• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, August 3, 2004

TelevisionWeek recently ran a story about how Fox's PR department keeps a "blacklist" of out-of-favor reporters. You apparently end up on the blacklist if you write unflattering things about Fox or their PR department and are refused access to senior executives, don't get your phone calls returned, and/or are denied little perks like a studio tour.

Given the nature of Fox's programming and patriotic hyperbole, it's a wonder the entire press corps hasn't made the list at one time or another. Naturally those on the blacklist are unhappy because not having official access can make their jobs a lot harder. Although I must say (having done PR for a number of media organizations) that if the blacklisted reporters have to rely on Fox's PR folks to get a story, they've done a damn poor job of working their beats since most employees of media companies think they have a heaven-sent mandate to talk about their companies since they make a living digging for facts and sources themselves.

No one reacts worse to press coverage than media companies. And when they really get smoked, their first reaction like virtually all companies, is to circulate a "policy" of not talking to the press. This is merely an open invitation to their own staffers to get on the phone with outside reporters and lash out at the idiotic management of the company, how they are all just bean counters, don't understand the news business, etc., etc., etc.. Some do this to push their own personal agendas (like getting rid of a boss they hate by leaking an embarrassing personal or professional gaffe) others do it to prove that they can't be muzzled by a corporate policy, and still ego-challenged others do it because they like being an "insider" whose words are attributed to something like "a source with knowledge of the company." Although I have done it when I thought there was outright fraud involved (like making up quotes), it is a low percentage game to go to war with the press. Scratch the surface and underneath you'll find a very human being. As one down-and-out reporter once told me when all the people he had covered weren't helping him find another job, "When I go back to work, I'll try to stay objective, but I won't forget the empty promises." Today every person in the industry he covers would pay big bucks just to kiss this guy's butt, he's that powerful.

You can only afford to be a list-keeping, vindictive PR person if the CEO loves you and you work for a company that has a corner on certain information. Hollywood publicists are famously self-righteous because they can (most of the time) totally control access to entertainers, about whom the public seems to have a limitless appetite. As a result, most celebrity journalism is soft core at best and usually highly flattering of those whose performances - or criminal records - don't deserve it.

Often the contentiousness is a matter of different perspectives. "Our issue is with unfair stories," a Fox PR guy said in the TelevisionWeek story. "If you take a shot at us, we don't have a problem with that, as long as you give us a chance to respond. But don't call us three seconds before deadline. That's not fair."

"When breaking a story, most journalists I know wait until the deadline is near until they call the company/organization/person in question for comment," wrote Ben Silverman, a former business news columnist for The New York Post who has an online newsletter about PR. "The reasoning here is simple: you don't want to get burned by giving a company six hours to spin their version of the story to another media outlet and you don't want to give a company six hours to come up with some meaningless comment that went through eight revisions before being signed off by the CEO. I'm not justifying the practice, but this is how it often works."

And trust me when I tell you that if Fox had six hours to undermine a mean-natured story, they would use every one of the 360 minutes to do so.

Because they are in an industry that generates a good deal of press interest and coverage, the Fox PR folks have decided they are watchdogs, protecting the company reputation from thieves in the night who would write stories at variance from their own corporately-mandated perspectives.

A more productive posture would be to view themselves as conduits of information to help reporters better understand the Fox point of view knowing that from time to time stories won't maintain the carefully crafted company line.

Or they can maintain a state of belligerence with a perceived enemy who, compared to their squirt gun, has a 50 megaton bomb.