Shoot the Messenger

Press Secretary to the President (or PS2POTUS) Robert Gibbs took a bath last night due to the ace throwing arm of Bill Plante of CBS News.

The dunking tank at the White House luau is just another way the Obama administration is bringing humor and humility to its relationship with the 4th Estate.

[via Fishbowl DC, photo from Mark Knoller's Twitter feed]

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PR and lobby shop Quinn & Gillespie is hosting their annual Flak Bash tonight to “honor D.C.’s most daring and verbally agile communicators.” The awards–flak jackets–are handed out to flaks (or flacks) to the Best Spokesperson in the following categories: Presidential Campaign (Republican and Democrat); Capitol Hill Press Secretary (Republican and Democrat); and Industry (business and association).

According to Quinn & Gillespie’s Ashley Prime:

Nominees come from the general public, and are judged by a top journalists including Jeff Birnbaum, The Washington Times; Eleanor Clift, Newsweek; Bob Cusack, The Hill; Eve Fairbanks, The New Republic; Arianna Huffington; Kathryn Jean Lopez; National Review Online; Charlie Mitchell, Roll Call; Brody Mullins, The Wall Street Journal; Bara Vaida, National Journal; and Jim VandeHei, The Politico.

According to Politico’s Shenanigans blog:

This is always a pretty popular affair, of course, honoring the best flaks in each political party in campaigns, on the Hill and in industry.

We hear there were two full pages of names that were culled, topped by all the usual suspects: the Tucker Boundses, the Danny Diazes, the Bill Burtons, blah, blah.

But there are some names that pop out. Sarah Palin, for one. Joe Biden. Tim Kaine. T. Boone Pickens. Tom Tancredo?

And other, more reasonable and actual communications people: Ryan Loskarn, Pepper Pennington, Brad Dayspring and David DiMartino.

Where’s Obama’s smooth talking southerner Robert Gibbs, and McCain’s Nicole Wallace? Surely they deserve respective kudos for being keeper of the message, and nearly-shot messenger/Needless Markups shopper?

[Colbert's angel of death, via 2040worldview]

In what could prove to be the ultimate messenger-shoots-back moment, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino joins Rahm Emanuel, Orrin Hatch, Eleanor Holmes Norton tonight to roast Stephen Colbert for the annual Spina Bifida fundraiser.

Colbert hasn’t been too rough on Perino, only referring to her “rockin’ bod” on the Report. Emanuel suffered the threat of a second severed finger for telling freshmen Dems not to appear on “Better Know a District”.

[Analysis of Colbert's insults via The Examiner's Yeahs and Nays]

Like her predecessor Scott McClellan, Dana Perino was caught dishing lies on behalf of the Administration this week.

Perino passed off a drastically edited CDC report on the health threat of global warming claiming the evidence didn’t jibe with the IPCC’s conclusions. It was because Dick Cheney’s office wanted to soften the message and not hasten any anti-corporate action by the Government.

In a press conference yesterday when the story unfolded, Senator Barbara Boxer called Perino’s explanation a lie. Perino’s #2 Tony Fratto backed her up: “We stand 100 percent behind what Dana said…Senator Boxer should not throw around charges like lying in cases where there might be a difference of opinion.”

Grist has the best round-up available of the chain of events leading up to this bit of gun play between Boxer and Perino.

If you don’t buy the bit about Perino saying there might be health BENEFITS to global warming, check the official transcript.

This edition of Shoot the Messenger is fueled by the Scott McClellan gun fight of last week, with CBS Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen taking time out of the staid and steady Sunday Morning program to lambaste the PR industry as inherently built on a foundation of lying. Cohen used the McClellan tell-all as a launching pad for poking fun at the notion of the PRSA’s Code of Ethics for PR, likening it to the Burglars Association (complete with fake logo) espousing Thou Shall Not Steal.

PRSA Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Julin was quick to issue a response.

While the PRSA rebuttal, and even Cohen’s attack have merit, it’s too easy to use one big brush over the whole industry. What Cohen is talking about the ends of the spectrum of solo flacks on one end, and multi-million dollar corporate suppression efforts on the other. There is a big, bell-curve middle of PR people doing good honest work. Those endpoints though, make for the most salacious PR blogging.

See Shel Holtz’s post on the subject of shining a light on the good work for more.

In the meantime, watch the clip above while we look to see which messenger gets shot next.

In this very special edition of Shoot the Messenger, the “fury” over former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan‘s “revelations” have created an all-out old-tymey Texas gun fight, with wartime Bushies all following the talking points (see CBS Evening News clip above) saying this is not the Scott they knew.

Well yeah. The communications strategy of the time was to take the #1 most credible person in the administration (Colin Powell) and put him in front of the U.N. to talk WMD. Are people really surprised the person 100% responsible delivering whatever he was told had misgivings about the decision to go to war?

McClellan’s predecessor Ari Fleisher claimed to be “stumped and stunned” on CBS, and “heartbroken” on NPR by these revelations.

McClellan’s Texas toast was buttered by Bush for many years, so we assume his advance was pretty hefty on this book to start doing his own shooting. According to sibling blog Galleycat, his What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception popped to #1 on the Amazon list, probably because no one can get their hands on it in traditional bookstores.

Apparently even fake journalists/prostitutes can Shoot the Messenger too. Jeff Gannon, a.k.a. “Bulldog” also “questions” McClellan’s credibility.

As they say in publishing, we’ll see if this book has any sell-through. We suspect its just a brief drive-by.

If you haven’t heard yet, or felt the wrath of having your firm’s domain name outed as a PR spammer, Gina Trapani the editor of Gawker Media’s LifeHacker blog has created a wiki to show other bloggers how to block pitches. Trapani is tired of PR people pitching her at her personal address.

It turns out she mentioned her blocking methods before in a comment on Valleywag during the kerfuffle over the Chris Anderson/LongTail spammers list, but didn’t draw as much response from the PR world.

On the front lines of this debate over How to Pitch a Blogger, and How to Block PR Firms is Todd Defren of Shift Communications, a shop with considerable tech and social media chops, and one of the domains on the list.

Defren figured out over the weekend that Trapini’s personal email is listed on Cision, one of the major PR databases. He also posted a screengrab of the Cision page on Flickr to make that point, and graciously took it down at her request, then protested on Twitter: “@ginatrapani‘s request, removed pic of her Cision entry from Flickr. Wish she’d been as nice about messing with others’ reputations.”

As I was on phone talking with researcher at Cision to verify how exactly they collect contact info, the wiki was updated explaining the same thing: people at Cision add information to journalist profiles based on what they find on web searches, as well as opt-in methods.

We’ll stay on this story as it develops, and stay neutral. Blocking is a little harsh but there are some terrible mail-merge style pitches getting spewed out there. For now ironically, one of the best place to go for web2.0 How-To remains Defren’s PR-Squared blog.

If you’re a blogger and you want to see if Cision has your information, call 312-922-2400 and ask for research. I just did, and added my phone number. Bring on the pitches, but read PR-Squared first.

(William J. Holstein does not like PR’s “little Jennifers”)

Prolific business writer and former Editor-in-Chief of Chief Executive and Directorship magazines William J. Holstein has expanded and edited his original rant against “Jasons and Jennifers” in public relations to include just “26 and 27-year-old ‘Little Jennifers,’” according to his retread in a recent issue of the Bulldog Reporter.

We thought this warranted a “Shoot the Messenger” post to see if PRNewser readers agree this piece required ageism and sexism to make a point. He published it to promote his book “Manage the Media”.

You can find the link, and full text to his original Chief Exec column on The Flack.

Is your name Jennifer? We’d love to hear what you think. Email us.

You can also send well-wishes to Holstein directly via his Yahoo! email.

Yours Truly,
Jason

PRNewser is happy to introduce a new feature titled (not entitled; we hear you Ken Wheaton) “Shoot the Messenger”.

We will blog, as well as solicit exclusive stories from frustrated journalists as well as errant publicists willing to cop to a gaffe. We’ll also seek out juicy tales of PR people who are fed up with shoddy treatment from those they pitch (we assume off the record).

Could the rising number of complaints be from journalists be that people in the workforce who identify themselves as working in PR outnumber journalists by 2 to 1? Could it be that journalists have more ways to vent frustrations beyond deleting your email or not returning your calls?

We hope STM will be one part education, one part forum, with just a smidge of schadenfreude.

Are you a source? Tell us why a messenger needs to be shot, or why you shouldn’t be in the crosshairs. Anonymity guaranteed as always. Send your stories and suggestions here.

While you have a think, enjoy the adorable Shoot the Messenger flash game and throw fireballs at those demonic flying PR people: