When I got started in the media about 30 years ago if you were a public figure you only had to deal with three media, print, radio and TV. And in form they were actually all pretty similar. Radio reporting had been formed by print reporters and TV reporting had been based on the radio standards. So it was pretty simple really. Plans for dealing with the media were pretty straight forward.
That stopped being the case back in the Watergate days. Since then public figures and politicians have had to rely ever more on media specialists. With the explosion of new media in the last decade it’s become even more important. Which why two recent media meltdowns just leave me shaking my head.
Start with Kansas governor Sam Brownback. He made an appearance in front of a high school group and one 18 year old girl wasn’t impressed. She tweeted her thoughts, uncomplimentary thoughts, about the Govenor. To her 65 followers. At which point Brownback’s media team turned an insignificant issue into a medium sized disaster. In the end the Governor ended up apologizing to the young lady. All because the “media experts” lost any sense of proportion.
At the other end you have former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. Cain’s suspension of his campaign has much less to do with whether or not his ideas were good than they do with the fact that the Cain campaign handled the media about as badly as it’s possible to do. Bizarre campaign videos and videos of a chronically under prepared candidate left the campaign with a huge added hurdle to overcome. Even in the speech announcing leaving the race Cain chose to rather bizarrely quote music from a Pokemon movie. If you’re 66 years old and trying to be taken seriously for the most powerful job in the world you need to avoid quoting children’s cartoons.
Good media teams should be there to help out. Then of course you also have to listen to them. Plenty of blame to pass around these days.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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