By Wes Pedersen
Remember when the buzz words in and on the media were “media bias”?
Slanted stories! Favoritism! Evil intent! Facts tortured! History plagiarized! Libel! The public prints abused for profit!
We were talking Big Media then. Big papers like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Big name gasbags on the TV nets, too.
Today, it doesn’t matter all that much what one of these news and commentary outlets thinks or says.
It doesn’t matter, really, if they are all biased. No one is paying attention. Because when we think or talk Big Media now we’re talking Social Media.
Social media have taken over for the press to a degree unbelievable a few years ago. You know it. You’ve made sizeable adjustments to accommodate your work in PR to changes that seemed early on to sneak up behind you and sandbag your work mode and ethic.
Every reporter still around will tell you his or her paper is fighting for its life. The Big Press’s obit is in the can, waiting for the daily traditions like the Post or Times to pass the inky mortal coil.
Once scoffed at blogs are now prized outlets for news, rumors, chatter, and opinion. And bias.
PR professionals cannot yet afford to disregard the moribund papers, because businesses cannot yet afford to discontinue print advertising, The papers still seem important to most clients, but the day of all-digital, all-technology communication is named Tomorrow.
For many people and to their computers and their midget-widget offspring, Tomorrow is Today.
A hefty portion of the public relations profession clings to the notion that the big papers are the ultimate in placement. They love the clips they can show off as proof of performance, of influence, of clout where it counts. But in real terms, social media can outperform the laggardly print Times and the Post in a matter of nanoseconds when it comes to carrying a message around the world.
In truth, there is no valid reason for print insofar as news is concerned these days. The papers proved that when they started making their sites all-day news carriers.
Social media is a term that can be translated into The People’s Media.
Dealing with The People is a rough go. How, for example, do you seek redress from The People? Whom do you charge with falsifying stories about your clients? Whom do you thank for any good words that are in common play out there?
Social media are not a PR cure for the common crisis; they absorb your message instantly and move on to the next news offering immediately. A wrong word, a wrong phrase brings the anonymous harpers and carpers out by the millions. A nasty response flashed around the world is the cue for more nasty comments, vulgarity building on vulgarity,
The social media are turning reporting into copycat-ism. Plagiarism is rampant outside the fields of traditional journalism. One idea becomes everyone’s idea.
One asset the social media can really claim is the ability to become opinion molders in their own right via blogs, Twits, texting and friend-liness. That’s the field savvy PR is mining. That’s the field Big Media are trying without success to tame.
Facebook and YouTube are today’s leading communications mechanisms. It’s not great communication in terms of la de da writing, but it is where America first posts its news and photos.
Unlike the old commercial press, there is little fact checking in most independent blogs. That is changing. Blogs offered by veteran journalists free of corporate ties are increasingly bolstered by facts citing chapter and verse
As are those open to readers of the nation’s most reliable newsletters.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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