Discussion Starter

Sieve! Sieve! Sieve! AG Pam Bondi green-lights the harassment of journalists as a result of Trump administration leaks

(Rare footage of Wisconsin Badger Hockey fans either taunting an opposing goalie for failing to make a save or mocking Pam Bondi for not running a tighter ship when it comes to stopping sources from leaking information to the media… )

THE LEAD: Attorney General Pam Bondi decided the best way to stop the sieve-like nature of the Trump administration’s leaking problem was to go after the journalists who received the information instead of the people leaking it.

To do that, she issued a memo late last month that made it easier for the government to subpoena reporters, their notes and other documents.

[T]he Bondi memo appears to have rescinded a specific provision protecting journalists from Justice Department subpoenas, court orders and search warrants based on the “receipt, possession, or publication” of classified information.

This change would make it easier for Justice Department attorneys to pursue journalists to identify confidential sources in reporting that involves leaks — like the Pentagon Papers or Watergate. And that could chill news reporting in the public interest.

THE MEMO: Bondi’s four-page explanation for her rollback of the protections put in place more than a decade ago under Merrick Garland offers both shot across the bow at journalists who receive and use leaked material as well as a general disdain for journalists generally:

Without question, it is a bedrock principle that a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy. The Department of Justice will defend that principle, despite the lack of independence of certain members of the legacy news media.

My takeaway is bloggers, as non-legacy news media, are safe to be completely dependent upon whomever they want for cash and prizes while taking leaked documents. So… Send your cryptocurrency bribes and emails about TrumpCoin to the email address linked on the blog’s About Us page…

Also, this feels more like an angry wedding party host giving a toast more than a serious memo at this point: “I’d like to say congratulations to Jill, the bride, my sister and my best friend. I will always be there for you, even though you slept with my prom date while I was throwing up in the bathroom at after prom. Still, love you, Jill! Jack, welcome to our family, and you might want to get a blood test… ”

And then there’s this…

This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people. “Where a Government employee improperly discloses sensitive information for the purposes of personal enrichment and undermining our foreign policy, national security, and Government effectiveness—all ultimately designed to sow chaos and distrust in Government—this conduct could properly be characterized as treasonous.”8 

A lot of suppositions there, not the least of which is that stuff “could” be treasonous or that all disclosures they want to attack are also definitely meant to undermine policies, victimize agencies and hurt people. By the way, the quote is from one of Trump’s executive orders, as are several other footnoted passages. Just one more reason to read the footnotes before assuming the content is valid.

The memo demonstrated why she probably should have hired one of those journalists she is now targeting to do some proofreading and copy editing:

The Attorney General must also approve efforts to question or arrest members of thew news media.

(Emphasis mine)

 

SO HOW FREAKED OUT SHOULD YOU BE? I wanted to run this past a couple of my “legal eagle” friends to basically get two questions answered before I posted about this:

  1. What is essentially going on here?
  2. How freaked out should journalism folks be about this and why?

Starting with the answer to number one, the legal folks explained that we do not have a nationwide press-shield law, nor an unfettered reporter’s privilege to legally keep the government at bay indefinitely. The case of Branzburg v. Hayes (1972) established that reporters can be compelled to break confidentiality agreements with sources if the government feels it is important that they do so.

As one of the legal folks noted, this isn’t just Trump being Trump about stuff he doesn’t like. Other administrations have also poked the media in a similar fashion when the situation benefited them:

“Many admins have used their federal investigative powers to harass journalists — Nixon famously, but definitely GW Bush and even Obama and certainly the Trump 1 admin. Merrick Garland as AG issued a memo saying his justice department wouldn’t do that, but that’s just guidance, it’s not binding. Congress had a chance to pass the PRESS Act in December provide more protection by law, but Trump told the GOP to kill it, and they did.”

As for number two, the answer basically comes down to, “Be as freaked out as you normally would be about dealing with leaks, because you never really had a lot of protection to begin with.” As one of those legal eagles put it:

“Congress has never passed a shield law, or Free Flow of Information Act, so our legal protection has always been in that weird middle space left by Powell’s concurring opinion in Branzburg.

“We still have a little bit of protection if there’s evidence the government is acting in bad faith or retaliation or harassment against journalists instead of having a bona fide need to get information they can’t get otherwise.

“I think this is more about undoing anything the Biden admin did than anything practically different. We all knew Trump and his admin would go after journalists — he’s been clear about that since before he was elected the first time.”

Essentially, the law itself hasn’t really changed, nor has anyone really stood up for journalists on the federal level (states have passed shield laws here and there, but that doesn’t apply when the fed comes calling). That said, it’s the enforcement that’s likely to be more of a concern.

“Trump and anyone serving in his administration see journalists who report things they don’t like as the enemy. They will target them for retaliation and force their newsrooms (if they work for one) to invest resources to fight in court. Bondi just gave the green light for that. Nixon would be proud.”

(SNIP)

“If anything, I think it’s aimed at trying to scare journalists from publishing leaks — or to scare leakers that journalists may not be able to protect them.”

“I’m not sure that’s gonna work, but it’s definitely the message Trump wants to send.”

DISCUSSION STARTER: What are your thoughts on the Bondi memo as well as the history of the government not solidifying a national media-protection act of some kind? Would that make you more or less worried about what to do if you received important information via a leak?

 

’60 Minutes’ leader quits, citing lack of editorial freedom and limited backing from his bosses

 

THE LEAD: Bill Owens, one of only three people to run “60 Minutes” over its lengthy stay on CBS, resigned this week, telling his staff that he felt the show’s editorial independence was compromised.

“Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience,” Owens wrote. “So, having defended this show- and what we stand for – from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.”

Much of the concerns related to what “60 Minutes” is or isn’t doing is, spoiler alert, related to President Trump’s attacks on the show, network and parent company. He has filed a $20 billion lawsuit against anything that breathed within the vicinity of the program, stating it was fraudulent in its actions as they related to an answer on the Middle East that Kamala Harris gave.

Trump sued CBS, which is owned by Paramount, a few days before the November election, alleging that the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris was deceptively edited and therefore violated a Texas consumer protection law. He then expanded the lawsuit earlier this year, alleging an additional claim under the federal Lanham Act and seeking at least $20 billion in damages. In March, Paramount and CBS filed two motions to throw out the lawsuit, calling it an “affront to the First Amendment.” And on April 7, their lawyers filed another motion asking the plaintiffs to produce the documents requested in discovery.

“Despite their insistence that discovery move forward, Plaintiffs have shown very little desire to produce their own documents, relying on unfounded objections and delay tactics,” the Paramount and CBS legal team said.

Paramount is in negotiations to sell the company, which requires FCC approval and that means it’s a really awkward time to be in a pit-sticking match with the administration. Therefore, trying to settle the suit and trying to keep its watchdog on a leash is in the financial best interests of Paramount.

 

SECOND VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST: This isn’t the first time that independent media outlets have gotten the muzzle treatment out of fear of Trump.

The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had several tussles between speaking truth to power and trying not to piss off power. Artist Ann Telnaes quit the paper after Bezos spiked one of her political cartoons about how the corporate interests in the country worshiped Trump.

Ann Telnaes says the rough version of the cartoon she drew for The Washington Post , shown above, was rejected by the paper's editorial page editor.

Bezos also took heat during the election season when he spiked the paper’s editorial endorsement of Harris for president. The L.A. Times had a similar situation, in which its editor resigned when the paper’s owner killed a Harris editorial prior to the election.

Yep, this is the hard-hitting journalism I’m getting these days from Bezos media….

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: We can call this situation a number of things (disgusting, nauseating, terrible, autocratic), but we shouldn’t call it surprising. Money isn’t everything, but it always beats the hell out of whatever comes in second, so when doing the right thing and speaking truth to power get between a money-person and a payday, it’s pretty obvious what’s going to occur.

We also shouldn’t lay this all at the feet of Donald Trump, as if he were the sole factor in the squelching of public debate and awareness. Sure, he can wave a bigger stick at bigger institutions, but let’s not pretend that this kind of thing hasn’t happened long before he came down that escalator.

A former student of mine worked at a newspaper along the East Coast where he was doing business journalism. The woman who owned the paper had no interest in journalism, as she had inherited it from her publisher husband. When my student wanted to do investigations into local businesses doing shady stuff, she shut him down because she didn’t want him “bothering my friends.”

Another former student worked at a radio station where he found out about a police chief behaving badly. After the station published its stories on the web, the police chief and his lawyer threatened all manner of things. The message was simple: Pull the story down or we’re suing you out of existence.

Had it not been for some legal help from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, he likely would have folded under the pressure of the threats. The story stayed up and won an award, while the chief moved on and the threat of the suit went away.

And, not to put too fine of a point on it, student newspapers always find themselves dealing with some level of “external pressure” as it relates to covering things administrators, athletics or student “leader” don’t want mentioned. Just because it’s happening to “grown-up journalism” doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before elsewhere.

As we outlined in various posts before, the First Amendment doesn’t protect against all the stuff people tend to think it protects against. It also doesn’t help people hoping to turn a profit grow a spine.

DISCUSSION STARTER: Is there a difference in your mind between the government stepping in and prohibiting speech and an organization self-censoring for fear of negative external outcomes?

Also, is resigning from the show the best thing Bill Owens can do, or is it not? It’s easy to make the argument in both ways, but focus on the WHY you think what you think about this and what it says about his ability to leave a job like this in this way.

 

 

 

A Lot at Steak: How U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s AI Blunder Led to Marketing Gold

THE LEAD: Secretary of Education Linda McMahon managed to confuse AI (artificial intelligence) with A.1. (steak sauce) while delivering her comments at the ASU+GSV Summit last week.

The gaffe became fodder for all sorts of internet humor, but company responsible for making the condiment saw an awesome opportunity and took full advantage of the mistake:

A.1. Sauce capitalized on McMahon’s blunder by posting an Instagram post on their verified account saying, “You heard her. Every school should have access to A.1.”

“Agree, best to start them early,” the picture attached to the post reads.

Other Instagram users loved the response from the Kraft Heinz-owned brand. One user even commented, “I will be buying a bottle or two because of this post.”

 

KRAFT-ING MARKETING GOLD AGAIN: Kraft Heinz, which markets A.1., has a decent track record of grabbing a cultural moment and running with it. The company took advantage of the “Barbenheimer” explosion by introducing a pink “Barbie-cue” sauce and has also linked a ranch dressing to Taylor Swift. In each case, the company drew attention to its brand, garnered some nice free media publicity and avoided the kinds of gaffes often associated with trying to ride a trend.

Despite the random uncertainty in the market these days, the stock closed up on Friday and has shown a gain from $27.60 on April 9 to $29.33 on Friday. Although that time frame corresponds with the comments McMahon made about A.1., it’s a bit simplistic to say the gains were solely connected to that mistake.

In its rating of best food stocks to buy according to billionaires, Insider Monkey rated Kraft Heinz at the top of the list for a number of reasons, including global supply chain and reliance on AI (not A.1.) for keeping factories humming. Still, people are saying they’re buying a bottle or two of the steak sauce as a result of the gaffe:

So far, A.1.’s loyal fans seem to be in support of its “new sauce.”

“My husband wants a bottle for his desk,” one commenter wrote under the brand’s post. “He teaches middle school, at least until they replace him with A.1.”

 

BLOG FLASHBACK: Kraft Heinz isn’t alone in taking advantage of dumb situation with some marketing genius. As we noted back in 2018, Country Time Lemonade drew a lot of attention after it created its “Legal Ade” defense fund for kids who had been fined for not having a business permit to run their lemonade stands.

Like the A.1. effort, this worked because it was on the right side of the argument, made fun of the utterly ridiculous and didn’t run a significant risk of hurting its brand with this maneuver.

Other organizations tend not to be as lucky when they jumped in on trending hashtags or didn’t think about potential blow back before entering the larger discussion.

DISCUSSION TIME: What do you think Kraft Heinz should do next? Ride the wave? Leave it alone? Try something else? Also, what other marketing maneuvers have you seen that tried to connect with a trend? Did they succeed or fail in your eyes? Why?

I$ Ca$h $peech? Elon Musk has a couple million thoughts on that…

Make It Rain Money GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY
An artistic rendering of Elon Musk’s rally in Green Bay on Sunday…

THE LEAD: Elon Musk handed out two $1 million checks Sunday as part of his efforts to rally voters for Brad Schimel in the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race.

Musk apparently decided that dumping $20 million in ad money into my home state’s Supreme Court Election wasn’t doing enough, so he decided to start handing out money to potential voters like it was parade candy.

Aside from offering people $100 each to sign a petition against “activist judges” (a thinly veiled swipe at the Democrat-backed candidate Susan Crawford), he took it a step further in offering the big cash prizes to a couple Wisconsin voters.

State AG Josh Kaul filed suit in an attempt to block this move, even as Musk was reshaping his offer:

Kaul is asking a Madison-based state appeals court to issue an order barring Musk from handing out $1 million checks to voters ahead of a planned Sunday event in Green Bay. The Democratic Attorney General first sought the ruling from a Columbia County judge who declined to act before Sunday, according to Kaul.

In a since-deleted post on X, Musk said he would hold an event Sunday in Wisconsin and hand out $1 million checks to voters “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”

But after election experts and Democrats raised questions about whether the offer violated the state’s election bribery laws, Musk deleted the post and said he would instead be handing over the checks to two people who would serve as spokespeople for his “Petition In Opposition To Activist Judges.” The new post also no longer said attendance would be limited “to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” as the original post had stated.

The appeals court rejected Kaul’s efforts on Saturday, noting that he hadn’t fully supported his application properly, so the judges denied his request. The Supreme Court also shot down his request.

BASIC BACKGROUND ON THE RACE: If you live outside of Wisconsin and have a limited interest in politics, you probably never heard of Susan Crawford or Brad Schimel. If you live in the state of Wisconsin, you probably know their names better than you know the name of your current pets.

(It’s also likely that you think all the Supreme Court will do is rule on when to set pedophiles free, given that seemed to be the gist of every attack ad on both sides of this.)

Like most court races, the Wisconsin Supreme Court election is supposed to be a non-partisan affair. As has become the case everywhere, that’s not entirely true, as both Republicans and Democrats basically pick sides and pour time, effort and cash into getting a candidate more to their liking onto the court.

Unlike most other statewide races in the country, people all over the place have taken a vested interest in whether Crawford or Schimel wins. According to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel analysis, people from all 50 states have dumped a record amount of cash into this election. The Brennan Center reported last week that the two campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $73 million on the race, which doesn’t account for whatever was spent since March 24.

The main reason is that whoever ends up winning will tilt the “non-partisan” court 4-3 toward a more liberal or more conservative side of the spectrum. With questions about gerrymandered state maps, women’s rights to bodily autonomy, state workers’ union rights, gun regulations and more likely coming down the road to the Supreme Seven, this race is seen as a really big deal for Wisconsin and beyond.

BASIC BACKGROUND ON FINANCIAL SPEECH AND ELECTIONS: In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in the Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission case that outside interest groups could spend as much money as they wanted to influence the outcome of elections via messaging of all kinds.

According to the Brennan Center, this led to the creation of giant “Super PACs” (political action committees) that wealthy interests could use basically steer election outcomes:

In other words, super PACs are not bound by spending limits on what they can collect or spend. Additionally, super PACs are required to disclose their donors, but those donors can include dark money groups, which make the original source of the donations unclear. And while super PACs are technically prohibited from working directly with candidates, weak rules that are supposed to enforce this separation have often proven ineffective.

The court in the Citizens United decision did note, however, that the law could limit money in politics if it was clear that the money was being used in a form of outright bribery, or  “quid pro quo corruption.” So, in short, Rich Dude/Dudette X can drop $500 billion into ads, mailers, events, social media posts and people wearing sandwich boards promoting a candidate for the Omro Dog Catcher Election, but they can’t hand $100 bills to voters outside a polling place for the purpose of buying their votes.

THE SMELL OF MUSK: Elon’s offers are clearly outside of the norm of what we’ve seen in politics to date (at least in recent years). To be fair, he’s giving out cash to people who sign a pledge that has no legally binding requirements and isn’t capable of creating any legally binding action if he reaches a certain number of signatures. In fact, people could take his money, use it to print up a boat load of Susan Crawford lawn signs and move on if they chose.

He also initially tried to skirt the rules meant to tamp down on bribery by making the two $1 million offers a kind of Publishers Clearinghouse Giveaway of sorts. His offer this time was for those folks who helped get the signature, which again, have no actual value in the broader sense of this election, so offering money for them is kind of like when the tooth fairy would pony up cash for your baby incisors.

What becomes a concern here is the psychological impact of reinforcing desired behaviors. The approach Musk is taking to get people to lean toward his liking is like Pavlov’s dogs, Skinner’s pigeons and Bandura’s bobo dolls all in one. Although the law has outlined strict rules for what is and isn’t bribery, psychological researchers have found the line between bribery and reinforcement to be a little fuzzier.

DISCUSSION STARTER: Where do you stand when it comes to the ideas outlined in the articles linked throughout here, particularly as they relate to the offering of money to complete a task like the petition Musk wanted people to sign? Is this a harmless stunt, a bribery attempt to undermine electoral legitimacy or something in between? Explain what you think and why and see if anyone can change your mind.

 

You are always in the public eye, so it pays to keep that in mind (a.k.a. we used to call it the World Wide Web for a reason)

This ensemble is from the “Dress to fire people” line…

THE LEAD (Part I): Being a social media influencer can take a lot of work, but multitasking between firing people as part of the Office of Personnel Management and showcasing clothing options that collectively cost more than my first car tends to lead to problems:

On the day O.P.M. sent a memo to all federal department and agency heads asking for lists of underperforming employees to terminate, she flaunted a “work look” that included a purple skirt that her followers could also purchase, retailing at $475. She would get a commission if they used her link.

The spokeswoman, McLaurine Pinover, is not the only member of the Trump administration to have used her federal office to promote outside business interests, but former agency officials and ethics watchdogs say that the timing and content of the videos were both unlawful and especially tone-deaf.

 

I wonder how they tracked her down after she scribble out her… Oh… Yeah…

THE LEAD (Part II): Being a racist jerk tends to lead to a lot of backlash, particularly when you leave enough clues for people to find you.

On March 2, Stephanie Lovins, while dining at Cazuelas Mexican Cantina in Columbus, Ohio, left a message for Ricardo, a U.S. citizen serving her.

In the signature section of her receipt, Lovins wrote: “I hope Trump deports you,” followed by “Zero. You suck.” The incident occurred after Lovins grew upset over the restaurant’s “one coupon per table” policy.

A restaurant employee who found the receipt shared a photo on social media, and it quickly went viral, provoking widespread condemnation and calls for Lovins’ termination.

 

DIGITALLY DUMB: In both cases, the people involved tried to wiggle their way out of this situation. In Pinover’s case, she did the “Ugh… like, why are you making such a big deal about this?” thing, arguing that she didn’t make any money and trying to garner sympathy for her influencer attempts:

In a statement, Ms. Pinover said she never made any money from the fashion videos.

“While I was battling breast cancer as a new mom, I felt so unlike myself. I turned to social media shortly after as a personal outlet,” she wrote. “I never made any income and with only about 800 followers, I’m surprised the so-called ‘newspaper of record’ finds this newsworthy. My focus remains on serving the American people at O.P.M.”

 

In the case of Lovins, she went with what I call the “Shaggy Defense” when confronted:

Lovins initially denied any involvement, claiming on social media that her credit card had been lost or stolen and that someone else had used it.

“My credit card was lost/stolen, and someone attempted to use it. Thanks for the notifications! This has been reported through my bank,” she wrote on Facebook.

“Thank you for all the recent notifications of scammers and profile hackers! I recently discovered a lost/missing credit card and an attempted use/purchase. I appreciate your patience while I manage the situation,” she wrote in a post on LinkedIn….

However, this was discovered to be a false statement after the restaurant reviewed CCTV footage and confirmed that she was inside the restaurant, leading to her termination.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: Two things came to mind in reading these stories. First, it was the idea that anything we do nowadays is private is almost quaint, but particularly so when you actively jump online.

I remember in the early ’00s when I had a student who wrote a blog post/diatribe about a conservative student on our campus. When that conservative kid saw the post, she put out the Bat Signal to conservative websites and media outlets, thus leading to this exchange between me and my student:

HER: This isn’t fair! I’m getting attacked by all these people who she shared the piece with.

ME: What do you mean it’s not fair? You published a hit piece on her, so she’s telling people to tell you what they think about it.

HER: But that wasn’t supposed to be for her! It was only for my friends! It was supposed to be private!

ME: What part of the “WORLD WIDE WEB” do you not understand?

Second, I had a similar situation where we were going to launch the reporting book and the folks at Sage wanted me to do a whole new social media profile:

ME: I’ve got a Twitter account and I’ve got a ton of followers already. Why should I delete that and do a different one?

EDITOR: Vince, do you remember what you ate for lunch yesterday?

ME: Um… No…

EDITOR: How about last week Tuesday?

ME: Not a clue…

EDITOR: Right. So you’ve been on Twitter for about 10 years at this point… How many of those tweets are things you remember well and are totally proud of?

ME: (Quietly setting fire to every digital account and device I ever owned…)

To be fair, I’m sure I wasn’t asking for money or to deport a server, but I was extremely upset about the Cubs stealing the 2016 World Series from my Cleveland squad, so I’m sure I didn’t cover myself in glory there…

 

BLOG FLASHBACK: We’ve had a number of these cases in which people behaving badly ended up getting shared online, leading to terrible outcomes.

There was the college student who didn’t think anyone would share her “Finsta” tirade about Black people. We also had the kid at UW-Madison, who apparently thought her “private thoughts” on forcing the ghosts of Black people to “pick cotton”   wasn’t going to go viral. Then, there was the kid who had a swastika flag and a whiteboard full of slurs getting outed at UW-Oshkosh.

I’m sure there were more, but I started getting depressed, so let’s just leave it at those and say these are not rare occurrences.

 

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Given that the sheer tonnage of time people spend online each day could stun a team of oxen in its tracks, there are a couple key takeaways for folks that bear repeating:

Nothing is “just” anything anymore: If you’re thinking you “just” sent that photo to a friend or you “just” made that less-than-savory joke to your private Facebook friends or you “just” acted like a dipstick in public once, welcome to your reality check.

Dad used to tell me stories about guys at work who would tell off-color jokes or poke fun at each other in ways that boggle my mind. I don’t know if it’s so much that these things were terrible or if now I’m just so attuned to the crap storm that could come from those jokes or putdowns that freak me out.

I like to think that it’s half of a piece of each, in that more people had thicker skin while fewer people were perpetually offended and that we have evolved to prevent some truly unsavory behavior in the work environment.

Either way, we are clearly beyond getting free passes in life with the justification of, “C’mon, it was just…”

 

Everything is public: I don’t like that everything I do is public these days or that someone could decide, “Hey, it’s F— with Filak Time!” and look for a McDonald’s receipt I was writing stupid crap on back in 1998 or something.  However, that’s the field I’m in and that’s the reality of our surroundings.

You can avoid a lot of this by not being online as much or not sharing as much stuff online, but for digital natives, media operatives and anyone under the age of 60 who wants to remain part of broader society, that’s a tough ask.

This is why paranoia is my best friend, why I try to count to 10 before I write anything out of anger and I always imagine the headline in the Advance-Titan of “UWO professor suspended for (Dumb thing I’m thinking about doing)” before I do anything.

It doesn’t solve everything, but it does tend to keep me more centered than I would otherwise be.

 

Know the rules: This more applies to the first case, as opposed to the second one, although understanding “one coupon per table” before losing your mind on a server has a tangential connection here.

When social media first emerged, a lot of people running organizations were in their 50s and 60s and they knew two things about it: 1) They didn’t know what it was or how it worked and 2) They wanted to use it somehow for the betterment of their organization.

Thus, they tended to turn to young people who had grown up a bit with this and really didn’t give them any major rules. It was like the Wild West, although I’d argue you could probably do more damage with one tweet than you could with a trusty six-shooter back in the day.

Once things started to go haywire, due to missteps by the posters or generally not paying attention well enough to the hashtags involved in other posts, the leaders at those places started putting some basic rules in place. By now, most places have a pretty solid rule book on what people can and can’t do on social media, which includes where and when they can or can’t do it.

One of the things most organizations (and the cops who tend to pull Amy over) say is, “Not knowing the rules is no excuse for not following them.” This is why it’s important, upon getting a new job, to know what it is that you can and can’t do, especially in terms of your outward-facing presence.

I know there are things I can’t put up in my office (political endorsement signs) and things that probably could get me in trouble if they upset people (Vintage Cleveland Baseball nodders come to mind). There are also things that are a little more nebulous, like, “What is the rule of the thumb on using my computer to blog like this?”

Long story short, it pays to know what the rules are before they become problematic. And it also pays not to be a racist ass-hat, even if you don’t think people will call you out for it.

 

Whether you agree or disagree with Mahmoud Khalil, you need to watch his case

THE LEAD: Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University and a legal U.S. resident, was picked up in an ICE raid Saturday and faces deportation. Khalil was a leading voice in the Palestine protests on the university’s campus last spring.

Khalil was detained Saturday night as he and his wife were returning to their Columbia University-owned apartment in upper Manhattan by officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The agents told the couple that Khalil was being detained because his student visa had been revoked.

When his wife provided documents proving he was a green card holder, the agents said that was also being revoked and took him away in handcuffs, according to a lawsuit Khalil’s attorneys filed challenging his detention.

President Donald Trump discussed the matter in a social media post in which he supported the arrest and potential deportation, calling Khalil a “terrorist sympathizer” for his stand on the Palestine situation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio concurred, saying Khalil’s protest actions were “aligned with Hamas” and thus it was acceptable to revoke his green card (and his marriage to a U.S. citizen, I guess) and deport him.

A court held up his deportation and his lawyers will be arguing Wednesday that he’s essentially being punished for exercising free speech.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: We talked about the issues related to protests last year when a number of campuses were dealing with upheaval and cracking down on students who peaceably assembled. As we noted back then, you can’t just support free speech when it’s speech you like. The same is essentially true for all of the other aspects of the First Amendment.

In other words, if you’re cool with people standing up for Side A of an issue, you have to be cool with people standing up for Side B of that issue. As long as the protests and speech don’t run afoul of what the law has already stated as being out of bounds (fighting words, child porn etc.), the Bill of Rights protects those actions.

 

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: You could easily make an argument that this is one guy, speaking out on a topic in a way that a lot of people don’t like, so it shouldn’t really matter.

You could make that argument and it would be both dead wrong and dangerous.

The actions here underlie a broader set of concerns for anyone who supports free expression. Earlier in March, the president noted he would crack down on colleges and universities that allowed for “illegal protests” to persist. It wasn’t clear what made something an “illegal protest” in the eyes of this administration, but I imagine that the translation would be “anything the president doesn’t like.”

Anyone who has an opinion about anything should probably be concerned about this approach, even if you disagree with everything Khalil stands for. Without legal protections for expression, it could be just a matter of time before whatever you think is worth talking about could land you in prison under some sort of trumped up charge.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Again, I don’t like a lot of speech or protests, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t agree with most of what Khalil has to say. That’s not the point of sticking up for his rights.

The law has long held that the government can’t suppress speech it doesn’t like, but it seems like we’re living in some sort of parallel universe right now where the government tends to do something beyond the pale and ask questions later. The Elon Musk line about how the administration will “make mistakes” but fix them up once they realize they made a mistake is a bad idea in general, but it’s even worse when it come to the inalienable rights associated with our country’s founding.

If the courts give the administration a pass and say, “Well, it’s just this one guy and, yeah, screw Palestine anyway,” it sets a dangerous precedent for when someone else upsets this administration. The cure for speech we don’t like is not to crush that speech. It’s more speech that presents a counterbalance to the original speech.

Even if the courts let this guy go, we still have the problem of how these actions have the potential to chill speech throughout the country. It’s like a bad parent smacking a kid in the head for voicing an opinion. That kid is probably not going to pipe up again, but the rest of the kids in that family are probably also going to keep their mouths shut.

That’s not how we’re supposed to roll as the United States.

Time flies when you’re not scavenging for toilet paper: The Fifth Anniversary of COVID

It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that it was just five years ago that the entire world was turned upside down. In some ways, it seems so much longer and in others, it feels like just yesterday that we were all washing our mail, rationing Clorox wipes and storming grocery stores like it was the Invasion of Normandy in search of toilet paper.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel published the first “COVID at Five Years” story I’ve seen, although I’m sure there will be more if journalists can find the time and discipline not to chase every “We’re gonna buy Nova Scotia and turn it into a car wash” brain twitch coming out of the White House. In looking back, the MJS hit on some things that COVID ushered into our social conscious:

Beyond the grim health toll, the cultural impact has been substantial. We learned about PPEs and contact tracing. We mark time as “before COVID” and “after COVID.” We use phrases like “jumping on a Zoom call,” talk about “the new normal,” and ask about “curbside pickup.”

More than anything, we felt and discussed isolation. Talk to bartenders or baristas, psychologists or scientists, and it’s as if a larger-than-typical chunk of our population lost, or in the case of young people never developed, the ability to have what once were normal social interactions.

The effects of social isolation on mental health “didn’t have boundaries,” said Dr. Pam Wilson, vice president of medical affairs at Sixteenth Street Community Health Center. “They affected everyone.”

(As I wrote this, the BBC sent along its look at the outbreak, so now I’m up to two articles.)

What people remember is likely a function of where they were living, what stage in life they were at and how directly this virus impacted them personally. I tend to remember some of the dumbest things possible, even as my wife was a nurse and putting herself at risk to make sure people could receive heath care.

I remember sending an email to the guy who ran our monthly baseball card shows right about this time of the month, asking if he had planned to cancel, as things were starting to get weird up here. His initial response was, “Nah, this is all overblown. See you in a couple weeks.”

I didn’t see him again for more than two years.

I also remember watching every university around me starting to close and shift to online learning. My reporting class was getting edgy, as they had a 24-hour Midterm From Hell about to begin. One kid asked me two days before we were about to start it, “What if they shut the university down before this happens?”

“Look, folks, we’re behind people, but I tend to think that if they were going to shut us down, they would have done it by now,” I said.

After class, I opened my email to find the, “We’re going into hibernation, run for the hills” email that got us into distance learning for the year or two.

The rest was a blur of random weirdness, although I have to admit we got really lucky that Amy put us in for monthly toilet paper deliveries about a year earlier and apparently we don’t use as much as Amazon liked to send each month. Before COVID, I was grousing about having to store cases of TP. During COVID, I felt borderline opulent in using the bathroom.

I remember putting together “care packages” for my parents, who would drive up and visit from the other end of the driveway. Extra toilet paper, Clorox wipes, books of puzzles and anything else I could find. I also remember that about two months earlier, my dad and I bought a sports card collection of more than 3 million cards. (No, that’s not a typo. It filled the back of a U-Haul.)

I would pull out boxes of cards and put them with the care package so Dad could keep himself busy by sorting and pricing cards during the pandemic. Given his general twitchiness, I imagine that keeping him plied with cards might have saved his marriage, or even kept my mother from burying him in a shallow grave in the backyard.

The point of this recall is not just to mark time, but also to look for opportunities to do some good reporting now. The obvious stories are things like, “What was it like for us five years ago?”  or “What did we do then that now seems ridiculous?” (Washing the mail comes to mind…)

However, there are now ways to dig into issues like long COVID, digital isolation (why have a meeting when you can have a Zoom?), mental health impacts, changes to education (a snow day apparently is no longer a snow day thanks to distance learning) and other similar changes.

It might also be worth asking what we learned overall from this kind of thing? Whenever I used to hear people talking about majoring in “supply-chain management,” I thought it meant they needed a major and they planned to work for their dad’s company. Now? I know how important that is. Same thing with people who worked in labs and planned for the zombie apocalypse. I have a lot better understanding of why I should care about washing my hands and not licking door knobs.

The point is, now would be a good time to take a retrospective look at what happened and what we now know about life on the other side of the pandemic.

It might even help us avoid another one.

The Washington Post Kills Ad Demanding Trump Fire Elon Musk

Copies of the ads the Common Cause and Southern Poverty Law Center planned to run in the Post.

THE LEAD: The Washington Post pulled an ad set to run Tuesday that called for President Donald Trump to Fire Elon Musk. Several organizations chipped in to run a wrap-around, a specialized ad approach that tends to draw a lot of attention in print publications.

Common Cause said it was told by the newspaper on Friday that the ad was being pulled. The full-page ad, known as a wraparound, would have covered the front and back pages of editions delivered to the White House, the Pentagon and Congress, and was planned in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.

A separate, full-page ad with the same themes would have been allowed to run inside the newspaper, but the two groups chose to cancel the internal ad as well. Both ads would have cost the groups $115,000.

“We asked why they wouldn’t run the wrap when we clearly met the guidelines if they were allowing the internal ad,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and chief executive of Common Cause. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason.”

Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post and reason why you could drunk-order a pimple-popping ear toy online, has made several moves that indicate a general sense of deference to the Trump administration. Prior to the presidential election, Bezos ended the paper’s tradition of running an editorial endorsement of one candidate. (The unspoken but obvious reason was that the newspaper folks weren’t picking Trump.)

Bezos also was in the “tech bros row” for Trump’s inauguration, along with Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman. A key factor in his preferred seating was likely that Amazon had donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Although Bezos was not interviewed or quoted for the “ad kill story,” the Post’s PR division offered a bland response in his stead:

A Washington Post spokeswoman said in an emailed statement that the newspaper did not comment on internal decisions related to specific advertising campaigns and pointed to its publicly available general guidelines for advertising.

(If you don’t feel like downloading the Post’s ad brochure, let me just say it’s the most pedestrian thing on Earth. It also does stipulate that the Post “reserves the right to position, revise, or refuse to publish any advertisement for failure to comply with the guidelines set forth below, or for any other reason.”)

 

UNDERSTANDING THE LAW AND THE AD GAME: Advertising falls under the umbrella of what the government calls commercial speech, meaning it’s meant to sponsor or promote the purchase of goods and services. It hasn’t always been protected speech, and as recently as the 1940s, courts had ruled that purely commercial advertising is not protected by the First Amendment.

Court rulings since then have either eroded or eliminated that stance and have led to some basic rules in regard to how advertising can or can’t be censored. In short, if someone is trying to get you to buy something or sell something, it’s probably going to fall into the realm of advertising and the courts will engage in strict scrutiny while examining the regulation of it.

Strict scrutiny in this case basically boils down to this: the state has to prove it has a good reason to regulate the ad and that the regulation will actually accomplish the outcome the government says it will and it will do so in a reasonable, not overreaching way.

 

PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE REGULATION: The key thing to understand here is that none of that stuff applies to what the Post did. Those laws basically apply to governmental action. So, if Trump had heard about the ad and decided to force the Post NOT to run it, that’s where the legal stuff on strict scrutiny etc. would come into play. The Post is a private media entity and it has the ability to accept or deny ads for any number of reasons.

Most newspapers (and I’m assuming other media outlets I haven’t dealt with the ad end of) have basic rules about what they will or won’t accept for ads, based on what they think is important to their readers.

Obvious things that get rejected are ads for illegal products. If I wanted to run an ad in the Advance-Titan, our student newspaper at UWO, for “Dr. Vinnie’s House Of Crystal Meth and Cocaine,” I’m guessing I’d get a pretty strong rejection. Back in the day, we rejected ads for off-shored internet casinos because they had all sorts of legal problems. (That almost seems quaint now that we’ve got ESPN’s “journalists” stepping up for gambling apps and pitching parlays to their audiences.)

Other things that get rejected can be based on how the audience is likely to feel about a product or any special stipulations between the media outlet and any intervening organization. For example, a friend who used to advise the student newspaper at the University of Notre Dame once told me that the paper was forbidden from accepting alcohol ads, due to its status as the official paper of the university. I know that some publications accept ads for strip clubs, abortion services and marijuana dispensaries, regardless of the legality associated with those enterprises.

Newspapers also often have a basic “because we said so” stipulation, just like the Post did. As I was fond of saying to my staff, we could institute “Screw You Tuesday,” in which we rejected any ads that people tried to place on a Tuesday, because, well, “Screw you, that’s why.” It’s not a great way to do business, clearly, but it is legal.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: First, I’d love to be in a financial position to turn down $115,000 “just because.” Have you ever seen how excited people get when they get close to that on “Wheel of Fortune?”

Second, and I can speak from experience on this, it sucks to be pinned in a corner on an ad buy like this. This group could have chosen one of a dozen major metros, but they picked the Post for a pretty good reason and it wasn’t necessarily that Trump reads it.

When I was advising the Advance-Titan, we got an offer to include a 12-page pro-life insert into our paper for about twice what we would normally charge. Like most student newspapers, we were struggling financially, so the money would have been welcome. That said, in digging into how this insert played elsewhere, we found that researchers had found legitimate concerns regarding the factual accuracy of some of the claims in the insert. Furthermore, it would put the paper in the middle of a debate we had no real interest in entering.

After the staff debated and discussed this a bit, the editor came to me and said, “How do we deal with this and not be screwed?”

“You’re screwed either way,” I told him. “If you run it, you’ll have people on the other side of the issue up in arms about it and you’ll catch the same grief as other places that ran it for the accuracy issues.”

He interrupted me. “OK, so then I won’t run it and we’re fine…”

“No,” I explained. “If you don’t run it, this organization is going to put out the Bat Signal to every media outlet that will pay attention saying that you’re pro-abortion and that you’re suppressing their speech. There will be news articles and comments and blog posts and everything else coming at you for this.”

“Like I said, you’re screwed either way. So do what you think is best, stick with it and don’t get into a war of words over it.”

He decided not to run the ad, and pretty much everything I noted above happened, but somehow worse. A press release went out, newspapers ran stories, a local talk radio guy in Milwaukee did about a half-hour on how criminal we were and all that. It eventually went away, but I think the editor doubled his smoking habit until it did.

In the Post case, Bezos clearly doesn’t need the money and he’s clearly dealing with someone who has no compunction about being vengeful when someone is perceived as disloyal, so not running this ad does make sense in that regard. The paper has that right and it can (and has) exercised it.

That said, the optics are really terrible, especially when coupled with the previous actions in regard to Trump. The Post itself will likely suffer credibility issues in general as a result of this.

When Bezos bought the Post, the prevailing thought was, “This is great, because he doesn’t need anyone’s money. He can do whatever he wants and not have to bow to the whims of the rich and powerful.”

Well, we were about half right on all of that.

DISCUSSION STARTER: If you ran the Post, what would you do with this ad? Also, what kinds of ads would you be willing to take (or reject) based on what you think about the publication, its audience and your own sense of what is fair?

Trump Is Limiting The AP’s Access To White House Events Because It Won’t Use His Preferred Noun When Discussing The Gulf of Mexico

THE LEAD: The Trump administration barred several journalists from the Associated Press from reporting opportunities in and around the White House over the past week for not calling the body of water to the south of the country the Gulf of America.

AP executive editor Julie Pace noted Thursday that AP had been shut out of multiple events, including an open news conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the signing of at least one executive order and the swearing in of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the Health and Human Services secretary.

“This is now the third day AP reporters have been barred from covering the president — first as a member of the pool, and now from a formal press conference — an incredible disservice to the billions of people who rely on The Associated Press for nonpartisan news,” Pace said.

The dispute began Tuesday, when the AP was informed that it would be barred from attending White House events because of the organization’s decision to continue using the name Gulf of Mexico, not the Gulf of America, as Trump decreed in an executive order last month.

BRIEF RECAP OF THE SITUATION: President Donald Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico should actually be named the Gulf of America, a declaration he codified with an executive order on Jan. 20. He doubled down on this declaration, when he deemed Feb. 9 the first “Gulf of America Day.”

Apple and Google maps have made the switch to this nomenclature, even as media outlets and foreign officials have pushed back on this move. (Apparently Bing followed suit, but nobody really noticed because… I mean… c’mon… It’s Bing.) The president of Mexico has threatened to sue Google over this change, while the AP and the White House apparently remain in a standoff over the issue.

Trump also made other name changes, such as shifting Denali back to Mount McKinley. In that case, the entirety of the mountain was within the U.S., so it didn’t require the international community to buy in. (Some folks in Alaska aren’t thrilled, to be fair, and the state’s senators are trying to get this undone.)

DEALING WITH TRUMP, AP STYLE:  The Associated Press is an international organization that operates in more than 100 countries, produces content in multiple languages and serves more than 1,300 news organizations daily, so even minor changes or small disputes can have major consequences. In addition, the AP style guide is the bible (not Bible) for journalists everywhere, so what they say, we all tend to use.

In this case, the AP tried to “split the baby” by both acknowledging Trump’s actions while also not letting 400 years of history and global tradition get scrapped with the stroke of a pen:

Screenshot

In short, “Here’s what we’ve always called it, here’s how it now impacts U.S. government stuff, here’s who can ignore it and here’s our best way forward.” Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for the Trump administration.

CAN TRUMP DO THIS (Part I) ?: The larger question of Trump’s right to rename the gulf unilaterally depends on the specific question being asked. As far as the U.S. government is concerned, yes, he can really do this and has. Reports indicate that both the Department of the Interior and the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the official federal database of all U.S. geographic names, are moving in this direction.

In terms of what can be enforced upon the rest of the world, no. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea essentially established that countries have control of things like this only as far as 12 nautical miles from the coastline. (Mexico essentially makes this argument in its lawsuit against Google.) Also, as much as he might like it to be true, Trump does not dictate what everyone on the planet does. Therefore, his declaration has no jurisdiction beyond certain borders.

CAN TRUMP DO THIS (Part II)?: In regard to the issue of barring journalists from stuff, can Trump do it? Sure, and he’s done it before. In 2017, he banned The Guardian, CNN, the New York Times and several other media outlets from a “gaggle” briefing, based on coverage he didn’t like. In 2018, Trump folks barred CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from a Rose Garden event after she had questioned the president in a way that wasn’t taken well.

That same year, the administration revoked the media credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta after an incident at a press briefing. (The White House reinstated the pass after CNN sued and a judge issued a temporary injunction on behalf of the network.) In 2019, he conducted a “mass purge” of journalists, restricting press access through “hard pass/soft pass” gamesmanship. Trump also just bounced a bunch of journalists out of their office space in the Pentagon, giving the space to outlets that give the administration more favorable coverage.

Generally speaking, the law dictates that the denial of a pass is within the rights of an administration, provided there is “an explicit and meaningful standard” to support its actions and “afford procedural protections.” That case did not say what it would take to revoke a pass, nor did it provide any clarity here in regard to who gets to go into the Oval Office or the Rose Garden or whatever.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: There’s a lot to unpack here and it’s not entirely one-sided. As much as I hate having to discuss the First Amendment an “it depends” kind of way, at least this time, it doesn’t involve porn.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is not entirely wrong in saying that a) covering the White House isn’t something everyone gets to do and b) the administration does have some leeway in how it controls who gets to go where when space is limited. I know I can’t just hop on a plane and demand access to the press room, let alone slide into the Oval Office for a chinwag with DJT, just because I’m writing a blog that dozens of people read.

It’s also no big secret that sources have always played favorites with media outlets. It would piss me off to no end when one of my reporters at the Columbia Missourian would call a police source about some story we had heard about and be told, “Nope… Nothing like that going on.” Then, miraculously, the Columbia Daily Tribune’s ancient cops reporter would somehow manage to break THAT EXACT STORY as an “exclusive” within two days.

I also used to hate the way that the Muncie Star-Press managed to have a great “buddy-buddy” relationship with the Ball State athletic office, so whenever something important would be going on (adding lights to the stadium, scheduling a nationally televised game), the Daily News kids would get shut out and the Star-Press would slather it all over the front page. To think the Trump administration would play more fairly with the national press than some yokel sources in the Midwest would with the local press seems to strain credulity.

Hell, it was so obvious he played favorites during his first term, John Oliver had some fun with it:

These kinds of things aren’t a blatant violation of the First Amendment, even if they feel petty and unfair.

All of that being said, I hate what Trump did here and I totally support AP’s position in regard to the coercive nature of this exclusionary maneuver. It does smack of favoritism, it does undermine their ability to spread information and it reeks of petty bull-pucky. I have a long-standing hatred for bullying, and that’s just what is happening here: “Do what we tell you to do, or else.”

This isn’t a new thing for Trump, nor will it be the only instance of it. I imagine there will be more than a few press passes getting yanked over the next few years, along with the obligatory lawsuits to get the Trump administration to back down. I also imagine that there will be additional significant efforts to cow the media throughout Trump’s reign. If there’s one thing this administration has consistently blessed with favor, it’s those who lavish unrelenting and uncritical praise upon the Dear Leader.

AP right now is in a game of “chicken” with the White House and I certainly don’t want the AP to back down. We could argue that nomenclature of this nature is petty and stupid (see the “freedom fries” debacle), but the bigger issue would be the press caving to power to curry favor. That’s the kind of loss of credibility that the AP could never get back once their reporters lost it. So, please, AP folks, for the sake of all of us out here trying to teach students how to do quality, unbiased journalism, fight like hell to get back what you have lost.

That said, the establishment doesn’t owe the AP a Snickers bar simply because they’re used to getting top-shelf treatment. I would argue that if you work for AP, you’re probably among some of the best, most-resourceful and dedicated reporters on the planet. You don’t get to the top of the heap like that be being spoon-fed and softly petted, so treat this slight like any other obstacle you would need to overcome.

I’d suggest you follow the lead from the folks getting the shaft at the Pentagon: “We’re going to work around this cheap ploy, because that’s what we do and we will not be deterred in holding the administration to account for its actions because that’s our job.”

 

A Look at “Apple Cider Vinegar” and How the Media Ecosystem Works

Earlier this month, Netflix dropped its most recent “tru-ish crime drama” mini-series, “Apple Cider Vinegar.” The series follows the rise and fall of wellness “guru” Belle Gibson, whose claims that she survived a terminal brain tumor (and other similar health crises) through the use of a wellness diet.

Here’s the trailer, which gives you a pretty solid look at what you’ll get over the six-episode saga:

The trailer and the series both seem to emphasize this odd game of “one-on-one” between Belle and Milla, the latter of which is not a real person. Experts digging into the series have offered theories about who Milla might be based on and to what degree Belle knew her, but it’s not as “Hatfields and McCoys” as we see in some clips and episodes.

We could spend about 8,000 words doing a “what’s true and what’s not” about this whole situation, but that wouldn’t really get us much in the way of value. What is interesting is to see how we got to a six-part mini-series about this health influencer and how it’s part of a pattern in media.

I’ve made the case in multiple classes that whether you’re in print, broadcast, film, social media, public relations, advertising or any other part of media that I missed, you’re not in a silo, but part of larger media ecosystem. In some cases, this is easy to see and it’s pretty linear: A PR practitioner puts out a press release on X topic, which mainstream media practitioners receive and use to craft a story. That story then gets shared on social media, where other media participants add information, provide commentary, offer other facets of coverage and so forth. Based on how loud that gets, the mainstream media, the original PR firm or other PR agencies can choose to respond, augment or ignore what’s going on.

In the case of Belle Gibson, we start with the easiest media on-ramp available: Social media. She began posting on various websites in the early 2010s and then developed a following through her “Healthy Belle” Instagram account. As she gained followers and attention, she developed the app “The Whole Pantry” in 2013, which had recipes related to the lifestyle she said had helped her beat her brain tumor. The success of the app led a Penguin Books subsidiary to publish a print edition cookbook of the same name and concept in 2014.

As she continued to get more and more attention, she had both supporters and detractors on social media. Her fans saw her as providing an alternative to the “cut, burn and poison” approach to cancer, while others had a hard time believing she could stop Stage 4 brain cancer with a smoothie.

Around this time, another part of the media ecosystem kicked in, as investigative reporters at The Age received information from one of Gibson’s former friends in 2015 that undercut her claims of raising money for charity and her recovery from cancer. Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano began digging into Gibson’s past and her claims to find that significant doubts existed among people who knew Gibson that she ever had cancer. They also reported that she didn’t donate money she raised for charity to said charity and that fans were beginning to turn on her.

As social media was continuing to shift the tide, Gibson fessed up in 2015 to The Weekly, explaining she never had cancer. “60 Minutes Australia” did a giant episode on Gibson in 2015, which included a confronting interview:

At this time, both print/online and broadcast media were digging into Gibson even more. Penguin pulled her book, her social media empire began to collapse and other publications found themselves in hot water over previous coverage of Gibson. Cosmopolitan had given Gibson a “Fearless Female” award while Elle Australia had reported her “miracle” story without fact-checking her cancer claims.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Gibson hired a PR firm to try to fix the situation. The folks there dropped her as the situation got out of hand.

In 2016, Consumer Affairs Victoria attempted to fine Gibson for violations of Australian Consumer Law. Reports indicate that she disappeared from public view, but as of 2020, she had not paid the fine.

While the mainstream media was keeping track of Gibson’s legal issues, Toscano and Donelly had turned their reporting into a longer-form read with the 2017 book, “The Woman Who Fooled the World.” They were also appearing on podcasts, media talk shows and more to discuss the situation.

Eventually, the story morphed into the “true-ish story based on a lie” that Netflix has put together, titled “Apple Cider Vinegar.” As the series launched, mainstream media stories about Gibson’s whereabouts have emerged, and, again, influencers and podcasters are taking another look at the story. (In addition, Netflix is posting the 2023 documentary, “The Search for Instagram’s Worst Con Artist,” next week. This piece covers the Gibson situation from a less “tru-ish” and more “true” angle.)

In looking back on this, we can see how this story continued to grow, morph and spread at least seven media forms (social, app, book, newspaper/website, broadcast, streaming, public relations)  to say nothing of the tangential elements I likely missed. Obviously, not every story gets the full Netflix treatment or has Tara Brown ripping someone to shreds. However, it does demonstrate the ways in which the media ecosystem feeds upon an event, a situation, a story or a concept over time and across platforms.

EXERCISE TIME: Take a look at pretty much anything else a big-name streaming service is doing as a docu-series/docu-drama and see how many other tentacles of media you can find touching that story at any point. Try to isolate where the story really started and then piece together a timeline as best you can that provides a look at which media entered the fray where and contributed what aspects of information to the story.

Time to Dissect the Super Bowl Ads for Audience-Centricity and Interest Elements

One major tradition surrounding the Super Bowl, other than complaining that whatever it was was the worst half-time show ever, is a deep dive into the commercials. Countless ad orgs, commentators, marketing pros and other folks will spend hours upon hours making bests and worsts lists. In any given year, there will be the ads that tug on heart strings, ads that are flat out ridiculous, ads that insult at least three demographic groups and ads that leave us wondering, “OK, what the heck was that?”

Rather than go the traditional way here, let’s make some sense of the ads from the perspective of how media content is supposed to work.

  1. Define and understand your audience well enough to provide content that caters to the people in it.
  2. Use specific interest elements to pique and hold the audience members’ attention.

Here is a link to a pretty good running tally of all the ads:

 

Go through the ads and find the one that you like (or hate) the most and start to analyze based on the key points above:

Audience: Break down the demographics based on who tends to watch the Super Bowl, according to a reliable source you can find online. Then, see what segment of that broader chunk is most likely the target of this ad from that perspective. Then, move into the psychographic elements that you think are at the core of what the target audience members most likely ascribe to in their lives. In short, what values, feelings, connections and more is the ad you picked trying to tap into.

(As for the third element we outline in the book, it’s highly unlikely the geographic element will play a role here, but if you find something, go for it.)

Then, move into the next phase by assessing the interest elements that draw the attention of audience members:

  • Fame
  • Oddity
  • Conflict
  • Immediacy
  • Impact

As we often note, you won’t be able to catch all five of these in most cases. At least one should be present in any media content. See how many you can find and then assess if those elements are being successfully tapped.

Some of the goals of the ads will work or won’t work because the people making the ads didn’t correctly match elements like “fame” or “impact” with what the target audience knows or understands. (I bring this up, as Amy and I were watching part of the half-time show and when someone came out to sing with Kendrick Lamar, we both asked, “OK, who the heck is that?” We eventually asked our cooler, hipper sister-in-law, who was nice enough not to shame us as part of the process…)

See what you can come up with as part of this analysis, particularly if you thought any given ad really worked or really flopped.

At the very least, it’s a good excuse to watch some videos in class today.

 

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