Fire Alarm

I work for a railroad company which operates in the Govt Sector. The other day (12th July), there occurred a small accident on a prestigious superfast train at a station (New Bongaigaon), about 150 km away from our headquarters where I am posted. The generator car of the train which houses the equipments for generating power for the train caught fire. It was just an accident, nothing to be read between the lines and the fire was controlled quickly.
The incident was reported to me very casually by a senior officer. I was told that the fire was a minor one and was controlled with the on-board fire-fighting equipments. To emphasize the frivolous nature of the accident, I was told that not even the fire brigade was informed, which otherwise is a standard procedure. Soon the fire was extinguished and the train continued it's journey carrying about 800 people, I was told. At that time I was not aware that information provided to me could not even be termed half truth. But, as friends from media called up, I gave them this piece of information sounding very authentic and dismissive.
Next day morning I had to hung my head on shame to find a photograph in a news paper showing a fire brigade engine standing next to the train at the station. Later inquiries revealed that the on-board fire fighting equipments did not work and we had to call the fire brigade to control the fire. It took them about half an hour to control the fire! All the newspaper were graphic in detailing how ill prepared were we to tackle such a situation and how we tried to misinform. The news items were clearly laced with obvious bias of the reporters at being misinformed (by me).
This was an immensely avoidable Public Relations disaster. The unintended misinformation will probably be not taken personally by most of the journalist friends, but it sure will linger on in the back of their mind for quite some time. And this sure will affect my credibility built over the last ten years!
Coming to genesis of what went wrong, I believe that as an organization we had nothing to be ashamed of or afraid of from the incident because anyone sane will readily agree that accidents can happen despite the best of measures. But we failed to had proper safety measures in place and the equipment meant for fighting the fire failed. Obviously it was someone's failure. The authorities probably was trying to evasive and shy away from public eye. And thus, they lied.
I also believe that if we had honestly said what happened and showed enough concern over our failure, the journalists would have understood and appreciated. Their trust on whatever information we provide would have increased. They probably would have thought, well these people are telling the truth and it was definitely not in their hands to prevent the accident.
They would not have allowed their reporting of the incident to be biased against us and at the end of the day the benefit would have been ours. It is probably time we sound the fire alarm that a lie is a lie is a lie always and it is not going to help us in any way.

In the league of liars

Two recent unrelated developments in the American media world vis-à-vis public relations professionals were perhaps pointers to the need of a closer look and introspection into the relationship between public relations professionals and journalists in our part of the world too.
Harold Burson, the founder of the renowned public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, had recently reacted very sharply to a comment by a lawyer at the CBS television’s “Sunday Morning” show on June 8. In an ‘unflattering diatribe’ on the behaviour and characteristics of Public Relations professionals, the lawyer had reportedly said that public relations is nothing but communicating lies.
Harold has been practicing public relations for more than sixty years now. He is the founder of renowned public relations firm Burson and Marsteller which has branches in various parts of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. It had recently taken over Genesis Public Relations at Chennai. Harold’s internet blog is a must-read, almost like the daily newspaper, for many hard-core public relations professionals across the world.
CBS News Sunday Morning is, on the other hand, an immensely popular morning news magazine program in America. The programme hosted by Charles Osgood is broadcast on Sunday mornings on the CBS network. Sunday Morning premiered in 1979 and was originally hosted by Charles Kuralt until 1994.When a person in legal profession ends up saying public relations is all about communicating lies on such an acclaimed show, one tends to sit up and take notice unless, of course, one is not dead.
There has long been a “love-hate relationship” between journalists and public relations professionals. Journalists often call public relations professionals “liars” and public relations professionals call journalists “necessary evil” though rarely in earshot of one another. But the gloves came off last week after Chris Anderson, the executive editor of Wired magazine, chided public relations professionals who deluge him with e-mails with news releases “because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching.” Anderson, then, released the names of 304 unsolicited e-mail senders who had sent him press releases, with hopes of getting a few column centimetre of printed space, and stated that he had permanently blocked these senders. To their embarrassment, the names included several renowned and established public relations firms.
These developments put up two very disturbing but pertinent questions. First, do people in general and journalists in particular, really understand what public relations is all about? And second, is it not time that public relations professionals also give a deeper thought to the age old notion of judging efficiency of public relations by volume of printed space or air time that they mange to get for their respective organizations or clients?
What we, the people in public relations, actually do to earn our living? Ideally our job is to be the bridge between the public and the organization we serve. For this we practice something called media relations apparently trying to get journalist write – about our clients, our organizations, our products, thereby give publicity. What is the end purpose in media relations? It is to convey messages to targeted audiences to advance concerned organization’s goals, raise its profile, and uphold its reputation. In this process, journalists become a means to an end. They are only conduits or tools for information disseminations. In other words, the focus of media relations should be creating an ongoing dialogue between public relations people and journalists to have your organization or product discussed in a positive light, in public, through a publication or broadcast.
This can be achieved by creating a relationships based on trust with media people, and that is what we do. But before approaching towards their job, public relations people need to understand the customs, conventions and standard operating procedures relating to the media. Public relations people need to know how journalists operate and approach their job, which in turn will shape their attitude towards journalists and editors. If you distrust and dislike journalists, it will eventually show and affect your dealings with the media. If as public relations professional you lie to a journalist, he or she will eventually find out and your credibility will go down. That is not going to help in your pursuit in developing a relationship and going to make your job increasingly difficult.
I think that the media in general sees themselves as a ‘watchdog’ against big business and institutions. In an environment where the public is bombarded with information from so many sources journalists believe that they are maintaining a balance by consciously and aggressively searching for the bad news. They see themselves as devil’s advocates, standing guard for right and truth.
Harold wrote in his blog that facts are no more scarce, and news is no more reporting facts only, it is more of interpreting facts. We public relations people also present facts to the journalists, of course laced with our interpretations or present them the way we look at those facts. Journalists often may find what we present them with not conforming to their idea of facts. But, that is per say not lying. Harold is of the view that if people are misunderstanding the profession of public relations, it is because the public relations people had failed to explain to them what they do.
Another factor that is making our life increasing difficult is the tendency of CEOs and top management of judging our efficiency by numbers of news coverage we manage to corner. It is this tendency that is pushing more and more people in public relations to go all out with mindless bombardment of journalists with press releases blindly. We have so little time and resources and so hard pressed to show results that we are left with no other option to spam the mailbox of journalists with the hope that some will at least publish our press releases. The situation will drastically change if we can make people understand that good public relations is not judged by volume of media coverage but by quality of media coverage. If only we could make them understand public relations is not possible without performance and telling lie or suppressing facts is not at all going to help. I will not mind being put in the league of liars by a few as long as others understand what we do.

40 plus

I have become 41 year old on May 28 last year. Celebrated my big day with my family, and from next day started to live the mundane daily life of a 40-year-old again. On 28 May this year, I unceremoniously became a 42-year-old and from next day onward started to live the same life again - where everything runs exactly as before and nothing changes.
Each day of my life is unequally divided among my office, my child, my acquaintances, my home and my wife - in that order - and there is no time left for myself except the time I sleep, eat and attend to the calls of nature. I have a happy wife, a normal active child, a home, a car and a steady job. I have no chronic disease and can eat whatever is on offer. I am not running much on debt except for the home loan and the car loan which can be taken care of from my insurance in the event of my death. People generally do not bother about me as I do not about them.
There is not much left for me to demand from life. Or is it so?
There are a lot of sayings on 40-years olds. Some say, "Life begins at 40". Does it? I have been past 40 for two years; life has not began yet here. It has been years since I enjoyed the luxury of sitting on that piece of rock in the nearby hillock looking at the evening sun going down over the hills at dusk without worrying about how much time I had already spent or without worrying about returning home. It had been even more years since going to the market without any particular purpose in mind except to gaze at people, mainly beautiful girls and spend hours at end to return home empty handed. I do not remember when did for the last time I had been to a cinema hall all alone. I also do not remember when was the last time that I had played football.
The world around me grew older, so did my son, my parents and I. The sun still goes down over the hill at dusk, only I keep on woryying about getting home soon.

It happened again!!

This is what happens to me always.On second thought, this is what I do to myself always.
When I started this blog two years ago, the thoughts that I had in my mind were incoherent, illogical and totally unorganised. I wanted to think straight, wanted to do something to drive away my blues and thought writing for me and for all would be a good proposition. I started this blog as if it was a great project and ...then forgot about it.
For the last two years it was simply a Bookmark in my web browser, nothing else. Then, sometime last year (I do not even remember clearly; I have to see my blog to remember the date), I posted another on Public Relations. To be honest the piece I wrote on Public Relations was not the result of much creativity or labour.
So, the moot point here is that what I planned two years ago did not happen! Like every other venture in my life this also went down the oblivion..unnoticed.

Consumer Rights

The other day I was invited to deliver a lecture on Consumer Rights and Awareness with a perspective from the Railways. The lecture was, in fact, supposed to be a paper in a seminar organised by the journalism department of an university. The broader theme of the seminar was "Mass Communication as a Medium for Generating Consumer Awareness". I was not given a clue to the theme of the seminar and therefore when I arrived to deliver the lecture, I was surprised as well as embarrassed. Surprised, as it would have been much easier for me to deliberate on the theme of the seminar and embarrassed as I had not prepared in the line of the theme of the seminar.

Consumer Rights is not something I had ever bothered about. Of course, the attempt by shop-owners to take me for a ride often irritates me. But, I was never serious about doing something about them or for my right right as a consumer. And consumer right is not something that Railways probably bother either. There was nothing on the subject the Railways had to offer and the railway people themselves were not sure about the mechanism of ensuring consumers' rights.

So, when I was requested to speak on the subject, I had to start from scrape. I did a search on the subject, read a few books on Railway Rules and Acts and came up with a 2000 words write-up on the subject based on my understanding. The exercise was immensely beneficial for me as this was one area I never intended to explore.

Public Relations - New Approach

Most Public Relations practitioners are actually ‘improvised practitioners’ (Michel Dumas) – people who practice public relations without theoretical knowledge of what they practice or why practice what they did. They have no idea of why public relations is important for an organization either. Public Relations is an occupation defined more by its technique than by theory. Most Public Relations people are masters of techniques of handling media, staging special events and lobbying. Most of their efforts at communicating are through mass media and they believe that they could affect large numbers of people through publicity. The organizations that employ them also believe that they could get people’s support by creating a good image in the media. Thus, for most of us in the field, Public Relations is what public relations practitioners do.

However, with the advent of new theories of mass media and increased realization that people exercise greater control over how they use media then the media exercising control over the behaviour of the people, the concept of public relations is also getting an overhaul. It is now understood that media cannot create ‘image’ – good or bad. Images are what people think, and most people think independent of media. So, people will construct a good image if the organization behaves well i.e. in ways that people want it to behave. If the organization fails to address the interest of the public there will be opinion against it and the image of the organization will tarnish. Gone are the days when a lie could be passed on as truth in the Goebel’s way.

From the beginning of 1900s to the 1930s the concept of “public responsibility” of enterprises was developed. Corporations are responsible not only for profits of their owners but also for the improvement of society. The problem first emerged in United States during the time of companies merging into bigger companies. Managers of railway companies had to persuade the Public that these mergers were in public interest. Public interest led to Public Relations and public responsibility. Frederick named this concept CRS1 – Corporate Social Responsibility.

In the 1970s, a new approach to the question of the public responsibility of companies began to develop which was called Corporate Social Responsiveness – CRS2. There is an importance difference between these two concepts. While CRS1 still question whether companies have any responsibilities except those to owners, CRS2 works on the assumption that this question has been answered in the positive and works on the “how”. The transition from CRS1 to CRS2 also corresponds to the time of clarification of the expression “public relations”. Jefkins says, “public relations is a constantly misunderstood expression. A simple explanation is offered by reversing the word to say ‘relations with the public’”. White says, “Public Relations is, quite literally, about the relationship between organization and various public”. Berneys said, “Public Relations means exactly what it says, relations of an organization, individual, idea, whatever, with the publics on which it depends for its existence”.

However, Public Relations is essentially a communication process and its importance is growing with the realization of the importance of information in economic theories of decision making. Let us go back into economic theories to some extant. We may recall that Classical Microeconomic theories treated information as a given, not as a variable, by assuming that consumers and entrepreneurs possessed perfect knowledge and given perfect knowledge consumers made choices that maximize their satisfaction (utility) or entrepreneurs maximise profit. Beginning with Knight, neoclassical economists started questioning the assumption of perfect knowledge. Knight concluded that since perfect knowledge does not exist, Perfect Competition also does not exist. He said most economic decisions are made under conditions of risk and uncertainty. Simon postulated that economic decision makers, in the absence of perfect knowledge, make the best decision they can with the information they have (bounded rationality). In other words, limited information and knowledge limits the rationality of decision making. It is in the quest of rational decision making for maximizing profit and satisfaction that information and knowledge assumed such an important position in today’s world. This also explains the importance of Public Relations for the corporations. For the modern day corporations, Public Relations is the management of Trust in conditions of opportunism and bounded rationality; it is the art of creation of consent. At the macro level, organizations need public relations because their behaviours affect publics and the behaviour of publics affects them.

Why should you endure this blog?

You need not actually.
But, if you will, you will loose nothing - believe me!

At ripe old age of 38 if I have started something that generally is percieved as the domain of 20 plus something people, there are - yes 'are' - reasons for it. And if I hope for people to read it, there are reasons for it too.

Writing, for me, is the way to drive away my blues and when I get those I must get rid of them quickly and creatively - for me and for my family. Why will you read them? Because, you need to drive away your blues too.

So read on...