Real Versus Fake Media Conspiracies

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate. The title of the story is Anatomy of a Media Conspiracy. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. This is the program where we analyze how influential and interesting people communicate, what they communicate and how they communicate. Sometimes we have guests and sometimes we have me, and ideally we always have you. So this is a show to really explore ideas and how they're communicated, whether it's through speaking to the public, speaking to the media, speaking on podcasts, all the different ways you can communicate. A couple of weeks ago, a fascinating story caught my eye entitled Anatomy of a Media Conspiracy. This was in the New York Times. It was written by one of their writers, Mark Leibovich, and he talks about how he became a part of essentially a huge controversy in the 2016 political campaign because emails of his that were sent to the Clinton campaign were leaked. Part of the whole Russian WikiLeak thing. And now he's being mocked, ridiculed, attacked as a Clinton lap dog and as a stooge. The Trump campaign is latched onto this as an example of how the mainstream media, to quote Sarah Palin, the lamestream media, are just in the tank for Hillary Clinton and Democrats. So the author comments on this and talks about what's going on. For those of you who aren't in the media or don't regularly deal with the media, at first blush it does sound off because there's all these emails talking about, can I use this? Do I have permission to use it really does sound as though the New York Times writer is essentially the PR flack for the Clinton campaign. So I can certainly understand why people just looking at the emails think that this is an example of something awful, something untoward, something that is embarrassing. Well, here's the thing, and Mark illustrates this and I will link to this in the show notes. He essentially says, well, this is how journalism works and it works on all sides. Now he does point out specifically that he's interviewed Donald Trump and essentially the very same privileges were given to Donald Trump. Here's what happens if you are just an average Joe or Jane Blow and you put out a press release about your new business or your new product or something, and you somehow get a reporter to call you up. This is not going to work for you. Most reporters do not have to give most people they interview all sorts of extra protections and promises and agree to certain ground rules. If you're Tom Cruise, if you're a major, if you're candidate running for president, you can often extract extra rules. Well, one of the rules is, may I speak to you off the record? Now, most report, not all, but most reporters will say yes. What that means is you can listen to me, but you can't quote me. And you can't use anything I'm saying directly in a story. You have to act as if you didn't hear it. It can sort of influence your thinking, but otherwise why would I tell you? But you can't quote me and you can't use it in the story. And politicians of every party and every political stripe do this. And political reporters from every major outlet most of the time will accept this. So what happens is if you interview a politician and it is off the record, what you can do as a reporter is go back to them and say, hey, can I use this quote? Can we essentially put this back on the record? And most politicians will look at and say, well, hey, that doesn't make me look bad, that doesn't make me look stupid, that doesn't open up a can of worms. Okay, you have permission. Now this does give a certain balance of power. But back to the politician or back to the movie star, back to the person who is being interviewed. And any media person who doesn't like it just always has the option of saying, okay, I'm just not going to do the interview. So no one's forcing the reporter to interview the person. So there is still somewhat of a two way street. Now the interesting thing in this case is only one political campaign's emails were leaked. And if we saw the emails from reporters to, and I'm not picking on Donald Trump could be any candidate at almost any level in any year of any party. The same thing happens. Now it's very easy to sit back and be a purist and say, well, I don't think reporters should ever speak to any politician off the record. If you did that, then you simply would not have access to the politicians. You might not be as informed, you might not have a sense of what's really going on. So I do understand why reporters do that. And you can also take a purist position and say, well, if someone is running for public office, they should be 100% transparent and everything they say should be on the record. And that sounds good in the abstract, but as a practical matter, what that means is you have to be on guard at every second. You have to think, not just how does this sound to this one person, but how could every sentence out of a five minute conversation be pulled out to make you look like a jerk. That's what you have to think about if you're a politician of any party, of any ideology. So if you really had some sort of rule where no politician ever spoke to any reporter unless everything was 100% on the record, you would create an incentive system for reporters, excuse me, for politicians to very, very rarely ever speak to the media, especially if they're an incumbent or especially if they're ahead in the races. And I don't know how any sane person with a straight face who knows anything about politics, they don't have to have my politics. But I don't know how any sane person, regardless of your politics or ideology, can really say democratic societies would be better off if most people in power rarely or never conducted interviews. I mean, that's just, frankly kind of crazy. So my take on. You may have a different take. My take on this is this so called controversy was not a controversy. It was just sort of lifting the lid, going back behind in the kitchen to see how the sausage is made or the stew is made, I guess, if I'm going to use the kitchen analogy. And the very same people who are crying the loudest are the ones who often benefit from the exact same phrase. Now, this particular story in the New York Times talks about specifically Hillary Clinton made a reference to Sarah Palin. It wasn't anything particularly nasty or negative, but it could have been construed that way. So the Clinton campaign said, no, we want to keep that off the record. Well, it's now out there because the emails were hacked. But when you look at it, it's not like she said, oh, I think Sarah Palin is an evil monster and I hope she falls off the face of the earth. It was nothing like that. It was essentially, oh, I always get a big kick out of Sarah Palin. And then she sort of imitated her voice. Not even a joke, nothing nasty, nothing mocking. But the Clinton campaign told the reporter that's going to stay off the record. Well, those are part of the rules that they get to do that. If you're a reporter and you agree to do an interview off the record, you have to accept the rules. And if you break the rules and you violate someone's promise of saying something off the record, well, then you're considered an unethical person. And that politician will, for the most part, never deal with you again. And you've completely burned all access to that political leader. So there's not much of an incentive to break that promise. It has to go both ways. So you often hear from PR experts to clients, the public at large, never ever speak off the record. And I gotta tell you, that's just not, in my view, a wise policy. It may work well for most people in most organizations most of the time, but when you're talking about someone running for president, where there is around the clock coverage and reporters are surrounding you all the time, it is simply too much to ask a politician to have to think about their messages and how every single thing will play out once it comes out of their mouth in real time. There is, I think, some real value and some benefit to the idea of politicians saying, okay, I'll let you spend time with me, you can have dinner together, you can ride on the bus with me. But it'll be off the record. Something really interesting you want to put in, let us know. I think that's fair. You can say, well tj, you're corrupt, you're a part of the insider world, that's your opinion, that's fine. But I've yet to see anyone really make a compelling case as to how the politician or the journalist, and ultimately how the public will really benefit. If there can never ever, ever be any sort such thing as off the record. What do you think honest, intelligent, fair minded people can disagree on this topic? Let me know. Post your comments on the blog, on the website, on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, wherever you are listening to or experiencing or watching this podcast, I'd love to hear from you. I'm T.J. walker. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to speaking with T.J. walker.