, phone calls, direct email–all these and more are critical especially when focused on the opinion leaders and those whose opinion is most important to your future. This may not be so visible to the media-consuming public and the media will not pick up on the positive outcomes of these engagements, but over the long term this is where the battle will be won or lost.

Vacation musings–it’s a beautiful, ugly world

If it seems crisisblogger has been quiet lately it is because I was enjoying an absolutely wonderful family vacation in the San Juan Islands. When you combine the delights of spending time with your beautiful wife, three grown children, their wonderful spouses, and seven angelic (usually) grandchildren all under the age of seven, along with the majestic beauty of the San Juans, what can be better? The weather was great, and we were successful on two out of four whale watching adventures in my little boat.

What can I say, other than it is a beautiful world and if we have eyes to see it we can catch glimpses of Eden through the veil of this life. However, the veil is there and while the vacation gave some respite from thoughts about crisis management, BP, the Gulf Spill and all that, it also provides some time to get perspective. And the perspective I have on the overall situation is that it is a beautiful, ugly world.

There are few things uglier than the sight of millions of gallons of dirty oil spewing into water inhabited by so many good things and on which so many people depend. To think that this tragedy is caused by ordinary people making bad mistakes makes it more painful for all of us to endure. Our natural reaction is anger, frustration, rage. The spewing forth of this anger matches in ugliness that which came from a mile deep. But there are some differences. The investigation into the spill will no doubt get focused on a few key decisions that had they been made differently would make all the difference. But the spewing forth of vitriol that has accompanied this is not the decision of a few, but of millions. And it is fed by the economic necessity of our desperate media whose only response to the hyper competitive environment they are in is to find a flame of anger and fan it to the greatest extent possible. This too is great ugliness.

This is not just my cynical observation and obsession. “Bagehot,” the pseudononymous columnist for the Economist made this comment about the media in his farewell column in the July 3 issue of The Economist. He is referring to British media but what he says about them can be said even more about American media: “The British newspaper business cultivates provocation rather than consideration. The crowdedness of the market mean people feel a need to yell to be heard; for all their virtues, political blogs and the Internet have intensified the competition and the shrillness, making analysis ever more instant and intrusive.”  Provocation rather than consideration–a wonderful but somehow too quiet way of saying what we face in media coverage around an event like this spill.

Bagehot goes on to comment about the British voters. He is a British political commentator so he writes from that perspective but what he says about politicians applies also to business leaders, particularly when caught in the cross hairs of a major crisis: “British voters seem increasingly inclined to think of their politicians as either heroes or (more often) villains. There is little room for honest mistakes or good intentions gone awry, and little sympathy for the challenges of reconciling competing public priorities. The puerile simplicity of some political coverage, Bagehot submits, reflects a broader and worrying immaturity in the way the country thinks about politics and government.”

Again, in such an understated British way Bagehot has captured the ugliness of our world as it relates to this monstrous event. The problem is, of course, I know many of the people involved, both with the US Coast Guard and BP. I have known many of them for years. These are the villains that have been so thoroughly demonized in the press and in the political firestorm that most of you and the public cannot even any longer conceive of them as decent, respectable, intelligent and honorable human beings. This demonizing it is not at all unlike what happens in a war. Having written a book on a fighter pilot who survived Buchenwald, I have become aware of what happens to both the victim and the perpetrator in the process of dehumanization. That is what is happening here. When you turn someone else into sub-human, it not only destroys them, it destroys you. The people of BP are not perfect. But neither am I and neither or you. No doubt terrible mistakes have been made. But I would bet my life no decision was made with any intent to destroy people’s lives and the environment. If I am wrong, I hope it is revealed and the evil is punished. In the meantime, the judgment goes on every day in the media coverage, in blogs, in conversation, in the criminal process, and in a zillion lawyers offices.

I urge you to be cautious in your own judgments about those who have already been accused, tried, and convicted. Remember, it is not only the victim of unjust dehumanization that is damaged in the process. We have enough ugliness in the world without adding to it.

Online Socializing–is it good or bad?

When you are as old as I am and look back on the changes in how communication is done it is completely unreal. OK, I can remember black rotary dial phones (touch tone was a big deal back then) and my first job was at a newspaper company that still occasionally used a hot lead linotype–setting up a newspaper with photo typesetters was really cool technology. Without doubt the movement of interpersonal communication from letter writing, phone calling and personal visits to email, blogging, Twitter, Facebook and all kinds of social media has transformed lives, changed how we interact, revolutionized our culture, and modified our values.

But, is that a good thing? There are some whom I respect immensely who are convinced that it is about 85-90% bad. Others seem to accept any “progress” in technology as an inherent good. I am of the firm opinion that like almost all other ideas and inventions of humankind, it is neither good nor bad apart from the heart and intention of those who use it.

Pew, the authority on all things opinion-related on the Internet, has done a study of what you and millions like you think about online socializing, including what you think it will mean for the future. Here’s their new study.

But, the topline is 85% say the Internet has been a positive force in their social lives and will only become more so in the future. 14% disagree, saying it is negative.

Why negative:

Among the negatives noted by both groups of respondents: time spent online robs time from important face-to-face relationships; the internet fosters mostly shallow relationships; the act of leveraging the internet to engage in social connection exposes private information; the internet allows people to silo themselves, limiting their exposure to new ideas; and the internet is being used to engender intolerance.
Why positive:

Many of the people who said the internet is a positive force noted that it “costs” people less now to communicate — some noted that it costs less money and others noted that it costs less in time spent, allowing them to cultivate many more relationships, including those with both strong and weak ties. They said “geography” is no longer an obstacle to making and maintaining connections; some noted that internet]based communications removes previously perceived constraints of “space” and not just “place.”

So we can now make more friends and acquaintances faster, at less cost, and without regard to geographic location. Yeah, sure, I can see the advantages. But I get tired just thinking about it. Maybe I’ll use my old black rotary and dial a few friends and family members for an old fashioned picnic. We can take the time to look each other in the eye and actually talk.

On BP reputation issues–Reuters gets it wrong, Dezenhall gets it right

It’s been fascinating to me to watch the PR pundits deal with BP’s reputation issues. I haven’t commented too much because BP is longtime client in crisis communication and I and others in my company are involved in this situation–that means anything I say will be dismissed by those who disagree and I can’t be as free to comment as I would be if I was not involved.

Reuters has an in-depth article about BP’s PR blunders–a topic that seems to provide endless fascination for the PR press as well as general media. A number of excellent points are made in this article, in addition to the tiresome re-hash of supposed gaffes. For example, the oft-repeated sloppy journalism story about BP’s faulty initial flow estimates–as I pointed out before only Factcheck.org and the Rolling Stone got this right–these were estimates from Unified Command. These were government estimates. Then of course there is the statement by CEO Hayward that he wanted his life back. This is simply unfair–silly perhaps to make a comment like that when so many in the gulf would like their life back, but it seems rather obvious that he was trying to say that there are few people more eager to get the hole plugged and the oil cleaned up more than him. Still, a vitally important media training lesson. Don’t allow your CEO (or Chairman for that matter) to just talk endlessly off the cuff for hours and days on end because sooner or later they will say something that the sharks will bite on.

But while no doubt BP has made a number of serious PR mistakes, this article misses the main point. Of all the commentators on BP’s PR problems, the only one I’ve seen who got it seriously right is Eric Dezenhall. I’ve been a fan of Eric for a long time–I quoted him from his book “Nail ‘Em” quite often when I wrote my book Now Is Too Late. I learned a lot from him about the nature of the media and the truly ugly game infotainment has become.

Here’s what Eric says in the Reuters article:

“PR is not the antidote to what’s happening here. Whenever something like this happens it is a 100 percent certainty that the public relations will be deemed to be botched,” said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis PR specialist for almost 30 years,

Washington-based Dezenhall said BP’s communications efforts must be judged over the longer term.

“All of these PR chestnuts that sound wonderful in a college class, about apologizing and contrition, there is very, very weak data to show these cliches bear out in reality.”

As to where I stand, I have been doing a series of by invitation only webinars and at the end I discuss why the public opinion about BP and the spill response is so bad, considering that earlier on they were doing a pretty darn good job of communicating about what was going on (in my opinion that has deteriorated badly in the last few weeks). Here are my reasons:

1) Media blame game-it’s just the way media is done these days, particularly around big disasters where people are getting killed or hurt bad. Everyday they have to come up with something new to compete for the eyes on the screen or page and what sells is “new revelation” of dastardly deeds or incompetent failures.

2) Politics–politics is simply going to be involved in events of this magnitude. Elections are at stake. Lots of them. And this fact combined with the media blame game means all elected officials from the president to parish presidents are doing their absolute darndest to 1) avoid any of the blame game falling of them and 2) get credit for anything good that happens. In this case, BP provides a completely understandable foil for every political message related to those two point. So all the blame is going to fall on them, and all the credit will be assumed by others–and not much BP can do about it.

3) Ignorance of Unified Command–its clear that few in this country understand the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that has been driving much of the response and communications, nor do they understand the National Incident Management System or Incident Command System and the Joint Information Center concept.This ignorance has led to some very stupid things being said by politicians, by the press and by pundits.

4) The industry everyone loves to hate. All the reputation studies show that the oil industry is near the bottom of the list in public trust. So every oil company executive starts every day in a deep reputation hole. This is of their own doing in many ways, but the fact is that public opinion is not favorable to fossil fuels and getting less favorable every day–even while we consume like crazy. It’s one thing if a candy company has a crisis, its quite another if an oil company does. By the way, only the media business has a lower trust rating–how ironic.

5) Toxic talk–this is the lack of civility and decency in our public discourse, so well documented by the recent WeberShandwick study. Over 50,000 people have submitted comments to the response and to BP through the response website and BP’s state response websites. A great many have been very very negative–a disconcerting number threaten violence. It’s a sad part of our culture but it contributes to an overall attitude of animosity, venom and cultural dis-ease.

6) It’s a very very bad event–this is undoubtedly the biggest reason. The fact is that oil continues to flow as it has for over two months. It is still not stopped and the threat to people, environment and wildlife continues to grow. People cannot understand how this can happen and why it can’t be stopped. It makes everyone furious and frustrated. So, whether you are at fault or not, if you stand up and say, we are responsible you are going to take the brunt of that anger and frustration. That’s far beyond any PR fix.

7) BP mistakes–yep, there have been a number. Mistakes of omission and commission. Avoidable mistakes and a lot of “spinning” of bad information and minor gaffes. But BP cannot avoid responsibility for their situation entirely. But, like Dezenhall suggests, it makes more sense when trying to analyze this for future crises, to consider the whole picture.

I once went to a doctor who advised me if I wanted to live long that I should pick my parents carefully. If BP, or any other company wants to protect its reputation, don’t dump gazillions of gallons of oil into any water.

Gulf Spill propels technology advances in crisis communication

The communicators involved in the Gulf Spill are aggressively using technology of all kinds to help get the story of the spill and response out. We’ve seen that, particularly earlier on with this event, with their use of social media. One of the biggest is the use of live video feeds. I commented on this today on emergencymgmt.com. It is a virtual certainty that any kind of major event, particularly anyone drawing the kind of media and political activity that this one has, will require a live video feed. It will either be provided by those involved, or citizens will find a way to offer it themselves.

As I mention in the emergency management blog, high quality video production just got a whole lot easier. Citizen journalists are suddenly equipped with what used to take a gazillion bucks and a Hollywood studio full of artists and technicians.

Another example of technology being used to help the public get information was just released today: the widget. Add it to any website and it will give you a real-time feed of the latest news, tweets and links from the deepwaterhorizonresponse.com website.

Give it a try. Not just because it kind of slick and cool and will help keep you better informed of what is going on with this event, but because it will give you an idea of what you will have to be able to plan and manage if you find yourself deep in it.

Washington Post and Dave Weigel teach lesson about emails

Dave Weigel, a blogger for the Washington Post lost his job today. No big story. He was hired as a conservative blogger (increasingly called journalists) because the Post was criticized by conservatives of not understanding their thinking. He was fired because its now quite clear that he didn’t think too much of some of the leading conservatives. A bigger deal, but still not such a big deal. His real attitude toward conservatives was revealed not so much in his official posts, but in private email conversation. Big deal.

Another Post blogger, and the one who set up the private email listserv from which the damaging emails were leaked, Ezra Klein, clearly feels badly for his friend. And in his blog he captures an interesting dilemma about internet communications–the feeling of privacy that belies the complete lack of privacy:

There’s a lot of faux-intimacy on the Web. Readers like that intimacy, or at least some of them do. But it’s dangerous. A newspaper column is public, and writers treat it as such. So too is a blog. But Twitter? It’s public, but it feels, somehow, looser, safer. Facebook is less public than Twitter, and feels even more intimate. A private e-mail list is not public, but it is electronically archived text, and it is protected only by a password field and the good will of the members. It’s easy to talk as if it’s private without considering the possibility, unlikely as it is, that it will one day become public.

Not long ago the Library of Congress announced it was archiving all Twitter conversations. Perhaps some future sociologist will find gold in the millions of conversations about sandwiches, lattes and bathroom breaks. Twitter, like email, feels private and protected, but it is not. Somehow those little arrangement of bits and bytes can be saved somewhere, shared in unexpected ways and come back to haunt you years later. Career counselors on university campuses have a big job today reminding students that what they put on Facebook may affect their careers in years ahead and in unsuspecting and distressing ways. We can be fully open, transparent and authentic on the Internet, but that may not be a good thing.

Added to this situation, and a critical part of it, is the cultural change in exposure. We hear now of journalists in the days of the Kennedy’s preserving private activities that today would be front page fodder and the subject of tens of thousands of posts and comments. Today, we would consider such a conspiracy of silence to be almost unamerican, a violation of our right to know, and for most a sign of unethical political partisanship on the part of journalists (citizen or professional) who have the info but refuse to share it. This culture of exposure is brilliantly explained in this column today in NYT by David Brooks.

We lost an American hero and perhaps a critical part of our war effort in Afghanistan when the Rolling Stone as a publication and the reporter who wrote the story on General McCrystal fully delivered on our cultural values. The ethos of brutal exposure was taken to new heights, or depths. Clearly the good General didn’t catch what should have been some obvious clues as to what his unthinking staff had gotten him into. But maybe he was too much into the corruption and disease in Afghan culture and politics that he missed the clues to our own corruption and disease.

I hope this sad episode and David Brook’s column help us all to think a little more about the direction we have been taking. This culture of exposure, of fault-finding, of demonizing for the purpose of political gain and attracting audiences is painfully obvious to me and I hope to you each day in the coverage of the Gulf spill. I am saddened by it, frustrated, and angry. We should expect more of our media, our politicians and ourselves.

In the meantime, understanding this culture of exposure, understanding that all discourse online today is permanent and completely shareable, the stories of Weigel and McCrystal should urge us to caution. Perhaps the age of transparency has come and gone. If so, I think I might miss it less than I earlier thought.

Are we tiring of “toxic talk?”

One of the most disturbing aspects of our culture to emerge with Internet communications and social media in particular is what I call “toxic talk.” That is the tendency of a very substantial portion of the Internet sub-culture to engage in conversation that is crude, lewd, venomous, bitter and disrespectful. I’ve blogged about it repeatedly and I have been surprised that more in our society are seemingly resigned to this unpleasant manifestation of this mode of communication.

Well, I was wrong. Although there has been surprisingly little discussion about it in the media, PR circles or sociological studies, WeberShandwick has corrected this failing. They published results of a survey on Civility in America (available on their website). This is a very important study. I am absolutely thrilled with the result that shows 94% of Americans consider this incivility a problem and 65% consider it a major problem. Perhaps more significantly, the public is turning away from those places including websites and social media sites where incivility is so strong. They are also turning away from the political discussions because of this high level of incivility.

I’ve observed at first hand the incredible animosity and foul language of so many who are expressing their opinion of the Gulf spill on the spill website (www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com) and the social media sites for the spill. In presentations recently to others about the spill communications, one of the lessons learned that is shocking to some is the incredibly high volume as well as hatred so vividly displayed. This toxic talk creates an atmosphere that brings all who observe and participate in it down.

I believe we can do something about this. First, by not participating in it ourselves, committing to respectful, cultured disagreement rather than gutter language and personal attacks. Second, by turning off the radio and tv programs that specialize in the angry, excessively partisan, hate-inspired language so evident on both left and right. Third, by letting those engaging in it know that you find it offensive (prepare to be offended twice as much). Fourth, by getting involved in what I hope is a growing movement to discourage toxic talk, like that conducted by www.civilination.com.

Goldman Sachs–what to do when in a deep hole

Thought it might be interesting to comment on the efforts of Goldman Sachs to dig out of their deep hole, while about to visit the command center for the spill in New Orleans.

Daily Dog says that Goldman is about to start a PR campaign and maybe even go on Oprah to help communicate what banks do.

One thing for certain, when you are in a deep hole you can be assured that every tiny effort to improve your status will be observed, reported, and attacked. Usually with exceptional venom. I’ve seen Daily Dog do that with regard to BP and the spill but they are not alone. Not sure why some PR publications seem to want to outdo the outrage. By the time such reporting hits the blogs and social media, the effort has been so twisted and trashed that it is hardly recognizable. Just a warning to you, Goldman.

On a tv program I was on with Peter Firestein, a crisis communication consultant with a book with the best title around: Crisis of Character, he said BP should just be quiet. I disagreed but have thought about it alot. Everything that is said is attacked, discredited, and in most cases, turned against them. Same may be true (to a lesser degree I would suggest) of Goldman. Should they just be quiet?

A few key principles I believe in and have promoted in my book and presentations:

1) Credibility is everything. You cannot exist in the public arena, in the marketplace, in the stock market, without it. But what if you completely and unutterably lose it? You must borrow it from those who have it. That is what I have suggested before. Goldman needs friends now, and it is not the only one. Friends trusted by many of its worst critics. Hard to do? Maybe, particularly as deep as some of these holes are, but absolutely necessary. Credibility must be restored and it is likely that few within Goldman will have the credibility needed to do the job, or can earn it by a PR campaign or a trip to the holy shrine of Oprah.

2) Don’t let lies stand. In the current situation I am observing and somewhat involved, I have seen countless lies propagated, many by the most mainstream of the mainstream. I call them lies but sometimes it is sloppy or ignorant reporting, sometimes especially vicious twists on the truth, sometimes repeats with added flavor of misinformation reported elsewhere. Many times the lies are not untrue, they just are presented in a way that does not represent reality. But I see little effort on Goldman’s part to counter what they may consider lies. A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. They cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged. But, if you are the one without credibility or with it seriously damaged as in Goldman’s case, you are probably not the best one to challenge the lies. Someone, or some organization, with credibility must be found.

Short of those kinds of game changing, aggressive actions, perhaps it is best to just be silent.

What are the fifteen most hated companies in America?

I’ll bet you think you can name them. BP starts the list, right, Toyota, AT&T, maybe even Microsoft. Certainly WalMart.

Wrong. According to the analysis by 24/7 Wall Street, here are the 15 most hated:

1. AIG
2. United Airlines
3. Level 3
4. Hertz
5. Citigroup
6. K-Mart
7. Blackwater
8. Dell
9. Abercrombie & Fitch
10. Chrysler
11. Dish Network
12. Rite-Aid
13. Gibson
14. Forever 21
15. Sprint

This is a surprising list and you might wonder on what basis were they selected. Here is the explanation:

We evaluated each company based on five criteria.  First, employee impressions, using research firm Glassdoor and other services, were reviewed.  Second,  we considered total return to shareholders from these companies over one-year, two-year and five-year periods, compared to the broad market and other companies within the same sector. Several firms on our list are not public. Third, customer satisfaction numbers and reputation figures were analyzed from a broad array of sources, including Consumer Reports, JD Power, the MSN/Zogby poll, Vanno, and the University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index were examined. Fourth, brand valuation changes were also reviewed based on data from Corebrands, Interbrand, and Brand Z.  Finally, the views of taxpayers, Congress and the Administration of these companies were considered where applicable.

For those in the crisis management field like me, you might think public or at least consumer attitudes would trump everything. But I think these guys have it right. This is a 360 degree view of the organization. What does it matter if customers love you but the shareholders don’t? And what if you are darling of Congress, but your employees think you stink? Taking all key stakeholders groups into consideration is something we PR folks need to do a lot more. Kudos to 24/7 Wall Street for this list. And good luck to each and everyone of you who find yourself on it.