PR IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL MCCARTHYISMPosted by Amanda Chapel To all you PR 2.0 blog evangelists... is this where you are pushing your clients?
Bookmark This
 Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry
No Trackbacks
Comments
Display comments as
(Linear | Threaded)
Great example of using video to make a point. Although all of the video snippets were right wingers making a case against the leftist bloggers, which is like the Swiftboat Campaign calling a decorated war veteran a draft dodging member of the Texas National Guard.
The right has so much red meat media going that to call attention to the leftist bloggers is just silly. On the larger point about its application to PR and is this where you are leading your clients, see my response to Mark Rose's post on the Coscoification of the media. It covers this point. On my beach chair in Sarasota. Matt Gentile (FloridaMoves.com - 300 Days of Sunshine
you failed to show clips of Rupert Murdoch who was very happy with blogs and has claimed most blog to be allies to his cause.
Hilarious!
"vicious, hateful stuff," eh? Thank heavens that FOX News is "fair and balanced." Without their thoughtful, reasoned discourse, the marketplace of ideas would be over-run by facist liberals such as those nasty moveon.org types. From my high chair, perched on my high horse, in high dudgeon
What's the proposition here? That any journey into the blogosphere is inevitably going to lead to encounters with 'hateful' left-wing 'digital McCarthyists?'
If so, what an utter load of cobblers. It's been noted by others already that this was almost entirely comprised of clips from Fox News Channel programs critical of 'left-wing blog radicals.' Have you read 'little green footballs', 'relapsed Catholic', 'small dead animals' etc etc? I figure I am a socialist libertarian by political stripe, and besides that I'm Canadian, so who cares what I think anyway? But the fact that the political culture of the US is essentially that of two scorpions in a bottle doesn't equate to a seamless reason to avoid the blogosphere entirely. Be careful of reaching too far and overbalancing whilst on a high horse, Amanda.
Bob,
I think some excellent points are raised by the tape. The point is that there are two cultures with PR 2.0, i.e. zealots and realists. You're got those that preach that all CEOs should blog; then you've got 95 percent of the Fortune 500 CEO who for good reason avoid it like the plague. The point of the tape is that while you are enthusiastically encouraging your clients to go play on the highway... maybe you should listen to what others are saying about the dangers. That's not a high horse; that's good business counsel. - Amanda
believe me... they avoid it because it is a losing battle. Corporations are power structures. Power Structures that are in the hands of an elite. You expect them to Democratize that? The problem isn't the corporations... they are nothing but large governments. The problem is that we don't recognize Corporations as governments. It is a huge problem of semantics. Corporations are treated closer to individuals... this is a huge mistake. Our laws need to re-establish what the nature of a large corporation is. If we can recognize a corporation as a governing party... then we would be able to deregulate it.... using Libertarian principles. They are governments because they monopolize industries... the moment this occurs the people need to recognize a corporation as a completely different entity. But you can't expect any people in power to want to give it up.
YIKES Noah!!
Ironically, you just described the failure of Web 2.0. Awareness of the Web's libertarian agenda is just being to congeal in Corporate America. Not a fucking chance in Hell they are going to allow that to happen. Actually, considering the distribution of stock ownership, not a chance in Hell the general population will go along with it either.
THAT's WHAT I AM ALL ABOUT.... AMANDA
SMALL NATIONS THAT DEFEND BORDERS. if the people can see that they threatened by the status quo... they will change their opinions. It happened with 9/11 in America in it's stance to Israel. and it will happen again. SORRY TO BRING IN THE BIG ISSUE... but it gets to the final juxtaposition of my argument... the corporations only control the media till something drastic happens. then PR get's out of control. Before 9/11 Israel was a mere intellectual conversation @ Starbucks and it didn't stop Peter Jennings from having a Palestinian mistress. Something drastic will occur again.... and when it does... the balance of power will shift away from Corporations and back into the state republic system. It's only a matter of time. People want a border and they want to defend it. They are already terrified, and all the corporate PR on NPR and PBS will not save the opposing party because it will be a conflict of interest to Volvo Soccer Moms who in the end decide the vote. Am I like Marx and do I believe this is the final liberation? No... it will only be a matter of time before people begin to want the benefits of Internationalist systems... and there will be an eternal struggle. It is important to classify the new agendas and powers @ hand when we talk about corporate accountability and responses. The wars of the 21st century will all be about these core issues and I have no doubt that there is a huge grey area and a matter of relativity and proportion. This is the struggle. Let's call a spade a spade as Freud would say.
I certainly think it's a class struggle. But I don't agree with your assumptions and conclusions. Actually, I'm not quite sure how it relates to the video.
Moreover, the assertion about Jennings is false. I assume the poster is referring to Hanan Ashrawi. While she and Jennings did date, both were single at the time (1971 or 1972, I believe).
Great video, Amanda. This even beats "Like To Get to Know You", my alltime Strumpette fav. Who wins the most attention on the Web? Who is the Blogosphere's fav Prez candidate? Not Obama or Hillary.
The K-Sync Web Noise Tracker indicates that Rudy Giuliani is getting the lion's share of attention, mostly positive, on the Web from political bloggers. Check out the "Tracker" at www.politics08.us. Fact is the Blogosphere is neither Left or Right. It's a reflection of our political reality in America. It's "bi" like everything else.
Sorry, this video lost me as soon as one of the talking heads said that this morning she, "went to the blogosphere." Really? Is that up on 5th? Up past the series of tubes?
Watching Bill O' pout about someone's political vitriol is fabulous, especially the part about being sponsored by JetBlue. (You could practically see Rupert "MySpace" Murdoch smiling and waving in the fake backdrop behind him.)
This precisely the kind of reaction I'd expect from the mainstream media in general, and the kind of sensationalism that I'd expect from Fox in particular.
CT:
1. Mainstream media is the standard. If the prevailing standard is judging you as f-ed up... you just might want to listen. 2. As to "sensationalism"... okay, say that's true. Well, it so happens that sensationalism only works IF it is rooted in a belief held by the general population. Apparently, for SM to be viable, one must ignore standards and the majority of the population. Sounds like a cult. - Amanda
All I'm saying is that addressing the blogsphere has become part and parcel of effective reputation management. Just like you need to keep a grip on what's on the the first page of Google, you don't need a reporter you've spent time schmoozing Googling your client's name and casting recent development with your client in an old, unsavory light of bad press gone by.
the Peter Jennings mistress issue was told to me by Roz Abrams of ABC @ the time. I did not read it anywhere. Around 1999, it was told to me by people @ ABC who I met when I was working across the street @ what was then "Tower Records" @ Lincoln Center NYC. It was a good way to keep my fingers on the media when I was young.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRoz_Abrams&ei=SIC3RofTIoLQeYL3uNMK&usg=AFQjCNHN7ktOEn9UxyDP7pJYCYmyMqAY6Q&sig2=0Gnee38OlqKgwfXkkdzTMg Speaking of corporate accountability: as a former employee of "Tower Records", I can quote from experience that this is a primary example where poor decisions eventually led to "Tower Records" demise. While there I often spoke to the customers and found my higher ups @ "Tower Records" to be quite hostile to free thought. Though I was still in school at the time, I found my customers to be more loyal when I actually got to know them. "Tower Records" preferred the "Blockbuster Video" corporate strategy of non opinionated workers. When I left "Tower" I warned them that the one advantage of creating loyal customers was through opinions, because most people simply preferred to download music for free. Opinions are the reason people buy recorded media. The future idea of the media was one where the employees gave recommendations and interacted with people. "Tower Records" failed to heed my warning and now no longer exists. This is not delusions of grandeur. "Tower Records" failed to understand what the media was all about. When you centralize ideas into a forum and create a capitalized system where people pay or are advertised to, the danger is that people might go to another venue if the system of distribution is censored. The argument against this is the "Blockbuster" strategy of monopolization or governments like China. My arguments against these tyrannies are that in the long term censorship will not work. Essentially we are now going to see the same thing occur on facebook. Censorship besides being illegal is a governing economic principle of information. Information want to be free! Add Comment
|