Many years ago, when I worked for the Orlando Sentinel as a reporter, the authoritarian publisher would think nothing of putting a spreading palm tree in a photo to replace a single individual he didn't want to appear in HIS daily.
Because he felt strongly about tourism, he refused to allow negative stories about alligators, snakes and various other creatures that could be found in the orange grove paradise of Central Florida. I also remember seeing a story killed that was critical of a favorite advertiser, a local furrier.
The key, however, is that this publisher owned the paper and the ink. He paid the reporters, and all others who worked in the warren of the rambling building. It was his newspaper, and it had many of what is called in the business "sacred cows", pet projects to be boosted or to be damned.
Before too long, however, the eccentric publisher had sold out (or cashed in, depending on your point of view) to a much larger newspaper syndicate. While the publication continues to have a home-town feel, it became a little more homogenized, rather tame I would say, in comparison to the old days.
These recollections are stirred due to recent United States government actions in relation to the press, which bear a kindredship to the widespread practice of corporate buying of news columns in Ukraine. The practice is wrong. It can not be defended.
However, there are shades of guilt, and most corporations and PR firms engage in this. Often the article is marked advertorial. At our own company, we try to discourage clients purchasing even advertorials, but we do proffer money for space on occasion and on request. I am pained each time. It is not a smart use of marketing dollars.
For the most part, it is simply a waste of money. Ukrainian law is rather hazy on this topic, and some in PR, the news business, and at the higher editor echelons say any story that mentions a name brand is an advertisement and subject to an advertising tax. Hence, buy the space as if it were an ad.
I have no trouble with this so long as it is clearly marked as an ad. However, on our home turf, The Ukrainian Observer, we have never had a paid news column or even an advertorial that did not shout that it was, indeed, a commercial ad. We never will, and we have turned down such requests.
Have we written feature stories on some of The Willard Group's clients in our magazine. Of course, but we do disclose the relationships, and in each case the individuals would have merited a story, one was the head of Phillip Morris, the other of Astelit, a relatively new cell operator on the block.
But Ukraine needs good journalism and public relations role models. The United States Agency for International Development has famously poured millions of dollars into Ukraine for market reform, democracy advocacy programs, and, yes, programs aimed at a free press.
The current U.S. administration sadly is the poster child for bad role models. It is a horrible one, regardless of how one feels about the war in Iraq, government funding of faith-based charities or the various and sundry social issues under President George Bush's evangelical tent.
Last fall, federal auditors said the Bush Administration had violated U.S. laws by buying favorable coverage of its education policies. Public relations agencies had been hired to produce video news releases supporting such programs, and they went to stations across America. Unsuspecting broadcast editors had no clue the tapes were a U.S. Government production.
One would have thought there would have been a lesson learned in getting caught in "tapegate". No, they are back at it again.
This time they are buying stories in Iraqi newspapers - through a PR company called Lincoln Group. And this group has a $100 million contract from the United States Special Operations Command to "provide global media support".
This is blatant Pentagon payola. It has to be embarrassing for the Pentagon to be caught planting articles in newspapers, but one would think they would at least have come up with story angles sufficiently interesting such that they didn't have to pay for the privilege.
But there are larger worries here. How can anyone trust a USAID democracy program based on freedom of the press when the U.S. Government is buying favorable stories in Iraq and perhaps elsewhere. There is no way anyone can connect those dots.
What's more, as John Tierney pointed out in a recent column, the PR company didn't even do a good job at buying the press using taxpayers' dollars. They came up with such bland titles for so-called stories as "Iraqi Soldiers Improve Leadership Skills" or this jewel, "Renovated Facilities Help to Bolster Security".
Tierney, with tongue planted in cheek, gave his own suggestions that would titillate an Iraqi press to place the articles without charge.
The one I liked was "Bomber's Report From Afterlife: No Virgins."
|
