Fraser SeitelFraser Seitel

“Fake news” is in the eye of the beholder.

For example, if you think it’s no big deal that Jared Kushner may have attempted to set up a back channel with the Russians to fight ISIS in Syria, then you’d probably brand all the media echo chamber hysteria incriminating the President’s son-in-law as “fake news.”

Today’s “fake news” is just a natural extension of the steady diminution of journalistic standards over the past two decades.

Journalists used to champion “objectivity” in reporting. But with the growth of Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left and with proliferating, one-sided web sites billing themselves as “sources of news,” it was probably inevitable that media pillars which at least tried to be “neutral” — from The New York Times and Washington Post to CNN and NBC — would eventually throw in the towel and willingly display their bias. (If you disagree, tune in to "NBC Nightly News" any evening and watch how thoroughly its Washington reporters excoriate all things Trump.)

So, if even traditional sources of journalism have been declared one-sided under the new reportorial law of the land, how can an organization caught in the “fake news” cross-hairs confront and combat it?

Here are a few suggestions, which run counter to the traditional public relations advice of treating the media as “friendly adversaries.”

Don’t hide

CEOs — particularly those making tens of millions of dollars annually — are notoriously reluctant to mix it up with critics.

Unlike the old days when corporate citizens with names like Rockefeller and Wriston, Welch and Iaccoca regularly stood up for what they stood for, today’s CEOs are generally fraidy scared. They avoid the media, refrain from giving speeches or testimony and try to keep out of public view.

Staying silent, of course, is the worst strategy if your organization is confronted by “fake news.” As they say, “Silence grants the point.”

So, a good CEO doesn’t hide in the face of fake news; he or she fights back, in public.

That’s exactly what JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon does every time his institution or his industry is challenged by fake news purveyors. For instance, while other bank CEOs shrink in the face of a withering fusillade from their primary Congressional critic, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Jamie Dimon rises up. When Warren calls for breaking up the banks or imposing increased banking regulation, Dimon dismisses the gentle lady’s venom with a simple, “She doesn’t understand the global banking system.”

Strike back quickly

With social media humming and biased websites churning out copy by the minute, the adage, “If you snooze, you lose,” has never been truer.

News with no basis in fact must be shut down immediately, before it has momentum to metastasize on the web.

That’s what Pepsi didn’t do when its chairman was falsely accused of telling victorious Trump supporters to “take their business elsewhere.” What she really said was, “The election is over … we should mourn, for those of us who supported the other side. But we have to come together and life has to go on.” When Pepsi failed to react quickly enough to the fake news, the company became the focus of a boycott.

When New Balance’s spokesman harmlessly suggested that “things will move in the right direction” after the presidential election, a white supremacist website quickly declared the shoe company “the official brand of the Trump Revolution.”

Hoo boy! New Balance immediately released a statement that it “does not tolerate bigotry or hate in any form.” And the fake news was quashed.

Fight fire with fire

When aspersions are publicly cast against their institutions, most CEOs, on the advice of lawyers, barrel into the bunker and hope the whole thing blows over.

But in this day of hyper partisanship, media bias and phony news websites, such an avoidance strategy rarely works. The better advice is to strike back in kind.

That’s what Exxon Mobil did when faced with accusations that literally threatened its viability. Oil companies, of course, are not known for their propensity to engage in public battles. But when Exxon found itself on the wrong end of media, website and government conspiracy theorists, who charged it with withholding climate information the same way tobacco companies withheld damning data on cigarettes and cancer, the company wisely struck back.

When New York’s perpetually-campaigning Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation, based on anti-Exxon press articles, the company vigorously defended itself and filed a lawsuit, questioning the motives of Schneiderman and other attorneys general he recruited for his high profile Exxon witch hunt.

Get nasty

In such cases when fake news accusations jeopardize the very lifeblood of the corporate body, even the nicest, most customer-friendly CEOs must take off the gloves and show their fangs.

Few, for example, are more wholesome than Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of the all-natural Chobani yogurt company. Mr. Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant himself, invests heavily in his yogurt-making factory communities, where he also employs hundreds of refugees. This doesn’t sit well with the anti-immigrant component of the political right wing.

So, when right wing conspiratorial hero Alex Jones, proprietor of a radio show, YouTube channel and the InfoWars.com blog, claimed that Chobani’s Idaho factory was connected to a 2016 child sexual assault and a rise in tuberculosis cases, Ulukaya took off the gloves.

He sued Jones in April for “false” and “defamatory” statements and “actual malice” to harm Chobani’s reputation and damage its business. Jones immediately vowed to fight the legal action to the end and appealed to followers to help him defeat the “cold blooded globalists” attacking him.

Chobani’s Ulukaya held his ground, and a month later, the sputtering Jones folded like a rented mule, settling the lawsuit and retracting his previous statements about the company.

In the Age of Trump, with half the country steadfastly supporting the President’s agenda and the other half fiercely opposing it, the trend toward pronounced media bias and more frequent fake news will continue.

Faced with such attacks, smart organizations and individuals have little choice but to fight back. Are you listening Jared Kushner?

***

Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He is the author of the Prentice- Hall text “The Practice of Public Relations,” now in its eleventh edition, and co-author of “Rethinking Reputation" and "Idea Wise.” He may be reached directly at [email protected].