I’ve been reminded over past days how truth and accuracy in information are under assault – and of the obligation that each of us has to fight back.
Harris Diamond, CEO of Weber Shandwick, characterized the situation in a commencement speech: “The new paradigm holds that everything is opinion, everything is relative, and everything is spin. Information is in the eye of the communicator. The assumption today seems to be that since no information is fully accurate; all information is up for grabs.”
Diamond made the remarks to the spring 2010 graduating class at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism. He was the first public relations professional to give the commencement speech at the journalism school, and Diamond’s remarks are a great read. (They appear below.)
His challenge to the graduates (and to all of us – whether we practice public relations or journalism) is to fulfill an obligation to tell the truth and to the idea that objective facts set boundaries of communications.
Bill Nixon, a long-time public policy insider in Washington DC, spoke eloquently on this subject at the Institute’s National Summit on Strategic Communications. He said that today, everything is about the message and medium where communications – the words – take on a life of their own.
In this environment – in our online world – “veracity has to reign supreme.” How you talk about the truth is not a shade of gray. (See: Richard Blumenthal).
The constant challenge is for communications to be creative in order for your message to stick, which tends to make communication more about controversy, not information. Communication in this environment, Nixon says, is “strategic brinksmanship.”
“This is a dangerous trend,” Diamond said. “(Factual) information is the foundation on which the commons of democratic society is built.
“You have the power to reject this assault, to fight back, to take a stand.”
Indeed!
Robert W. Grupp
President and CEO
Institute for Public Relations
USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
Commencement Address to the Class of 2010
By Harris Diamond, CEO, Weber Shandwick
Thank you so much for that introduction. There’s really only one word that matters on a day like this, and that word is “congratulations.” So congratulations—congratulations to the graduates, to the parents and family and friends who helped you to this day, and congratulations to all of you for already having chosen wisely in the most important decision of your careers so far: attending the Annenberg School.
Having said one word is all that matters, I should sit down. But I’m going to defend some old fashioned values in this speech, and there’s no value more old-fashioned than the one that says commencement speakers should drone on far longer than anyone wants to listen, with advice nobody needs to hear, with an air of self-importance nobody should be forced to endure. Today I take my place in that long and unbroken tradition. So indulge me for a few more minutes. They’re not going to give you the diplomas until you sit through this speech anyway.
When I was a teenager, I sold peanuts at Yankee Stadium. It was every Brooklyn kid’s dream job, mostly because you could hang out in the stands watching the game. That’s what I was doing one day during the third inning when an old man—I think he was maybe 20—said, “Hey, kid, if you’re here to watch the game, find a quarter, buy a ticket and grab a bleacher”. If you came here to make money, make money.”
That man taught me the decisive importance of always asking: What did I come here to do? It’s a question I want to put to each of you as you embark on your careers in communication today. What are you here to do?
It’s not an idle question—because the field of communication faces challenges today that make the answer far from clear. The easy answer, of course, is that you’re here because you want to spend your careers communicating. But communicating what? Again, the easy answer: communicating information.
And that’s where we arrive at the difficulty I want to discuss with you today, because it’s one on which the viability of our field—whether you’re in journalism or public relations, whether the viability is economic or ethical—depends.
The difficulty begins with this irony: We live in an information age. Yet the idea of information itself is under assault. By information, I mean something pretty simple. Or so you’d think. I mean facts. I mean reality. I mean a common basis of objective truths—whether it pertains to politics or products—on which we can make decisions, have arguments, form opinions. It’s now a truism to say information is more plentiful than ever. I need hardly say that’s right. But in the two professions for which this institution has trained you—public relations and journalism—there is not merely a shrinking commitment to conveying information as I have described it but also a mounting attack on the concept of information itself.
The new paradigm holds that everything is opinion, everything is relative, everything is spin. Information is in the eye of the communicator. Communication is about controversy, not information.
It’s been said that if a politician today declared the earth to be flat, the headline the next morning would read, “Controversy over shape of earth.” It’s supposed to elicit a laugh, and I suppose it does. But it conceals a deep and disturbing truth about both journalism and PR. On both sides, we are increasingly willing to say anything—and to believe our ethical duties have been discharged as long as someone contradicts it on the other side.
In this new paradigm, stating the simple truth– that the earth is flat, and that anyone who says otherwise is either deranged or lying — makes you arrogant, presumptuous, even unethical. I’m reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s famous question: “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?” The answer: “Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
Apparently Honest Abe didn’t get cable. Because these days, saying anything increasingly does make it so.
This is what I mean by the assault on information. The facts—the truths—that used to establish limits for PR and aspirations for journalism are under attack.
It’s in evidence in the shouting that passes for cable news, the blending of the once distinct endeavors of reporting and commentary, and—on the public relations side—the myth that it’s both possible and ethical to spin any sow’s ear into any silk purse.
There was a time when PR people might say anything—but with the confidence, somewhere in the back of our minds, that if we pushed it too far, the media would rein us in. What’s happened, though, is that the boundaries on both sides of the communication profession have collapsed. No one is holding anyone in. In a curious sense, journalism and public relations have converged. We are all spin doctors now.
And my message to you today, as your careers begin in whichever of these fields you may choose, is this: Physicians, we need to heal ourselves. What we need today, on both the journalism and the public relations sides, is an ethical renewal, a return to the idea that objective information exists and that it sets the boundaries for what we do.
At this point, you may be wondering whether the reality you’re sitting in right now is real. After all, I’m the first guy from the PR side to address this school’s commencement. And the flack, of all people, is lecturing you about truth. Not just a flack, but a guy who used to be a political flack. And you haven’t even heard the worst of it. I’m also a lawyer.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times—I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it’s a good one—that someone who manages to cram politics, public relations and law into the same resume is standing at this podium pontificating about truth. But if it’s a sign, I’m not the only one seeing it. Public trust in journalism, as you know, is not high. (And I’m sure you’ve noticed the business itself is not in great shape, either.) Large portions of the American public no longer trust the information they receive—increasingly, information in any form.
That is not good for our society, for the business I’m in or the one the journalists among you are about to enter. Because if the information we are getting is unreliable; if the truth doesn’t matter; if facts don’t exist; if reality itself is a commodity anyone can manufacture; then communications is a service – whether provided by journalists or public relations folks – that nobody needs to buy. And the choice, I think, is pretty simple. The boundaries of communication will be set by facts, or they will be set by convenience—which is to say, by nothing.
The ethic of journalism used to be that the news pages reported the facts as objectively as possible. The idea of opinion writing, of politics and of public relations was to comment on those facts—to present them in a way that advanced a certain point of view, but the facts were the common denominator binding both sides of our respective businesses and, indeed, of our entire society.
Today, though, a commitment to facts is being overtaken by an obsession with spin. The once stark line between news and commentary is blurring. So is the line between commentary and fiction—between making a persuasive case and, well, making things up. In both journalism and PR, this new perspective holds that opinion is everything. Facts aren’t merely irrelevant; they’re non-existent.
Of course, in a democracy, a little skepticism can be a healthy thing. But what we have today is neither a “little” skepticism nor a healthy skepticism. The assumption today seems to be that since no information is fully accurate, all information is up for grabs. Senator Moynihan once said that you’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. These days, not only do people feel entitled to their own facts, there are media proliferating to supply them. It’s now possible not just to choose what information you believe but to cherry pick all the information you receive in the first place.
This is a dangerous trend. Information is the foundation on which the commons of democratic society is built. If we cannot meet on that commons, we simply cannot meet. I don’t mean we have to agree. I mean we have to be able to disagree in a meaningful way. I mean that civil society—emphasis on the “civil”—rests on the possibility, however unlikely it may be, that we can convince one another of our views. Or that even if we can’t, it’s because I think my facts are more important than yours; or I think they are more persuasive than yours.
But it is not because I deny that your facts exist. Still less is it because I deny that any facts exist. If we can’t talk to each other, all we can do is yell. That, increasingly, is what we are in fact doing. And one can’t help but wonder whether the fists are far behind.
You have the power to reject this assault, to fight back, to take a stand.
If your calling is journalism—and at its best, it is exactly that, a calling—you can defend the line between reporting and commentary. Even if you choose the path of opinion writing, or of reporting from a specific perspective, you can insist that facts set the limits of what you do. If your profession will be public relations, or political communication, you can choose to spin facts rather than merely spin—to present a point of view, to do so with zeal, but to do so within boundaries set by objective truths.
If you choose the path of journalism, you can refuse to put the authoritative statement from the Nobel laureate on par with the wild claim of the conspiracy theorist. If you choose public relations, you can tell your client that you’ll spin facts into a point of view—but not into fiction. If you choose the path of journalism, you can report that the earth is round—that someone claiming otherwise doesn’t amount to a controversy, it amounts to a lie. If your future lies in PR, you can refuse—no matter how alluring the retainer may be—to claim the earth is flat.
Joseph Pulitzer once described a journalist’s obligation to his or her reader this way: “Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”
It’s an obligation each of you—whether your path is journalism or public relations—now inherits. It’s an obligation to the idea of truth, to the idea of information. It’s to the idea of objective facts that set the boundaries of communications, whether we are journalists or advocates.
That idea is under assault. That means our profession is under assault. And it means we need a new generation of professionals willing to fight back. You are it. I know because I know how well the institution from which you graduate today has prepared you for this moment. I know that Annenberg has taught you not merely competence but character. You leave this campus not only with proficiency but with purpose—with a sense of mission on which it is no exaggeration to say the future of society depends.
This moment presents you with a choice—and, therefore—with an opportunity. Take it. That is what you’re here to do. The Annenberg School’s class of 2010 is ready for the challenge. And that, I can assure you, is the truth.
Congratulations and good luck.
