When Journalists Become the Story: Who Really Controls the Narrative?

Welcome to a live edition of the PR Breakdown, bringing back two of my favorite guests. It is the. I think I wrote this today, the guys behind the Reputation Town podcast, briefly, for the new people here listening. What do you guys do? Why are you here? Why do I love you guys?

We'd like to give different takes on PR and communications you might not hear elsewhere, certainly in Canada anyway, where Warren and I operate from.

Warren, what say you meet the train guy? 30 some years in public relations and love chatting about it, which is why we're here.

What's interesting, we've been doing this for a couple years. You two have had your podcast for a while, but I popped in as a guest and you've been a guest on my podcast. I always find that our opinions align for the most part, not often that we are on other sides of the argument. One was the election. John and I miscalled it big time. Warren, you. You correctly said that Donald Trump would win the election. But I'm going to tie this into, I think, another place where we do not align. And that would be our take on Jake Tapper's book or co author of Original Sin, All About Joe Biden. And now it's been a month or two since the publication date and I have to ask you guys, what do you think? Should we go with John first on this one or Warren, who's going to drop the bomb on this one?

I've got the contrarian take you.

You think you have a contrarian?

I'll throw that out there and then you can tell me what you think of it. So, okay, so obviously the backstory to that book, everybody knows Jake Tapper really didn't give a lot of time to the Joe Biden is in decline story. And so he was trying to, I think, create a path for him to be able to talk about this going forward. And what's the best way to get past an issue you have? Sometimes it's to embrace it. And I think that's what his strategy was here. He searched out Alex Thompson, who had been reported about Biden's decline, and wrapped himself tightly around him to write this book. And then he's using it as a vehicle to give himself credibility going forward to say, you know what, I got it wrong, but now I've made amends and I've written this book that gives all this great detail about what actually did happen. And so I can be credible on this subject. Again, that's the approach I think he's taken here.

Okay, so I can't tell, though, in your answer, do you think he was, do you have a problem with him writing a book like this or do you understand why some people had problems with him this?

I don't have a problem with it, particularly because if he was, if he came to me as a client and said, hi, help me get past this issue I have, this is probably the best way of doing it. Giving himself freedom to work past this in the future and have a discussion about this in the future so he isn't constantly being called out. I think there's going to be hearings coming up in the not too distant future in Congress about Biden's decline. So he will give. He has given himself a platform to be able to talk about this in a way that he couldn't have otherwise.

Okay, Warren, what is your take now? I will say a little backstory here. When I had a podcast about it because I started listening to the book, I was flying to San Francisco and I thought, oh, this is perfect cross country, perfect time to start listening to the book. I loved it. I looked at it as an insider's view of what was happening in the White House. I was not really thinking about the authors and what they were lacking. It certainly came up, but I didn't have as much of a problem with it because I have my thoughts on journalism, journalism nowadays and what it's like to be a journalist and work in media companies. I don't even call them news companies anymore. And I posted something and you were the first person to chime in with your thoughts, Warren. Share your thoughts on Jake Tapper specifically.

My comment was, I can't believe you gave Jake Tapper $30. And then.

And my honest response was, technically I.

Spotify, which I didn't know. This is great. You can, if you have a Spotify membership, you can listen to any audiobook. Basically.

Oh yes.

I've been stewing about this for a couple of weeks. So I love that I have an opportunity to vent a little bit now. I think that, and this is just one guy's opinion, this to me was the most blatant and shameless display of hypocrisy I've seen in the book publishing world. And also on the tail end, probably one of the least successful. If you look at his book, would you call it a success? Do you think it was a great launch? Think he sold a bunch of copies. What do you think his numbers have been?

Oh, he was on the top of the list when I recorded the podcast. He was number two on the. He was number two on The Amazon list behind signed Mel Robbins. And I don't know if you know who he. She is. She wrote the let them theory. That annoyed me in and of itself. But he was at the top of the New York Times list. There was a pre sale.

I think he did well, I would say that's manufactured by cnn. It was probably one of the most promoted books every time. Hey, guys, my book's coming out next week and they just promote like millions of dollars worth of free promotion. First week he sold 53,000 copies, which is certainly respectable if you compare that to Bob Woodward Fear, the book he had about Donald trump. First week, 1.1 million books. Mary Trump, right? So Bob Woodward's like, you know, obviously Watergate, Mary Trump's book about Donald Trump, that came out a couple years ago, 900,000 copies in the first week. And those books also held their sales for a tremendous amount of time. Jake Tabor, second week, 17,000. And now it's just. It's off the list. So sales aside, and I listened to the first two chapters, but I started throwing up in my mouth a little bit. So I just.

Warren, were those the free chapters?

I have the whole book. It's on Spotify as well. I'm like, oh, I gotta listen to it. And I was out for a walk and I'm just like, jesus Christ. So the stories are great. You're right. Like, the stories are excellent. It's interesting. You can picture it. You're like, oh, I had a suspicion. It's. To me, you have to separate the art from the artist. I just. I think he's the wrong messenger for this. Because if you look back, as I have, there are many video clips when he's always sharp as attack. He's the best Joe Biden he's ever been. This guy's Mac. How dare you make fun of his stutter. And the dude had clear cautionary cognitive decline and like dementia, whatever you want to call it. And for him, the moment when Joe Biden becomes out of power and not useful to him anymore, he stabs him in the back and uses him to climb up. And I found that really, really offensive. So interesting stories in the book, but I was really offended by the balls that this guy had to actually say that he was not complicit. I would say he was one of the top four or five journalists because of his platform who was actually promoting this. Like he was the guy moderating the debate, the terrible debate. And he was actually working on this book before all that. So it's not like, he had this eureka moment during the debate of, oh, my God, what's happening? He was writing the book. And folks in the journalism, in the media world would say, if you, if your job is a journalist and you're on cnn, should you maybe not be reporting stuff when you know it? So that's my beef with Jake Tapper.

Yeah. And that has certainly come up before. I'm blanking on the New York Times, Moreno, Dowd, you know, it's the same thing. No, not Marino, Dowd, but writing. Writing about Trump and then coming out with a book about Trump. Yeah, certainly with journalists. I. And something that I said to you, I think your argument is valid. It is absolutely valid. But my take on it for the Jake Tappers of the world is this, is that the media industry is changing. When Bob Woodward was reporting on Watergate newspaper, really was King. Woodward and Bernstein were. They were doing the work. They were hustling. They didn't even have the respect in the newsroom with Ben Bradley, but he gave them the story. Hustle, hustle. Because they did it for the love of news. But nowadays, because I think it's a combination of journalism ego, but also how the media world is structured now, we don't have news businesses, we just have entertainment businesses. So whether it's cable television, if it's news or book, I think it's all the same. It's like content.

The reality is that I think Jake Tapper wrote the book to give him the credibility as an. As a journalist going forward. And a year from now, when we're more deep into congressional hearings about Joe Biden's competency, he's going to be able to credibly say, you know what? I did get that wrong. I covered it in my book. I laid out, like, the first clear account of what that decline was like. And he will be able to, I think, have a lot more room to maneuver and talk about these issues than he would have otherwise.

So the reputational play for him. So 50 years from now, when people don't remember the minutiae, they'll remember he was the guy that set the record straight. That's what we'll remember. So actually, still a bullshit move. A couple other things, if I can. Jake Tapper hired a crisis manager. I thought, when I first heard that, I thought it like, oh, my God, Molly, please.

No, but let's just say, though, that Jake Tapper does follow me and his response. You could tell he was doing crisis management. Then I heard that he did hire someone. It did follow my framework I'm just saying. But go on, Warren.

You're saying, having said all that, if you have to hire a crisis manager to launch your book, like, maybe there's an issue. The other thing is one of your, one of your listeners here said, where do we find stories that are true? What do you. And here's. I'm going to say something that is maybe going to rub people the wrong way, but I actually believe this is the case. The best journalists we have in the world right now are these independent podcasters like Theo Vaughn, which is crazy. And I know Joe Rogan is a very polarizing figure, but if you go back and just objectively listen to his podcasts over the past four years, he was asking tough questions of politicians, of healthcare professionals that no actual journalists were. Got just vilified for it. And CNN had him in a yellow filter, made him look all weird. But, like, why is Theo Vaughn asking harder questions than 60 Minutes? That's problematic.

And here's your answer. And on this chat before, and I should say on this episode, we do have the chat going. I said, my smarty, sometimes snarky smart people, they chime in. And we talked about this issue at great length. I had touched on the fact that the media industry is changing so much. And you bring up 60 Minutes when CBS, owned by Paramount, is brokering a deal to be purchased. And then there's pressure on the executive producer of 60 Minutes, and then the head of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, is asked to leave. Business now forms journalism. So a lot of these journalists, their hands are tied on what they can and cannot report on. But you get content creators, the Theo Vaughn's, the Joe Rogans, the. Oh my gosh, call her daddy Alex, boys. No, someone in the chat will tell me, why am I blanking? I just watched her on Netflix. They can say what they want, they can ask any question what they want. But also they have the ability to go so deep, that's what makes them interesting. And so the question was, are they really journalists or not? But they're knowledgeable. That's what people are driven to.

How are they not journalists? How are they not?

I say this, they're not credentialed, but you're right. What makes a journalist? Do they follow ethics and rules the journalism, the rules of ethics?

Do the journalists today, like, do the MSNBCs and the fox? It's. If you look at what's happened to the media business, and I know this was not really our topic that we were going to chat about, but I find it Depressing what's going on. And like to the point where at this advanced age that I'm at here in this business and I went to journalism school, I am credentialed right from way back in the day. And a lot of people, I would say, would think that credential is worth the paper it's written on because they learn how to do it in a newsroom and they learn how to go out on the street and ask questions. But it makes me actually want to go out and start a program where I ask these people because no one is asking, no one is taking these politicians to task and asking them great questions because they're scared of losing their access.

Yeah, exactly. If you're comparing, let's say Alex Cooper from Caller Daddy, which has. Between her and Joe Rogan, they're at the top. And there's. And the reason why it's entertaining. They ask the questions that a credentialed journalist that who is on a media outlet is not going to ask. But then you have Terry Moran being fired from ABC News for the tweet that he posted about Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. Now, what do you think about that?

So that strays into what does a news organization have to do to stay in good stead with the White House to be able to effectively report? We've already seen them kick AP out of the press pool or out of the White House offices. The thing about the media right now is that there's all these things, all these businesses that look like news outlets. And from an outsider, you would say, oh, that's a news outlet. But they don't actually operate that way. The quote unquote journalists who, who run them and who actually do the reporting, they don't operate on the same basis with the same rules and the same sort of standards that traditional journalists would. And. But at the same time, you as an organization are left trying to protect your reputation or maybe get a story accurately reported on those platforms. And it's very difficult because they're all often have their own interests, their own objectives they don't disclose and often motivated by their own political or financial motivations that again, aren't disclosed. So it is a very complicated environment to be in. And this is actually why to the point about content creators like podcasters, embracing them where you can to get your message out is the better way than trying to just rely on earned media alone. Because if you just try and rely on earned media to tell your story, it is a losing game as far as I'm concerned, because there's not as many. There's not enough opportunity. Your audience isn't necessarily there in the first place. And I find that this ties into what you were talking about, Molly, about some of the traditional journalists in the White House. They really get hung up on what they think the storyline should be versus what an objective view of the matter might be. Right now we're recording this. It's June 25th, and this morning the dialogue is continually all about who is correct about the way the White House is portraying the attack on Iran. Were things completely obliterated or just partially obliterated and trying to catch the the president out in some way, shape or form. But the reality is this is the same game they played for four years before and it was a losing game and it's a losing game now. They're really focused on something so in the weeds that I think they're putting themselves at risk to have them being outstripped even further by these alternative content creators, podcasters. Because that's more and more what is going to, I think, drive the narrative when it comes to news in the future.

The White House giving press credentials to content creators, friendly content creators. And it's interesting, when you guys went to open the HuffPo, the Huffington Post clip that I gave you, it was gone, it was already pulled. And what I had sent you was Caroline Levitt, she's our the press secretary, was welcoming a room full of online content creators, all very friendly. And so you can imagine what the questions were like. The first question was given to a content creator and she said, thank you so much for allowing me to answer, to ask the first question and to be here. And then everything was fluff, fluff, fluff. It's like, how come you guys are so great and how can you be any better? So that's a big problem. They're really skewing it through social media. And I'll say last night, I was telling Warren, before we came on the air, I was at a show last night in Boston and it was with a bunch of influencers and they needed to invite the old person up there. I totally represented Gen X offline. When we were chit chatting, the conversation was how much, how much money is flowing to from pac money coming from both sides, going to content creators to spread the information. So I think the Trump White House, if there's one thing that you're going to give them, that Biden was trying too late, I think is having, is just having the beat on their content creators and influencers who are spreading their messages.

But here's the thing. Is that really a problem or is that just reality? And as communicators, you have to adapt to reality and often embrace it in order to get the upper hand with your clients or your organization you're trying to represent.

Yeah, but also the White House doesn't want traditional media in there. They're blocking them. So how does it, how does traditional media then report on what's happening in the White House? And then that could bring us back, right to Jake Tapper, what we know happened on the inside, even with Biden.

Maybe try reporting on it. Actually say that the, the Biden administration had their friendly voices and they were MSNBC and cnn. They were doing the same thing that these independent podcasters are doing. And it if the other thing that we haven't really mentioned here, and that is an actual fact, and I could sound like a tinfoil hat person, but there are a lot of these media outlets, these big ones in the States especially are kind of communications arms of the government. There is someone from the government. I can't, I can't remember if it's the FBI or the CIA who has a desk at Fox News. And I'm sure it's the same in all those other channels, like they sit inside the outlet. I heard that the other day. Yeah, that's bananas.

Oh, I haven't heard that. That's interesting. We know there's significant cuts to Voice of America which is putting out propaganda. But we have one of the people in our chat here who is visiting us from Sweden is saying news in the USA looks like a game show and a tabloid in one in one big colors yelling people over exaggerations and in competition with each other. It's such set up for divide and untruths. And they really nailed it there because it is true. It is like a game show because it is, it's ratings, it's average advertising dollars. That's what they need. Truth. I don't know where truth falls.

Yeah, or in, in many case of new content creators, subscriptions. And the more you can deliver content that your audience likes to see, the more subscriptions you get. Again, I like people aren't going to. Communicators aren't going to change all this. This is, we are caught in the current and the current is going this way. And so the question is, in my mind, how do you use this to your advantage versus trying to throw your hands up in the air and say, oh, this is terrible. How do we stop it? I don't think it's I don't think it's stoppable. It is what it is. This is the way that the media world's evolving.

Yeah. To wrap up this conversation, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring in a comment from the chat. And Warren, I'm gonna direct this to you. She's a fellow Canadian and she works in politics. She's, she always brings good intel in here. But her question is genuinely curious. Do you think Jake Tapper is wrong for withholding the book's content as a reporter or making money off news as a reporter? And I will add, or both.

I guess it depends on your definition of his role. Is he a journalist or is he an entertainer? And I think he's answered that question for us. Right. If you're a journalist and you have news that the public should, you know, that the president can't function, should you know that there's an auto pen that's signing everything and what do they call it? Pardoning people? Should you know that as an American citizen, like, I'm, I live in a different country and I'm pissed. So I think that it just, it's disappointing to me that the, and maybe I nostalgize the Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather era, but like, where do you go? Where do you go for news? How do you know what's going on? And I would say like the best version of that and my piss off some of your people here is like X for me, it's just, it's a, it's an unfiltered window into what? And that's why I said Trump was going to win, win the election. Like I was seeing something dramatically different on there than I was seeing on these different channels and New York Times, you look at the Globe and Mail here or the Toronto Star or the New York Times or the Washington Post, and you see that kind of title. And I think there's this automatic. You say this is the same paper that existed 10 years ago and 20 years ago and 50 years ago and 80 years ago, but it's not. The COVID looks the same, but the people underneath and the motivations are completely different. And I think once you scratch below the surface, it's pretty ugly what's going on in journalism. And you have, you obviously have the echo chambers and the squeaky wheels on either side. But I think there are a lot of people in the moderate middle who don't really have a voice and who are super pissed off and super confused.

Yeah. And speaking of being super confused, John Pearnock I cannot believe that Warren nailed the calling Trump, but he's saying he only got that from X, which is the most biased version of getting information about Trump. Is it Warren Weeks? Are you telling me X is your go to social media?

It's my go to news, information source. Like, I dabble in all. Like, you have to get it from everywhere, right?

Yeah, you do. Yeah.

In myself. Am I part of the problem? Am I in my echo chamber? But I will say, in the lead up to the election, I was seeing just as much, if not more stuff for Kamala Harris than I was seeing for Donald Trump. But it was so polarized from both sides. But I would see his rally, and I'm like, those people look pretty jazzed up. And I would see her. I'm like, those people look like they're at gunpoint. And so on some level, it looked the same. Oh, yay, we got the signs. Beyonce's here for three minutes for $10 million looked like. My gut instinct told me, this is bullshit. That's not real Donald Trump. It's in the. Whether you like him, whether you don't. A lot of people don't. It seemed genuine. And so that's how I made that call, because I was just seeing this content, and I was seeing it on both sides of money. Into it she went. She burned through, like, a billion and a half dollars in a couple of months.

Yeah. Getting people like Oprah paying for that. Yeah. And speaking of. Speaking of Oprah, I just want to ask quickly on this one, and we're not going to go too deep on it, but this weekend, the wedding. John, I know you just came back from Italy, and it's a shame that you. You must have missed it in the mail. Your invitation.

My invitation. Yeah. Was lost somewhere.

Yeah. To his wedding. To the wedding to Lauren Sanchez. And when I was doing this program last night, Jeff Bezos came up, but there's a lot of people online, and he's gets a lot of blowback about just how he conducts himself and their whole branding of the two of them. But what do you guys think? Have an opinion on it. But if you're walking in the shoes of Jeff Bezos, like, what do you think he's. What. How is he putting his perception out there or his brand out there? What is he trying to do? Is he trying to come off as this ridiculous kind of trope of just oozing of money and they don't care what people think? Or do you think he actually cares what people think?

I also want to hear If John got married when he was in Italy, but we'll talk about that later. I think I know what happened to your invitation. It got stolen off your porch.

That's probably.

So there was another billionaire wedding recently, June 14th. Does anybody who know who it was.

Wait, are. Is this a quiz or you're asking us?

Quiz.

Wait. A Billionaire wedding on June 14.

Billionaire wedding on June 14. Soros, Xander Soros marries Anthony Weiner's ex, which, like, there's no amount of money in the world that could end up. So I don't remember.

I admit that was a great story to follow. That was a Twitter story.

Yeah. I don't remember any protesters at their wedding. So this is the problem billionaires, or is the problem billionaires that gave a million dollars to Donald Trump again? And so he keeps coming up as a thread through all the stories. But I don't. I. The most problematic thing to me is like they're talking about over tourism in. In Venice as being a huge problem. Do you know how many visitors they get every year? 20 to 30 million visitors. And he has 200 people at his wedding, so that doesn't work for me either. It's not like too many people. The politicians in the area are all saying this is crazy. Bring the money on. We need this. So to me, the biggest problem with this is I don't know of. He's what, the third or fourth richest person in the world and this is who he picks? No offense, but she's spent millions of dollars to look like a cat. And I don't understand the logic in. And again, to each his own. But as far as I know, they're doing all their stuff in private venues. I don't think they're shutting anything down. George Clooney got married there and they shut down the canal so they could have their little procession. I don't remember any protesters there as well because they're on the left. So I don't want to make everything political, but it seems like much ado about nothing. I don't, you know, to answer your actual question, I don't think Jeff Bezos cares what people think about him.

John, what say you?

I think that the amount of news coverage that is happening is more in relation to organizations like Greenpeace who were organizing some of the protests, using this as an opportunity to get profile for themselves. And I had to laugh, though. I saw them came with the name of the tower in Venice they occupied and then released some smoke from and had a big banner hanging off of. But if you Think of those people who vandalize or destroy like valuable pieces of artwork because they're trying to protest oil prices or something like that. Like it's on par with that. They're just, they're using it as a platform for their own interest. And I, I think often it just backfires. People look at it and say, this is ridiculous. You're doing this. I think Bezos is an easy target because he's made a lot of money, he's got a really successful business. There are questions about labor practices at Amazon over the years, whether or not they're true or not. I don't have that information in front of me to say either way. But I think it is a convenient opportunity for these kind of third parties to try and give a platform for their message. And this is where it, that goes back to the media thing is that at the end of the day, you could probably count the number of protesters that are involved. There's probably fewer than a hundred in total, I would bet. But yet the amount of media attention they're being given by the all the major news outlets is enormous. And I would go back to the question of is that really news? Is that the thing that the news organizations should be giving the attention to or are other things that arguably are more newsworthy? But again, this reveals the whole lie behind the curtain is that even the traditional news media is driven by ratings and advertising and they will put on what gets eyeballs. And Jeff Bezos's wedding is probably going to get more eyeballs than something else.

Yeah, I agree with both of you. And not just ratings, but also the online chatter because that's where a lot of as well. And the Sanchez Bezos wedding is a wedding that is just made for social media and for commentary. I had a reporter reach out to me UK magazine, asking me to comment on it. And I thought, I don't want to spend even two minutes thinking about this couple in the middle of my work. I have to do strategic comms. And then I said no. And then they came back again and said, could you just write something? And I thought, oh, just how annoying. Like a journalist being a journalist. But. But then I thought on it because I thought, what is this guy thinking? Because I thought, no, let me think about it. I really do want to think about this now. And what it comes down to is I. They look, people are looking at the Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in a way almost like common people, if you will. They're one of us in a weird way. So we can chime in on them. I don't think Jeff Bezos cares about anybody because he has so much money now. Lauren Sanchez, a little bit more of a commoner. She was a on air. On air reporter, anchor, but she's still in the normal realm. But I think his currency is relevancy. And he wants to be respected, but he. Because he doesn't have it. They have to make a show of everything. And a lot of guests who are there are the people who want to be relevant. The people 1 transactionally, the Kardashians are there, but also Oprah and Gail, who I find very transactional in their choices of late as well. And then there's other people, certainly in the spectacle of it all. But I just don't think they care. And I agree with you 100%. It's ratings, it's chatter, and they're just negative now. Like they're the villains that people to talk about. But they have so much money, they.

Don'T even care this. Where could he have done his wedding and not had a protest?

You're right. You're 100% correct.

He could have done it on his little spaceship in space and they'd be whining about that. Oh, the green emissions or whatever.

So on the cusp of space, it's.

Ultimately, it's people are. I think there's some envy, some jealousy there. And rightly, when should people have nine gajillion dollars? I'll just leave that because I'm a capitalist, too. Jeff Bezos paid $1.4 billion in taxes last year. A lot of people would say that's low, but it seems probably higher than most. And I would ask a couple questions. What did the folks who were protesting pay in taxes last year as a percentage of their income? Because I would say it's probably lower. And have any of them ordered stuff from Amazon and had it shipped to their house in a day? So answer me that.

Wow. Okay, so Jeff Bezos, apologist.

I'm not. Maybe we should be worried, but less about Jeff Bezos and his wedding and worry more about our own life and getting a better job and having a relationship and taking care of our kids and like going to the gym and eating a little better. Not to get all preachy, but when we're focusing on him, what are we really doing? To your point? Right. It's eyeballs, it's clicks. But at the end of the day, who gives a. Yeah.

And I mean it is a little preachy. I'll say. Warren, you sound a little freaking. No but I don't think Jeff Bezos cares. No, there's one bit he doesn't care one bit. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining me. And if you guys want more, Warren and John, you can check out their podcast, Reputation Town. I am such a fan. All right, everyone, thanks so much for joining. Bye for now. Thanks, Warren. Thanks, John.