The murkiest of murky waters

I'm not sure why the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is doing a speaking tour right now or what occasioned his recent controversial remarks at Washington's National Press Club. From a media relations perspective though, it's fascinating to watch this scenario play out.

From the very little I've read and seen, Barack Obama is rapidly painting himself into the 'can't win' corner, not as a result of his association with Rev. Wright or his attendance at the United Church of Christ in Chicago, but because his communications advisors aren't giving him the advice he needs to hear. Either that or he's not listening to them (some clients are like that, which makes one wonder why they hire consultants in the first place), or they are actually giving him bad advice.

I can only speculate about why Obama doesn't seem to understand that while some crises occur without a great deal of warning (think the sinking of The Titanic), most start out as issues that are improperly managed. Their growth can be slow, steady, and trackable, or they can erupt like the fires in a peat bog, the ones that burn underground for days, weeks and months and burst out after all the firefighters have gone home. It may well be a facet of Obama's character that he speaks first and thinks second, or thinks only after someone has pointed out the consequences of his statements. Certainly his remarks regarding the working class at the fundraising dinner seem to have been a case of his desire to play to his particular audience and laugh at his own jokes overriding his better judgment.

It may also be the result of some peculiarity of political communications advisors, whose career aspirations are so closely linked to the candidate's. Perhaps it's more difficult for them to get out of order-taker mode and into consultant mode, so they can tell their 'client' (Obama) what he needs - but undoubtedly doesn't want - to hear.

But the fact remains, even if the Rev. Wright decides to take a sabbatical and visit another country for the next six months, or takes a vow of silence, or [substitute other potential event that could remove him from the media spotlight], the issue of Obama's association with Wright - which as a member of the congregation includes taking spiritual advice from a man who may well be misunderstood but does seem to be a pretty loose cannon and not what I'd call a 'media natural' - is never going to go away. That's the sad thing about issues in the age of the internet: they're always there waiting to resurface.

Media reports indicate that Obama's initial response to some of Rev. Wright's most recent controversial remarks on race and disease was somewhat jocular and dismissive, and only in his second round of media interviews on the subject did he actually censure the remarks Wright had made and attempt to distance himself from his pastor. Obama's excuse: he hadn't actually seen the coverage or heard the precise words when he spoke first.

The next day, after he had heard exactly what Wright did say, Obama's reaction was to angrily paint his spiritual leader as a 'divisive' individual and a negative factor in the presidential campaign overall.

Someone on Obama's communications staff needs to learn what a holding statement is and how to use it. And Obama himself needs to learn to curb his tendency to be dismissive and flippant, because it's not playing well in the international media or with voters. He seems to be playing to the media, his imagined buddies, rather than talking to his would-be constituents. And as a result he's alienating both. He also needs to learn that there's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't have all the information I need to answer that question but I'll do my best to answer it as soon as possible." All Obama needed to say in his first round of interviews was, "I haven't heard Rev. Wright's remarks myself and I'd like to review them before I respond to your questions. Let's talk about this tomorrow - my staff will be happy to set something up." And then move on - quite literally in this case.

Is that too simple? Perhaps it is, and perhaps that's why it hasn't occurred to Obama or his advisors that it's also the right response. Remember that expression, "Poor planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on mine"? Journalists have deadlines and as a media relations practitioner I like to respect those deadlines and work with them. But a scrum is very different from a press conference, and if you haven't scheduled a press conference, you don't have to get into it with reporters before you've had a chance to gather the information you need (not to mention your thoughts). Better to say something, yes - 'not available for comment' or 'didn't respond to our request for an interview' are lines that make me cringe whenever I hear, read, or see them. But by being open, honest, and transparent, by not even trying to be a 'media cowboy', you're not going to have that said about you. Because you did respond - you just didn't say much. And that's ok, particularly when you sense that you don't have all the relevant facts at your disposal.

And yes, of course, if Obama had used the wording I suggest, reporters would have started telling him what Wright had said. At which point Obama should have reiterated, "I'd like to review the reverend's remarks myself - let's talk about this tomorrow." The questions would have continued until he said the same thing three times. And then they would have stopped when reporters realized this was really all they were going to get right now, and that pushing it would only alienate Obama and they don't really want to do that. Because they're going to want to talk to him next week and the week after, and journalists can't afford to burn bridges with people they need to interview.

Think of it this way. If your kitchen sink suddenly springs a leak, you're probably going to need to call in a plumber. You can call in the middle of the night, pay emergency rates, stay up the rest of the night biting your nails while waiting for help, and watch the water damage your hardwood and your carpets. Alternatively, you can turn the water off, mop up the mess, put a thick towel down in the area near the leak, go back to sleep, and call a plumber in the morning. If you follow the second course of action, you won't have solved the problem immediately, but you've contained the mess, ensured no more damage is being done and that the mess isn't going to get any bigger.

One of the ways you can tell Hillary Clinton really is the more experienced candidate was her response to - well, now the phrase 'the Bosnia boo boo' has popped into my mind I can't think of any other way to describe it. Her explanation wasn't particularly convincing, but it was prompt, forthright, and conclusive. Less than 24 hours after she got busted about the circumstances of her arrival in Bosnia, she was out there owning up and acting like an adult. Much as I dislike the ambivalent phrase, 'I misspoke' (in fact I was so astonished to hear it that I had to look it up to make sure it was actually a word), it was the correct one to use in the circumstance, sitting on the fence as it does between 'being mistaken' and 'having lied.' It can't have been an easy statement to make, and she did sound a little defensive when she went on to say that she was actually human and made mistakes. But what Hillary did very right in that situation was to then take charge of the interview and say, in effect, 'Regardless of the mistakes I've made, that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about what we need to do to make America a country all its citizens can be proud of, not just the privileged few.' Because that's what an American presidential election really is about. And that was a paraphrase of the gist of her remarks, not an actual quote.

I'm posting the link (but not embedding the video) to a singularly horrific interview with Rev. Wright. I have to say, I feel sorry for everyone involved with this interview: the reporter, the preacher, and the guy who actually feebly tries to put the United Church of Christ's statements on its web site into some sort of context. I never thought I'd feel sorry for a Fox reporter, but everyone involved with this interview has lost the plot. I'm thinking of using the line, 'I used to be a seminarian' to replace 'I used to be a contenda' in my impromptu comedy routines. As for Wright - challenging an already hostile reporter? Refusing to actually answer the question and repeatedly posing one of his own, then trying to make it sound like the interviewer was being mean to him? If I'd been the interviewer I would have cut the sound on Wright's mic as punishment for not actually engaging in a conversation and for answering every one of his questions with not just a question, but a challenge. Which is, I guess, why I'm not a journalist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTGRL0OJWQ

Writing short

Blossom Dearie, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008

In my personal life I have long realized that I am both loquacious and garrulous (one of those is worse than the other, although I can't remember which). Blame the one sixteenth Irish in me if you like, or the fact that I was an only child, and, worse, the child of two youngest children from large families who must have had to become compelling communicators and storytellers in order to get any attention at all. When I am not in seriously reticent, information gathering mode, I do like to talk. As much as I want.

Perhaps it's because I enjoy communication and can usually analyze what I'm saying and what the other person is saying while it's happening that I have what seems to be an inbred hostility to PowerPoint. All the pitches to potential clients demonstrating my former firm's expertise and global capabilities were done as PowerPoint presentations over which a team of us had slaved for a week, with tweaks and suggestions from executive management. But, I said, you're not learning anything about the client when you're lecturing them in the dark. The C-suite loves 'the deck', I was told. It was a case of adapt or leave, so I adapted.

I have come to appreciate PowerPoint's value a bit more, but there are still times when communicators' mastery of it as a tool seems minimal. Reading a PowerPoint when you haven't attended a presentation is a lot like reading the chapter titles of a book, and if you're lucky you get the first paragraph of each chapter as well. As for those who insist that I click to get each new line of text - the supporting points for the presenter's assertions - I am warning you, you are not Pavlov, I am not a dog, and your information nuggets do not qualify as 'treats'. If you want to communicate with me, do not make me dig for information - you will only alienate me. Similarly, if there is no compelling reason to provide a visual, chances are good I'm not going to be amused by irrelevant graphics.

So I am thrilled to hear of a trend in PowerPoint that originated in Japan but has now been widely exported to the Western world, Pecha Kucha. Maximum 20 slides. Maximum 20 seconds per slide. Do your presentation, make it effective, then sit down and let the reaction and interaction begin. I'm a little alarmed by the suggestion that content is less important than form. But as a rule of thumb I think PowerPoints globally will be substantially improved, even if it's only because those who adopt the Pecha Kucha concept will time themselves and will learn to be a little more realistic in terms of the sheer volume of information they're trying to convey. PowerPoint is all about the highlights - it's not an alternative to writing a white paper or a case study. It's not really an appropriate vehicle for a case study either.

One of the biggest challenges I have ever faced in my writing career was writing one-sentence synopses of films that still managed to convey some idea of what the movie was about. I was lucky this came early enough in my career that it gave me a certain sort of discipline, as well as a lot of practice in distilling the essence of complicated subject matter into very few words. This has been incredibly helpful when crafting key messages for media relations clients who are then required to provide sound bites for radio and television. Short sentences are wonderful. Long sentences can be even more wonderful, but tend to be far less memorable. Ditto short versus long questions - "Where's the beef?" is still one of the most memorable questions in advertising history.

A shout out to my friend Mhairi Petrovic of Out-Smarts (see link in the links section), in one of whose blog posts I discovered the Melcrum network (now if only there was one that focused on external communications rather than internal), where I first read about Pecha Kucha:

http://www.internalcommshub.com/open/news/pechakucha.shtml

And for Wired's take on this trend:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha#