Ep 156 Should You Write a Letter to the Editor After a Bad Story - Media Training June 4, 2016

Should you write a letter to the editor after a bad story has been written about you?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

This question comes courtesy of Gerald Breaux, one of my friendly competitors whom I have a great deal of respect for. And you should check out his video broadcast on this very subject. And he has something called the Brocast. You can find it on YouTube. You can go to Bro Communications and it's the spelling of his name. G E R A R D B R A U D. Broad. Excuse me? It's pronounced bro, but it's. If you're looking at it, it looks like Broad. B R A U D Communications. Check out his site, check out his blog. He does a great job. Fantastic insights on media. I want to address this question, too. Should you write a letter to the editor for a bad story or just let it die? Well, before I can answer that question, we have to define terms. When you say a bad story, it could just mean a reporter wrote an honest, thorough, fair story about you, but you didn't like it. Now, if a reporter does a profile of me and describes me as a guy with a little bit of a belly and balding, I would say that's bad if that's how he's describing me. But you know what? It's also accurate and fair. So I'm not going to demand a retraction or write a letter to the editor and say, well, he forgot to write about my other fine attributes. I'm nice to my fish. You know, I'm not going to do that because you have to use your judgment. Now, if you mean by a bad story there are factual inaccuracies, that's a different matter. There are particular strategies I would advise for that. First of all, I wouldn't even write to the editor as the first step. If a reporter has written a story about you and there are factual inaccuracies, first of all, you should be monitoring any story written about you. If you don't have your company's name and your own name in a Google alert, do it right now. Stop listening to this podcast. Stop watching it on YouTube, go to Google, set up an alert. It costs nothing because you need to be alerted within a couple of hours at most if there's any story that mentions you. So if a reporter has done a story and there's a factual inaccuracy, what I've done with amazing, amazing success is I just write to not the editor, but the reporter, and I'll say something like, hello, Jane, great story you wrote, by the way. My annual revenues are actually boom, boom, boom. I think your readers might enjoy this or might find this useful. Can you add it to the story? So I'm not attacking her. I'm not saying, you idiot, you fool, you imbecile, you liar. I'm not attacking the reporter. I am just calmly, directly stating what the facts are. If it requires outside justification or verification, I'll provide that. And in most cases, I find the reporters, they want to be accurate. They're not looking for headaches. They don't want to have some meeting with their editor or the lawyer for their newspaper or media outlet having to deal with defamation issues. So if you give them the facts, correct the facts right away, they'll put it in part because they know correctly. It makes it a lot harder to sue them in the future if they corrected it right away. Now, that works when it's an absolute, clear cut, factual situation. Sure, there's always ideologically motivated media or media that are just against you or your, your organization or your industry. I'm not saying it works 100% of the time, but if you do it quickly, and I mean within an hour or two of posting, the reporter hasn't really lost face. You've helped the reporter do a better job and everyone in the media outlet feels like you're not going to sue them and they're happier. So that works when it's a very, very clear cut situation. If it's a story where you just don't like it because they drew some conclusions and there was some criticism, that's where I think the tail end of Jared Breaux's question does apply. Just let it die. There are some stories where not everybody's gonna love you, folks. Not everybody loves me. Not every review of this show and every speech I give is positive. We just have to deal with it. You can't pick a fight with every single person who doesn't love you. Life is too short and you're simply not going to win all those battles. More on this in just a moment.

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So let's say the article has come out. Let's say it is a traditional newspaper or print magazine and you would like to see a correction in the next magazine or the next newspaper. I have used a formula since the 1980s that has been remarkably consistent and especially for newspapers, when you're trying to get it in print. Although increasingly these days, I'm not quite sure why anyone would care about print. But in some cultures, some parts of the world, print is still dominant. Personally, I don't ever buy a print newspaper. I do read them if when they're just put in front of me for free on an airplane or at a hotel. But I do everything online. But let's say you wanted to get it in print. There is less space in print, so you have to be a lot faster with it and you have to use particular strategy. The strategy I found that works is limit your letter to four sentences. Have some heading that is innocuous, that summarizes you know regarding your article on such and such. Important for readers to know the following and then state what you think were the missing facts or what needs to get in there to correct the record. Do it in a positive way. Don't repeat all the negatives because that hurts you. If you say, you know, Reporter Smithers called TJ a big fat ugly idiot. Regarding your story about TJ being a big fat idiot. Point number one, I'm not a big fat idiot. Some people think I'm a thin, slim idiot. All you're doing is repeating these negatives. So don't repeat the negatives. State what you want people to know. Put it in four sentences and get it to them quickly. If you're hoping that the letter to the editor gets printed in an actual paper format, try to email it to them within 24 hours of you seeing it. Now, the other option you have these days is most media outlets allow comments. Now, some of you may think, well, that's for anyone. That's for other people. That's for just the readers. Well, no, if there's a story about you and you think it's unfair, there's nothing wrong with placing your side of the story in the comment section because the comments are often read and you can hit more people that way. And if you feel like the reporter has been profoundly unfair, you might be able to generate some sympathy and at least get the message you want out in that area. Again, you've got to use judgment. And that's where it's helpful, frankly, to have an outside PR counsel. Folks, I'm not a PR firm, so I'm not going after your business. But I have noticed that some people are just so incredibly thin skinned. I've seen clients before have a giant 10,000 word profile in a major media outlet and every single sentence except one was overwhelmingly glowing and positive. And there was one sentence that was dredged up some negative in a mild way buried in the story. And the client wants to demand a retraction and call our lawyers. Let's write a letter to the editor. And the outside PR counsel needs to have the toughness to sit the client down and say, look, frankly, in a polite way, you're being an idiot. You're overreacting. This was a wildly positive story. You're lucky to get it. It's not the same thing as an advertisement where you can write it word for word. These people don't work for you. This isn't the Kremlin. It's not 1975. You can't dictate word for word what's said in the article. That's why it's more credible. That's why people read it. So there are times when people need to just essentially grow up and realize you're not going to get word for word everything you want all the time, especially if you're at all involved in public affairs, politics, government. You're just not going to get 100%. So those are the tips I would recommend, certainly factually, if there's anything inaccurate, get it to the reporter right away. Now, the one thing I didn't add, which we have talked about in recent podcasts, is if there's a story about you and the reporter didn't even bother to call you. What I've done with a lot of success is I simply write to the reporter, say, hey, saw your story, thought your readers would be interested in our perspective, and then give a one to two second quote that actually is quotable because it's got some emotion, some sound bite qualities. Absolute. An example, something that makes it genuinely quotable, which you've heard me talk about before, but limit it to two sentences. Just two sentences, not 800 words. This way the reporter can do a simple cut and paste, put it into the story, save it, upload it to the website and be done. This is especially effective after hours. If the story was posted at 5, maybe the reporter thought, it's too late to call these people. Let me just put the story to bed. You see it at 6, you quickly come up with your two sentences, write it to the reporter. The reporter on his or her cell phone can cut and paste, put into the story on their commute home. And by 7, anyone coming to that website is now seeing your quotes in the story to balance things out and give your perspective. So these are the techniques I would use on what to do if you see a story and you're not happy with it. I'm TJ Walker. May all of your presentations in life, whether it's to live audiences or the media, be a complete success. See you next time.

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