Patterns-and-Practices and The Perils of Public Relations

Getting the right message out there: Consider the proposition that a company's aim is to

(1) frame the narrative in a favorable manner.

 

Any firm wants to be seen not as a money-grubbing corporation that pollutes the environment and exploits its workers but as an innovative pioneer with sustainable operations and a social conscience.

An expert PR executive can hone such a message and identify the best way of communicating it to investors and the wider public, for example by selecting the journalists and publications that will lend it a sympathetic ear. 

 

Companies can hire an in-house team while also choosing to use an external PR firm.

 

If bad news strikes, bosses often go farther to call in a firm that specializes in "crisis management".

 

Perhaps this frenetic activity has a use. There is a chance that some publication has a desperate need to fill space, or was looking for a random executive’s views on an issue of the day. But in most cases it only serves to irritate the correspondent who has to deal with the pestering.

 

 

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THE OTHER REALITY >    

“We want Mesa to be a bottoms-up community. The seven of us [on the City Council] are not sitting here because we are the smartest people in the city or because we’re the ones who have the best ideas in the city. That’s not the case. We have a very capable community that has lots of talent and resources, and we want to draw on that. This approach helps us be better at what we’re doing.” – Mayor John Giles

 

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WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? Politicians have no morals, beholden to "higher interests."
We just can't leave it there - Put a screeching slam on the brakes!
Democracy cannot exist if a nation's leaders are free to simply invent whichever version of reality best suits their own priorities and ambitions.

We are seeing it happen:

02 January 2020

Duh! Golly, Gee Whizz! . . .So Many Media Stooges

Link > MesaZona 02 January 2020

"At the website PressThink, Jay Rosen had a post-Christmas examination of Meet The Press host Chuck Todd's startling new realization that, golly gee, it turns out that Republicans have been intentionally using his show and others to spread false information.
Yes, Todd just realized that now.
Yes, he is one of the top political "minds" in Washington, which ought to clarify just how boned we all are, as the nation's political press continues to somehow degrade into something even worse and more vapid than the all-too-chummy gullibles constantly spoon-fed to all of us almost all the time
So what now?
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READ MORE > The Daily Kos

Every approach, however, is a means of accomplishing the same thing: creating a mechanism by which those that spout disinformation to the public can incur damage, and not just rewards. This is not the same as attempting to shame politicians into honest behavior;

there is no such thing as political shame.
Stop expecting it; stop presuming it. . .

Liars will stop lying in public when the penalties for public lying are consequential enough to outweigh the advantages of broadcasting the lie.

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