CAP & The Press -- Negative versus Positive News

[JohnKachenmeister]

Ed, and some posters after his last comment, hit upon yet another problem with being PAO... Stupid commanders.  The PAO is a staff officer, and works for the commander.  The commander determines the PA posture of the unit or the mission.  Most commanders do NOT understand the function of the PAO, nor do they appreciate the help that a good PAO can provide for their unit.

Most commanders in CAP (In the RM, most senior commanders have been taught how to use the PAO) consider the PAO to be in a RE-action role, and limited to "Keep the media out of the way."  They do not understand that a good PA program incorporates and coordinates three things:  Command Information, Public Information, and Community Relations.

PAO's in CAP first must educate their commanders about what they can do, and make sure the commander is on board the train.

Yes, the field of journalism and PA is dynamic and always changing, but there are certain consistent truths:  Always be honest, Always have superior writing skills, and a good photograph is a good photograph no matter what era it depicts. 

The reciprocal is also true:  If you lie to a reporter, your credibility is forever ruined.  If you cannot write well, you will not be successful in this field.  And... Grip-and-grins go in the trash, good pictures get published.

[Smithsonia]

Kach - You have caught (or Katched) the paradoxical problem:
Bad PA is tougher to find than you might imagine. Most PA is serviceable. Idiots persist at all levels. Bad Commanders happen too.

I worked for Exxon on their critical response team in Chicago during the Exxon Valdez incident. We would craft and brief and then some Senior VP, Company President, or dumb lawyer would modify the work to the point of trivialization. "We've only killed a few thousand birds" "Sea Otters aren't that affected" OR the more common, "Don't you people have something better to do than stand in front of my building asking dumb questions." blah, blah, blah. This lack of sensitivity caused an entire 2 levels of Exxon Executives their careers. Frankly they were idiots. They were petty, paltry, insulated, fools.

So I have seen it up close and I was not impressed. I've figured that the Exxon PA gaffs cost the company extra billions because the American People heard the comments and decided to be punitive to the company. Punishment and social retribution is the worst possible place a company or institution can find itself.

Social retribution is GMs, Banks, Investment Houses, the Republican Party, the Stock Market, the housing markets current and biggest problem. Social retribution will have to run its course before confidence can be restored.

"Deem NOT to be despised." Is a principle that goes back to Machiavelli. That said, you can't account for every idiot with good PR. The best you can hope for is a trusting client that has a soul. I am sure Bernie Madoff's Lawyers feel the same, today.

A top down PR service seldom works. PA that is about making the boss a star is not the best for the institution. The trouble with PA in the military is that it's a top down protection service, mostly. PA should serve the institution first and boss second.

Abu Ghraib would have gone better if all those involved at the top has been made to pay by early retirement - than hanging a bunch of Non-Comms. How many American soldiers eventually died because of this PA Gaff and lack of response to dig up the line of officers responsible. How many enraged young Muslims came to the fight? How many bombs? How much carnage? How many innocent civilians were hurt too? Anyway serve the institution first. Find the right words, not only for the public pronouncements but for the one on one conferences with the leader, IC, Commander, etc. It keeps the "lying" down to a minimum and takes a pressure point off the public pronouncements. Always take the hit, declare sincere sorrow and fallibility and move on.

A PAO that understands that social retribution is a ground up enterprise is important. I must say that I have a CC in the Colorado Wing that seems very ground up savvy. If you lead make sure somebody is following. He invests in PA at all levels. If you do PA work... check for a soul in the person, enterprise, institution, or cause you serve. Otherwise you can wake up one morning and find yourself working for the Taliban or Bernie Madoff.

I left a presidential candidate's campaign, who was a front runner, about 2 years ago, because I couldn't detect a soul. In this there is no pure and simple test. It is a human intuition thing. Hopefully I've developed a better antenna on this issue.

[JohnKachenmeister]

Abu Graib is a case study in two things:

1.  How NOT to run prisoner operations, and

2.  How NOT to respond to a public scandal.

And, you are right.  At DINFOS the mantra was "Bad news goes away.  Bad PR lasts forever."  If one admits a mistake, emphasizes the corrective actions, and moves on, the media will soon be distracted by some Congresscritter having an affair with a female (or male) mud wrestler and your incident will be forgotten quicker than you can say "Old News."

Very few of us actually read the AR 15-6 investigation report on Abu Graib, but I did.  In the Army I had been on the staff of the 300th Military Police Command, which was the Army's central command for POW operations up to the Clinton Administration, when the unit was reduced to a brigade.

Frankly, the punishment imposed on the NCO's and the troops were about right, the punishments imposed upon the commanders were way too lenient.  The Russian Army would have had them shot.

The scandal has tainted ALL prisoner operations, and may have cost us the war.  The PA guy for Centcom SHOULD have been out front, and emphasizing the corrections that DID take place but which nobody knows about.  Too late now.

The PAO has to have his nose in ALL command levels, and has to be proactive.  He has to be aggressive enough (and ballsy enough) to stand up to the boss and say, "Sir, this is a real dumb thing that you are about to do, and here is how the American Public will view it."  You can't sit in your office composing news releases and waiting for a crisis to manage.

The PAO is the organizations attorney and advocate in the Court of Public Opinion, and as any good lawyer must not only be able to plead the case, but has to offer sound advice for staying out of trouble in the first place.

When I was a PAO with the 300th, a staff officer came up with a great idea for the MP's involved in prisoner operations to work in Federal pens to train in prisoner security.  I heard about this plan by being nosy, it was not discussed at staff meetings.  I met with the commanding general that week to raise some questions:

1.  Had anybody considered the effect on the Fed prison guards and their unions to be bringing in Army troops to train on their jobs only 10 years after the ATC strike when Reagan replaced all the ATC folks with military controllers?

2.  Had anybody considered that a small but violent percentage of Americans believe that the govt. has a secret plan to place Americans in concentration camps, and that this program could be seen as furthering such a plan?

3.  Did anybody check with the SJA to see if this was even legal, considering that the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the military from enforcing civil laws?

A crisis prevented beats a crisis handled.  Not as dramatic, but way less heartburn! 

[Smithsonia]

Kach;
You and I have been in many discussions on this board. We seem to always wind up agreeing. AND so it is here too.

The Public Affairs Officer Song sung to Stars and Stripes Forever.
I can't keep people from being dumb;
I can't fix it when they are... are,
I can resign and say I told you so,
and retire, and retire to the bar,

I will drink and drink till I'm dumb
but not so stupid as youuu,
I will drink to the end of the job,
and drink and drink till I am blue.

Here's to Affairs that are Public
And to the good ladies and the savvy
men... to those who are so few!
But not so, not ever so true!

The rest of this song goes into scatology and is banned
from proper company.

[JohnKachenmeister]

Ed:

I know you have been in this business way longer than me, and unlike you, I have seen it only from the PA side, never from the journalist side.

But I DO understand how important the PAO is to an organization, and how CAP suffers from its amateurish attempts to manage its own PA.  The military may not do everything right from a PA standpoint, but they still do it way better than CAP does. 

If CAP would emulate the military PA model, with all of the military's warts, we would still be doing better than we are.

[Smithsonia]

Kach;
I do believe that the regular military does a better job at regular PA than does CAP. They work full time at it, get paid for it, receive training and they should. Frankly, I think the US military should be the PA Gold Standard. Given the resources, people, training, etc. it misses by a mile. The reason is they can't think out of their box. They need a PA-DARPA.

I do NOT believe CAP should use the military model. For breaking news-briefings, perhaps yes. For every other thing... there is a much higher standard in modern Civilian PA.

Once again there needs to be cross training between the two institutions. Media needs to have military PAs see how they make decisions. Media needs to spend time seeing how and why the military does what it does. I worked on the embed program at the DOD for a while. Both need a good deal more cross referencing, communications, and
knowledge.

When IRAQ/Gulf War 2 started -- how many out going rounds were misidentified as incoming? How many F16s were identified as F18s-14s-15s. Etc. It was easy to tell which dummy hadn't studied their briefings. Its a mutual education society.

That said the Military does try. And the media does try. But the trying is on again off again.

[JohnKachenmeister]

You are absolutely right on the issue about ignorance by media people on military matters.  I already told the story about the reporter who thought sergeant was a higher rank than captain, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I had one TV reporter so caught up in her personal agenda that she was doing a stand-up in front of some vehicles, saying:  "Although the military has assured us of the safety of troops in this area, these ominous-looking machine-gun trucks are kept constantly at the ready near the flight line."

Cool, impressive, and trendy... except the vehicles were fire trucks.

There is not a single reporter who plans to keep his job who would go out to cover say... a heart transplant story without knowing the difference between a doctor and a nurse, and maybe why the heart is considered one of the more important vital organs.  But going to cover a story about the military while being totally ignorant about the subject is considered almost a badge of honor among reporters.

OK, CAP maybe SHOULD emulate the best of the best in PA, but the military model does fit for us.  By that I mean:

--   Formal, resident training for PA folks.  Schedule it over a few weekends, and give them hands-on experience in writing the various kinds of news copy; hard news, features, personality features, broadcast copy.  Teach them what makes a good news photo.  Give them practical experices through exercises in running a news briefing.  Teach them how to provide background materials in press kits,  all the nuts-and-bolts of PA work.

At YOUR level, you are an experienced doctor.  I want to train the PA guys to at least be EMT's.

--   Incorporate PA training in SLS and CLC.  Both courses, and maybe a refresher in RSC.  ALL officers have to be PAO's in CAP.  Some just have to be specially trained in it. 

Continuing the analogy, if PAO's are the EMT's, everybody needs to learn CPR and first aid.

That way we will have PAO's that can step into a crisis and not fall down, who can put together a rudimentary PA program, and who are trained to do the yeoman work of the news reporter so that an editor can get good copy and good photos of CAP activities without having to commit an expensive reporter to cover what to him is an interesting but pretty unimportant story.

[Smithsonia]

Kach;
A perfect example between refined mass PA training and standard PA is found in CAP 60-1 or 60-3.

I can't remember precisely, but basically it states that aircrews are not allowed to talk to Media. This can lead to the brusque and easily confusable; "NO COMMENT."

"No Comment" can be variously interpreted as: "I don't know," "I don't have to tell you," OR "I know but don't have to talk to the likes of you the American Public. OR, and this is the worst interpretation, "I have something to hide from you."
No Comment can be a miserable quote and placed in a most disturbing context.

Instead, how about putting it a different way. If a crew member is approached by the media simply reply; "I'm sorry, I don't have that answer. However, if you come with me I will be happy to introduce you to our Mission Information Officer/PIO/PAO/ Incident Commander and I am sure he/she can be of more service to you."

This simple piece of PA should be taught to everyone in CAP who might come in contact with the media while performing a mission. It should be rehearsed aloud and signed off as a required task on every mission SQTRS. In this way it will be taught in a repetitive fashion. It should be a 10 minute piece of business and should be easier than OPSEC/SET to teach. That's about as basic as it gets.

[JohnKachenmeister]

Kach;
A perfect example between refined mass PA training and standard PA is found in CAP 60-1 or 60-3.

I can't remember precisely, but basically it states that aircrews are not allowed to talk to Media. This can lead to the brusque and easily confusable; "NO COMMENT."

"No Comment" can be variously interpreted as: "I don't know," "I don't have to tell you," OR "I know but don't have to talk to the likes of you the American Public. OR, and this is the worst interpretation, "I have something to hide from you."
No Comment can be a miserable quote and placed in a most disturbing context.

Instead, how about putting it a different way. If a crew member is approached by the media simply reply; "I'm sorry, I don't have that answer. However, if you come with me I will be happy to introduce you to our Mission Information Officer/PIO/PAO/ Incident Commander and I am sure he/she can be of more service to you."

This simple piece of PA should be taught to everyone in CAP who might come in contact with the media while performing a mission. It should be rehearsed aloud and signed off as a required task on every mission SQTRS. In this way it will be taught in a repetitive fashion. It should be a 10 minute piece of business and should be easier than OPSEC/SET to teach. That's about as basic as it gets.

Absolutely.  I train security officers in Florida and teach them that the media needs to be handled by "Polite referral."

But... Warn them of the pitfalls.  While they are politely referring or escorting, the reporter will be casually conversing with them and continuing to seek information.  They will also try to loiter near a radio where they can eavesdrop and either get information or hear enough information so they can make something up about it.

[Smithsonia]

Here's another basic PA lesson.

If there is a live shot, TV camera shooting B-roll, report from the scene, etc... either clear out the background of CAP personnel or better yet... make sure everyone looks busy, doesn't look at the camera in dumb curiosity, doesn't eat, doesn't laugh, or pick at scabs, pluck nasal hairs, yawn, etc. etc. etc... Eventhough - this may seem natural at the time when layered over a worried family member, Air Force General/CAP Commander explaining something in earnest, or just a reporter stand up... your background will tell a different and negative story.

[RADIOMAN015]

The good news however, is almost always a one shot deal.   Locally in our area, even getting TV coverage of CAP activities is very difficult.  I've been told by one of the TV station's weekend news producer, that they have limited staffing and have to cover the stories that their competitors & what their research shows have an interest.  So crimes, car accidents, etc get the priority.

Even with newspaper articles, generally you aren't going to see "CAP Cadet Gets Award & Promotion" on the front page of the local regional newspaper, but it will be tucked away somewhere in the paper.

I don't have an answer to this problem.  BUT it is disheartening to see cadets work so hard & achieve so much, yet not get a lot of general public recognition for their achievements

RM     

Hmm, interestingly if you do a Google's news search and to the archives, there's a chart at the top of the search page that shows the results from 1940 to the present date.   apparently google has found 50,400 articles using the search term  "Civil Air Patrol". 
CY 2000 - 2009 23,000 articles
CY 1990-2000 9,760 articles
CY 1980-1990 4460 articles
CY 1970-1980 2760 articles
CY 1960-1970 2980 articles
CY 1950-1960 3640 articles
CY 1940-1950 2550 articles
I would assume that statistically there were probably more articles written, but smaller newspapers don't keep google searchable data bases, so that may account for the difference.  What's interesting is a lot of the big large circulation newspaper in CAP early years published quite a few articles.
If you have some time start with 1940 and work your way up scanning the articles.  it's a good walk through history.
RM
 

[Smithsonia]

In Colorado we ran a regular SAREX this weekend. We got a nice 3 minute piece on the largest TV station in the state. It ran tonight 7-12-09. Click here:
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=119334&catid=339

Capt. Scott Orr, Maj. Mike Daniels, MSgt Cynthia Smith did a very nice job selling the story, telling the story, and working with the media.

I keep track of these things in the WING. We get 10-15 good stories a year. Only two or three would be consider critical. Those usually have nothing to do with what CAP does or doesn't do but more with frustration that some people are lost and we can't seem to find them. It is a reflection of general anxiety. Once every 3 to 4 years one of our members will do something real boneheaded, only occasionally is the CAP mentioned. However, every 10 years or so... we get a pasting in the press. It is the nature of the business, the media, and the world.

So I can only conclude that we get fair press. We get good press more often than not. AND, when it is bad press -- it is likely deserved on some way.

Complaining of this sort of coverage is like complaining about the weather... it doesn't do much good.

[BuckeyeDEJ]

NO ONE IN THE MILITARY OR CAP PAO has ever been to a budget meeting. Until you are and unless you can get into a budget meeting (in my case as a media editor, reporter, news manager, news consultant, promotions consultant) you won't know how to pitch your story properly.

I've been in thousands of them. And unlike what Kach said, newspapers aren't in the business of running advertising copy. We run news. Advertising copy may be the bailiwick of some small-town rag or a shopper, but at the last few papers I've toiled at, we've been interested in the news. Oh, and we've supplied TV with their leads most of the time, not to mention feed the aggregators like Google. After all, if it wasn't for The New York Times, Katie, Brian and Charlie wouldn't know what's important for their nightly feeds.

Big papers care when CAP has something it considers big. Community rags run grip-and-grins, promotions and event-calendar stuff. CAP PAs many times aren't good at targeting, and that's probably the biggest problem our public affairs efforts face. Much of the stuff we release is better off in the little papers, which many times connect better with readers than the big boys, unfortunately.

It's also important to note that we would do better if we could figure out what we're all about -- seems like CAP is having an identity crisis these days -- and if we could look the part instead of like a ragtag bunch. Unfortunately, TV has a way of simplifying things too much, and we have to tailor the message and our image much, much better. Even our slogan is NOT made for the modern media environment. We could be so much more.

[Smithsonia]

We now have a real world first person event to choose from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbciFZYHGzk

Denver TV station KUSA/9News did a nice package on us this past weekend. It ran once that I know of. It was on their web page one day. It was a nice puff piece.

It was a slow news day. They were nice people. There is no complaint from me. I was one of the IOs on the SAREX and so by happenstance I look better than I should. ("Rotorhead" Scott Orr deserves the credit not me)

Below are all the posted comments from the story. Not one of these comments is negative. I've not edited any of the comments.

User Image     
BugBug31 wrote:
"Thank you to the many many people who give countless hours of unpaid time and effort for Search and Rescue."
7/13/2009 9:52 AM PDT on 9news.com

aubseric wrote:
"So that's what was going on overhead all weekend while we backpacked an 18 mile loop in the Indian Peaks wilderness. Good to know there out there training for a real situation. We wondered why there was so much single engine activity above, always in a east/west route. Those little Cessenas did sound to be strugling over the Divide, but they were still clipping along at what I quessed to be about 125 knots."
7/12/2009 5:19 PM PDT on 9news.com
   
C2dltCAP (16 hours ago) Show Hide
"hey when did this air... I always watch 9News!"

bollywood (11 hours ago) Show:
"These guy are Greaat! Thanks for a feel good story."

Dan Weaver of 9 News (the videographer/reporter on this story) sent this reply after my email of appreciation to him.
"You're welcome Ed! I enjoyed meeting you folks, and of course I appreciate all the work the CAP does for our state."

SO MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE PATROL -- Quit complaining so much about the press. Quit complaining so much about getting no respect.

MY POINT IS -- The public seems to likes us just fine. The Media seems to like us just fine. We got lucky. We were blessed. - we'll take it today and be appreciative for it.

[wuzafuzz]

Many news websites allow comments now.  Those can go ugly sometimes.  One of the things we recently taught our cadets was the importance of comments they may post.  News articles don't always turn out the way we might wish.  A tepid news story followed by an online tantrum in the comments section can make us look awful. 

On the other hand, it's sure nice to see unsolicited positive comments!