THE Un-CEO

Unlike many so-called leaders of our time, Pope Francis does not regurgitate processed bromides that fall on deaf ears.

Media commentary by Steve Dunlop

Don Hewitt, the brash, irrepressible creator of 60 Minutes whom I've written about elsewhere in the Press Center over the years, had a mantra for his staff that set the tone for the most successful newsmagazine in history.   

The mantra is harsh, even arrogant - but it cuts to the heart of what news actually is. 

"Tell me something," Hewitt argued," that I don't already know." 

In that pithy phrase, under the veneer of self-importance, lies the key to media coverage of last week's historic interview of Pope Francis.   But the lessons apply far beyond the religious realm.  Professional communicators from all walks of life, and especially from organizations under fire, should take heed. 

Pope Francis's interview was published in America, the magazine of the Jesuit order in the United States.   

The secular press widely reported Francis's comments that the Catholic Church had become "obsessed" with a "disjointed multitude of doctrines" on abortion, contraception, and gay issues, and needed to broaden its agenda in order to engage effectively with the rest of the world. 

Liberals cheered.  Moderates welcomed a fresh take on vexing concerns.  Conservatives protested that the pontiff had been taken out of context.  Still others contended that with a poor choice of words, Francis had naively undercut his own American bishops' defense of church teachings (to the point of said obsession). 

It's the critics who are naive, folks.  Pope Francis knows exactly what he is doing. 

Despite his proclivity for speaking almost entirely without notes - or, more likely, because of it - he has become the most quotable pope that the modern world has ever seen.   And all without the help of "handlers."  Francis himself is the author of this fundamental shift. 

Here are some recent Francis-isms that haven't gotten as much attention as the "obsessed" comment, because the topics they address are not prominent on the media's radar.  Note the shockingly original use of metaphors and analogies:

•  On vanity:  "Look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them."

•  On lukewarm priests:  "(When a priest) doesn’t put his own skin and own heart on the line, he never hears a warm, heartfelt word of thanks… this is precisely the reason why some priests grow dissatisfied, lose heart and become in a sense collectors of antiquities or novelties — instead of being shepherds, living with the smell of the sheep."

•  On himself.  At one point in the recent interview, he is bluntly asked, "who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio (his lifelong name)?… He nods and replies: "I  do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”

You can agree or disagree with the content of those quotes - but not the form.  As anyone in the communications field knows, good sound bites are rarely accidents.   Pope Francis is more media savvy than any of his critics believed.  

In the end, when the media jump on the "obsessed" angle, they are doing what they have always done.  They are reacting as Don Hewitt would - to something they "don't already know."   Who, after all, could have imagined the Bishop of Rome opining that the Church had become obsessed with sex?  

You might as well say Michael Jackson was obsessed with child molestation.   At one point years ago, that too was unimaginable.  But that revelation, when it emerged, also created headlines.  Which is precisely the point. 

This fundamental reality about the nature of news - that as human beings we find the unexpected far more interesting than the merely bold - explains the failure of many costly media campaigns.   

Your company takes a "strong stand" for "sustainability?"  Ho-hum.    Get in line, because that's utterly predictable. 

You are "focused like a laser beam" on "creating shareholder value?"  Welcome to the club.   Next?

The eyes of reporters and bloggers glaze over when press releases tout the next "end-to-end solution." We've heard it all before. 

But tell me something I truly don't already know?  Now, you've hooked me. 

Pope Francis sets an example.  He deserves credit for surprising us, intriguing us.   Unlike so many so-called leaders of our time, he does not regurgitate processed bromides that fall on deaf ears.  He makes news, and reaches hearts and minds, with a deliberately provocative choice of words. 

Yet the fact that it makes news doesn't reside just in those words - but in the fact that we did not already know a pope would ever say them. 

WHEN NEWS TRAVELS TOO FAST: The dangers of media speed

"We are being taught through social media responses to react as fast and as loud as possible – much to everyone's detriment," writes a teacher of ethics and critical thinking at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.  The "haste of acquiring information," says Tauriq Moosa, is "detrimental to proper responses, let alone proper reporting." 

Former Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg (left) and Dunlop Media's Charles Feldman, formerly of CNN (right), discuss the dangers of media speed at the 2009 Global Travel and Tourism Summit.   

Moosa agrees with Dunlop Media specialist Charles Feldman, who expressed similar sentiments in a recent book on the subject.  "The public's right to know," said Feldman, "has been supplanted by the public's right to know everything, however fanciful and even erroneous, as fast as technology allows."  Courtesy The Guardian. 

LINK TO COMMENTARY>> 

TV NEWS FAILED EVERYONE IN THE ZIMMERMAN CASE

RALEIGH, NC:  Broadcast coverage was relentless during and after the nationally televised trial of George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin.  Veteran journalist and college lecturer Doug Spero, a Dunlop Media associate, monitored the output - and couldn't believe what he saw. 

George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin, in a still image from a video provided by Sanford, Florida, police.   

"What we have had here is an acute case of agenda-style infotainment," Spero wrote in a nationally published op-ed piece.  "Pioneering TV journalists Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite would, no doubt, be horrified. "   Courtesy The Christian Science Monitor. 

LINK TO COMMENTARY>> 

DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: KTVU incident exposes weaknesses in a newsroom's culture - and ours

Media commentary by Steve Dunlop

Airline mishaps are so rare these days that safety experts tell us it usually takes a unique combination of errors - not just a single random act - to bring down a plane.   When the book is closed on the embarrassing error by  KTVU, the Fox affiliate in Oakland, on the so-called crew names from Asiana Flight 214, chances are we'll see the same pattern.  It's likely that a cascade of errors will have led to that error as well. 

So, let's stop to consider some of the root causes of silly errors that are made in newsrooms.   In KTVU's case, there are four identifiable realities that converged, in this case, to wreak havoc.  And they are by no means unique to that station. 

KTVU accidentally repeated a lowbrow joke in reporting the fictionalized names of the crew in an Asiana Airlines flight that crash landed in San Francisco.

We have to begin with one of the dirty little secrets of the news business.  Gallows humor breeds in newsrooms.   I've never worked in one where it wasn't a fact of life.  Joking is one of the coping mechanisms that journalists develop after repeated exposure to death, violence, and mayhem.  Find a way to laugh about it - and the more politically incorrect, the faster it will spread.

The second factor is the need for speed, driven largely by the minute-to-minute nature of news updates on cable networks and the Internet.  Fact checking that used to be de rigeur before air time has suffered in the face of new competition.  

The old rule was to double-verify your information before you go to air - and always, always keeping a healthy skepticism about information from third party sources, even government agencies.   "Get it first, but first get it right" is a saying I learned at the Associated Press when I was still in college.  But the fact is that many of the lines of defense that ensured "getting it right" years ago are now gone, victims to cost cutting and relentless efficiency reforms.

The third factor is is another dirty little secret - the real life work that summer interns are often assigned to do real work, not just in newsrooms but also government agencies.   Interns in the news business are mostly unpaid.  But supposedly, they are there to watch and learn.   Handing them the keys to the car before they can drive is risky business. 

And lastly, there is societal change.  There was a time when dark puns stayed largely in their environs - in the city room of a newspaper, for instance, or on the floor of a stock exchange.  The Internet, of course, has changed all that, just as it drove the need for speed.  The more outrageous the humor, the better the chances it will go viral. 

If you are lucky, you will learn those four lessons at a small newspaper or radio station early in life.  The hope is that in a small market, public harm will be minimal, and you are early enough on your career path to have those inevitable learning experiences help nurture what I call a journalist's self-censoring mechanism. 

But when you move to the big leagues, you're supposed to leave the Little League behind.  You shouldn't make mistakes like that in San Francisco. 

WHEN CEO'S SCREW UP: Dealing with public embarrassment

"When executives are on the podium, it’s theater," writes veteran speechwriter and blogger Peter W Yaremko.   "It's his or her face that everybody’s watching. The last thing a speechwriter wants to do is cause embarrassment."

The fact is, a CEO who handles embarrassment poorly only compounds the original error.  Yaremko tells a couple of on-the-mark stories to drive the point home... including the recent White House incident in which President Obama strode confidently to the podium, only to find his remarks missing from the lectern. 

LINK TO COMMENTARY>>