Angela Valdez of The New Republic writes Thursday about how some Wall Street executives are prepping themselves for potential indictments and may use the business media to argue their case.
“When smeared in the press, the defendant must respond. ”No comment’ is no longer an option,’ says Stephanie Martz, director of the White Collar Crime Project at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Crisis consultant Jim McCarthy, for example, takes a close-combat approach to dealing with the press. When Eliot Spitzer began investigating New York Stock Exchange director Kenneth Langone for advocating a cushy compensation package for the exchange’s chairman, McCarthy thought the press sacrificed accuracy in their rush to get the story. He fought for and won corrections in The New York Times and the New Yorker. ‘By consistently confronting every error, distortion, bias, and so on, you send a strong public signal that you will scrutinize and police all coverage of the client,’ McCarthy says.
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The trouble with demanding retractions is that, often, they either (a) end up repeating all the negative as well and/or (b) are such tiny articles that they aren't seen by your stakeholders.
Jonathan Bernstein
President
Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com
Jonathan's right that confronting the press on journalism standards means taking some shots. After all, it's a fight. And, yes, forcing correx from the likes of NYT and the New Yorker is like getting a cat into a bathtub. But it's worth it -- and beyond just setting the record straight on a specific point.
In effect, you are demonstrating to that particular news outlet that you will scrutinize their future coverage -- and also showing all the other reporters on the story that you can deliver consequences if they cut corners too.
It's important to note that the client itself should make public all interaction with the news outlet over the dispute. Demonstrate specifically and visibly how they have breached standards on accuracy, balance, sourcing, objectivity, analysis. If they resist setting the record straight, show that too.
The corrections editor is not the final arbiter of whether the coverage is fair or not -- readers are. The fundamental selling proposition that the press makes with its customers is that the reporting will abide by specific standards of fairness. When a client blows the whistle -- and loudly -- the impact can be huge. See here how, starting with a basic demand for correx, we totally debunked an A1 story in the NYT that unfairly maligned our clients in the fisheries industry:
http://www.aboutseafood.com/press/press-releases/nyt-public-editor-criticizes-times-mercury-story
http://www.aboutseafood.com/press/nfi-on-the-record
The risk in holding your fire is that, when you allow journalists to act with impunity toward the client, they will do exactly that.