Puhhhleeeease help Bill. He’s going to lose his job if he can’t get make 10,000 friends by August.

That’s right. 10,000 friends. Is this for real? For Vanity Fair editorial assistant Bill Bradley it is. And hey, Bill, if you make your deadline, my boss wants you to apply for a job here.

The go-getter with black-rimmed glasses works from his gray cubicle as the young mastermind behind a PR campaign to guilt people into joining Vanity Fair’s Facebook page.

But so far, it's not going so well. As of June 30, Bradley had 3,515 friends. To put it best in his words, “in short, I’m screwed.” His boss told him August 5 is the deadline. Attention Bill’s boss: This is a ridiculous assignment.

Bradley explained in a recent post on Vanity Fair’s Web site that he’s in a “shameless self-promotion for the sake of more Web site traffic and better job security.”

“I will befriend people that I clearly don’t know.”

“I will hand out fliers in Times Square.”

“And I will past my sorry, hopeless face, pale with desperation, on telephone poles around New York City.”

Case and point: Julia wrote at 10:59 p.m. on the VF Facebook wall: "oh I feel bad for the guy! hope they let the guy keep his job or extend the deadline...Go Bill!"

Steve wrote at 12:40 a.m. "just making sure the guy doesn't lose his job."

Bill is getting desperate. He recently pleaded with sweaty tourists and onlookers in New York’s Times Square for help. Covering his front and back with a sandwich ad board of the latest issue of Vanity Fair with Angelina Jolie, Bill tried to make new friends.

Bill went with the free walking ad campaign as compared to what would be $125,000 to run an ad for eight minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, on the jumbo screen in Times Square. (He did check into it but “was in no position to buy.”)

But the latest PR move doesn’t appear too successful. Watch the video here.

The all-important gossip site Gawker even picked it up.

So what if Bill loses his job? He’s young and obviously smart since he landed some writing on the Vanity Fair Web site. And he’ll have a good story to tell.

Do you think Bradley's PR stunt will work? August 5 isn't far off... he welcomes any ideas of “how I can be more lame and attract more fans.” After all, he says, “the job you save could be mine.”

After 19-years the Exxon Valdez oil spill is back in the news thanks to a precedent-setting case by the US Supreme Court. That gives us an excellent opportunity to check what edits the Exxon Mobile Corporation has made to the Wikipedia entry about the spill.

That’s right, Wiki Scanner, a no frills Web site some genius hacker kid invented last year, makes it possible to learn who is editing Wikipedia entries.

So if you plug “Exxon Valdez oil spill” into Wiki Scanner you learn that someone using an IP address registered to Exxon Mobile Corp. in Houston made three of the 501 edits to this Wikipedia page.

Quick side note: Nothing in Wiki Scanner indicates Exxon’s PR team made these changes as part of an organized campaign. In fact, it’s unclear if an actual Exxon employee made the edits. Of course, circumstantial evidence, ahem, IP addresses, suggests otherwise.

Also, the entries are pretty raw on Wiki Scanner. For instance, there are double brackets surrounding certain words or terms. I think it has something to do with HTML code; I eliminated those brackets to make it an easier read.

Now, onto the edits, all three were made on December 29, 2004, between 9:38 pm and 10:22, from the same Exxon Mobile IP address.

Someone first added this paragraph to the Wikipedia entry on “Exxon Valdez oil spill”:
“The plaintiffs' attorneys in the still-pending suit have not hesitated to seek appeals and delays in this case when they believed it was to their advantage to do so. These attorneys, many of whom do not live in the state and have not made any contributions to the quality of life in Alaska, stand to make an enormous windfall off the Valdez accident if the punitive damage award is upheld.”

And then moved this sentence, which was already there, below the bit about those greedy lawyers: “In 1991, following the collapse of the local biology/marine population (particularly clams, herring, and seals) the Chugach Native American group went bankrupt.”

Don’t know what’s true or false here—it is Wikipedia after all—but pitting your company, which allegedly destroyed marine life and bankrupt an entire Native American group, against some money-grubbing lawyers is a fairly shrewd move.

The second edit came about 20 minutes later, when someone inserted the word “alleged” into the above sentence. It then read “… the alleged collapse of…”

Another 20 minutes later someone decided to change that paragraph altogether. It became: “Following a series of bad luck and poor investments, the Chugach Native Corporation went bankrupt, partially as a result of Exxon Valdez' impact on the local herring population.”

Is your head spinning? Well just wait, you have yet to read the coup de gras. The imaginative editor took this paragraph:

“The long-term effects of the oil spill have been studied. Thousands of animals perished immediately, the best estimates are: 250,000 sea birds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 orcas, and billions of salmon and herring eggs. Though even as soon as a year later, one had to look carefully on most beaches to find any evidence of the spill. In the long term, declines have been observed in various marine populations, including stunted growth and indirect mortality increases in pink salmon populations. Sea otters and ducks also showed higher death rates years later, partly because they ate contaminated invertebrates. The animals also were exposed to oil when they dug up their prey in tainted soil.”

And turned it into this:

“Peer-reveiwed [sic] studies conducted by hundreds of scientists have confirmed that there has been no long-term severe impact to the Prince William Sound ecosystem. Thousands of species in Prince William Sound were never affected by the spill in the first place, or recovered quickly after the initial impact. As an example, six of the largest salmon harvests in history were recorded in the decade immediately following the spill.”

Don’t barf just yet, this Exxon IP address wasn’t done. He or she took this brief paragraph: “Researchers said some shoreline habitats, such as contaminated mussel beds, could take up to 30 years to recover.” And deleted it.

So there you go. Social media! Helping you delete history one Wikipedia entry at a time.
All of those entries were discovered and changed—if those changes are true is anyone’s guess.

Has there been a comedian more closely aligned with the sympathies of the business communicator than George Carlin?

He’s the man who riffed on “soft language” and the words you can’t say on TV. The guy who ditched a jacket and tie for jeans and the freedom to say whatever he wanted; the kind of freedom we writers and editors, trapped in nine-to-five slogs, yearn for.

By now you know he’s dead. And maybe you remember him as that bitter old-timer who did an annual HBO special; his most recent standup routines bordered on homicidal.

But the way he dissected language and its pretension was brilliant. Early on there was his “seven words you can’t say on TV” bit; words I won’t include, because, well, they will probably offend. But, as Carlin pointed out, the strange thing about language is …

“We have more words to describe dirty words than we actually have dirty words. They call them bad words, dirty, filthy, foul, vile, vulgar, course, in poor taste, unseemly, street talk, gutter talk, locker room language, barracks talk, bawdy, naughty, saucy, raunchy, rude, crude, lewd, lascivious, indecent, profane, obscene, blue, off-color, risqué, suggestive, cursin’, cussin’, swearin’ …”

Carlin was unrelenting about language. He commented on the hypocrisy of language. For instance, Carlin riffed that TV is full of sex humor. Television shows are constantly referring to it, he said. Entire plots and games shows are based on sex, and yet the word F*** can’t be said on television.

By the ‘90s Carlin riffed on impotent language, the “soft language, the language that takes the life out of life,” he would say. “Sometime during my life toilet paper became bathroom tissue ...” He observed. “Poor people used to live in slums, now the economically disadvantaged occupy substandard housing in the inner cities.

“They’re broke! They don’t have a negative cash flow position. They’re f***** broke! Because some of them were fired. You know, fired? Management wanted to curtail redundancies in the HR area so many people are no longer viable members of the work force.

“Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal its sins.”

His last truly great standup special from beginning to end aired in autumn 2001. The highlight was his closing bit, a revision of the Ten Commandments. Like a great editor, Carlin managed to trim ten commandments to two. They became:

“Thou shall always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nooky; and I shall try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you pray to.”

I watched that special with my dad, a devout Catholic and unapologetic Carlin fan; he laughed himself to tears.

But it was Carlin’s bits on language that remain some of his most amusing and insightful. Even the words masking the stigma of death were no match for his irreverent wit, as evident in this bit from the ‘90s:

“The one I do resist is when they look at an old guy and they say, ‘Look at him, he’s 90-years-young. Imagine the fear of aging that reveals to not even be able to use the word ‘old’ to describe someone, to have to use the antonym.

“And fear of aging is natural. It’s universal. We all have that. No one wants to get old, no one wants to die, but we do—so we bullshit ourselves. I started bullshitting myself when I got to my 40s. As soon as I was in my 40s I would look in the mirror and say, ‘Well, I guess I’m getting … older.’ Older sounds a little better than old, doesn’t it? Sounds like it might even last a little bit longer.

“Bullshit! I’m getting old. And it’s OK, because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die … I’ll pass away.”

Meanwhile, across the Internet you’ll find obits and tributes to Carlin that say, you guessed it, “Carlin passed away …”

Take this so-called tribute: “I woke up on this gloomy Monday morning here in New York to the sad news that legendary comedian George Carlin had passed away last night at the age of 71.”

Oh, the fun Carlin would have with that.

OK, I've had it with the green movement.

I really can't stand it anymore. If I see or hear one more silly tip on how I can save the planet, I'm going to spend every last dollar I have and buy a Hummer.

And this is coming from a card-carrying member of the Liberal Media Elite (see earlier post)!

I have been a rabid environmentalist all of my life. Al Gore is my hero. I am in favor of $10 a gallon gasoline. My head pops off whenever I hear some oil industry lobbyist talk about getting their greedy hands on the Arctic wildlife refuge. On almost every major environmental issue you can think of, I am on the side of Greenpeace.

But the green lifestyle fanatics have pushed me over the edge. And I am not alone. There are signs that consumers have had enough with green marketing and PR campaigns. This has huge ramifications for the PR industry, which has counseled its clients to look in every nook and cranny of their organization to find something ---anything---that will reveal their green-ness. As companies have raced to tell the world of their newfound passion for the planet, these well-intentioned campaigns have had the opposite effect: People are tuning out the messages and showing widespread impatience with a confusing torrent of contradictory advice.

So widespread is this consumer vertigo that there is now a name for it: "green noise."

Everywhere we turn today there is a to-do list. Stop using disposable diapers. Don't drink bottled water. Support the bio-fuels industry, buy only organic clothes, grow your own vegetables, purchase food from local farmers only and stop driving that gas-guzzling SUV. I passed the newsstand the other day and saw this headline: "Is your pet 'green?'"

The problem that much of the advice is contradictory.

Just when you decided to buy that gas-sipping Prius, your best friend tells you that it would be better to snatch up a used car because the energy used to make a new car does more damage to the environment than the fuel-hogging 1979 Volvo.

Just when you decided to support those heroic farmers who grow corn for ethanol, you learn that you are now responsible for world hunger. And forget about buying those grass-fed, free ranging, yoga practicing chickens. The fuel it took to truck them to your farmers market in downtown Chicago did more to hurt the planet than those nasty, immoral chickens produced by the agribusiness down the road.

The problem, as The New York Times pointed out in an excellent story Sunday, is that much of the advice we're getting is contradictory and even damaging. Because it is so pervasive, so self-righteous and so utterly demanding in its tone, it creates a sense of helplessness among the consumers its targeting.

People literally throw up their hands and say, "look, I love our planet, I want to help, but I don't have the time to compost my own poop!"

f you think I'm alone in my frustration, consider this study from the Shelton group, a Knoxville-based advertising agency and marketing firm. In 2007, consumers surveyed by the company were between 22 and 55 percent less likely to buy green products than the year before.

“What we’ve been seeing in focus groups is a real green backlash,” Suzanne C. Shelton, the company’s president, told the New York Times. Consumers are literally rolling their eyes when Shelton's firm screens new green advertising themes, as if to say, "not another green message."

You know you have a problem when the Sierra Club begins worrying about message overload.

The true solution to climate change lies in public policy and massive shifts in economic energy inducements, the kind of sea-changes that can only be brought about by government initiatives, tax policy, public consensus and market-based solutions.

Consider this one fact:

Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles in May of 2008 when compared to the same month last year---11 billion fewer miles!---and all because of rising fuel costs.

All the poop composts and green pets in the world won't do as much for the environment as a $1 hike at the pump.

So let's all ease back on the green throttle and do our part to reduce "green noise" pollution.

That crunching sound you're hearing in the distance is the sound of the information gravy train grinding to halt, or at least slowing down.

In a move that sent the blogosphere into shrieks of anger yesterday, the venerable Associated Press announced its intention to challenge the posting of its copyrighted material on blogs and Web sites.

While the A.P. backed off its strong words after a firestorm erupted in the blogosphere, it stuck by its pledge to challenge what it believes is the unfair use of its content on the Internet.

In a story reported by The New York Times, the wire service announced that it will "for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites and excerpt without infringing on the A.P.'s copyright."

This has enormous implications for Web publishing industry. For years, bloggers and small Web publishers have freely used copyrighted material from the A.P., The New York Times, and every other news organization without fear of legal action.

It is not much of a stretch to say that thousands of bloggers---including PR Junkie--feast off the Internet's seemingly endless supply of news.

The firestorm began last week when the wire service fired off a letter to the Drudge Retort, a left-leaning parody of the more famous Drudge Report, demanding that it take down seven posts carrying quotations from its work. The excerpts ranged from 39 to 79 words.

After bloggers screamed in protest, posting dozens of commentaries attacking A.P., the wire service backed off, saying it would regroup to fight the battle another day with a more well defined policy.

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P. explained in an interview. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

You can bet that the A.P. is silently being cheered on by the 1,500 newspapers that make up the news cooperative. Indeed, one wonders why it took the wire service so long to challenge the free use of its content.

Free information has been the oxygen supply allowing low-cost web sites to exist. Without it, bloggers would have far less material to publish and comment upon.

Some news sites in the PR industry rely almost entirely on mainstream news organizations for their own news bulletins. Bulldog Reporter and its Daily Dog is a case in point. Every morning, The Daily Dog is sent to thousands of readers hungry for news on the PR and media relations industry. But much of the content in the Daily Dog actually comes from a technique known as "covering the coverage." Writers simply paraphrase or summarize mainstream press reports, being careful to attribute their information to the AP or The Wall Street Journal. The AP wants to challenge that practice for obvious reasons: These organizations are making money off their content.

Web site publishers argue that their use of mainstream news sources falls into the doctrine of "fair use," an age-old legal principle that allows publishers to excerpt small passages of copyrighted material to make an argument. The classic example of fair use cited by most lawyers is the book reviewer who quotes from a novel he or she is reviewing to give readers a sense of the work.

Whether the fair use doctrine will shield bloggers and small web publishers from challenges by the A.P. will be decided if and when a case goes to court.

In the meantime, bloggers are right to worry about their information gravy train toppling over.

It's time for the crisis folks at the NBA to earn their keep.

Let's consider the nightmare that unfolded last Tuesday:

A referee tells the world that some of his colleagues bet on playoff games and tampered with outcomes. What do you do? If you're NBA commissioner David Stern, you attempt to run out the clock by hoping the finals will overwhelm the bad news.

Who is advising this man?

We liked an analysis we saw in the Sacramento Bee on Friday.

John Segale, head of Precision Public Relations, told the newspaper that Stern did the right thing by denying Tim Donaghy's allegations personally before the press. But the commissioner didn't go far enough.

“He’s attacking (Donaghy), but he’s not providing any solutions,” Segale said. Worse yet, he's resorted to the bush league tactic of attacking the media, which is almost always a sure sign of desperation.

"He's blaming sports talk radio, the bloggers, sports writers and the general media who may not understand the nuances of pro sports," says Segale. "And he's failed to understand or chosen to ignore the power of the Web to keep the story alive."

Finally, Stern's apparent strategy of hoping the crisis will be overshadowed by the finals is simply not working.

"Every time that whistle is blown, every time a replayed foul is shown, people are going to wonder about these accusations," says Segale. "So what was a dream championship matchup a week ago is becoming a microscope for all that's good and all that's bad about the league.

"A week ago people were focused on the teams' performances. Now we're looking at the professionalism of the refs and their impact on the game."

Segale's recommendation:

Do something now. Example: Announce the creation of a commission to regulate the refs. Or, he could announce that owners will soon meet to discuss ways to raise standards even higher.

Stop baiting the press. When you put yourself above the media, reporters become even more determined to bring you down.

Says Segale: "You've got to be careful in how you relate to the media because you may invite far more scrutiny than you deserve. If you insist that you're above reproach, the media will test the claim."

'...the media will test the claim."

Never a truer phrase has been uttered about crisis PR. There are probably a million examples of this truth, but my favorite comes from the world of politics. Remember former Colorado Senator Gary Hart?

In 1987, Hart ran for President again and was leading in most polls when, at a press conference, a reporter asked about allegations of marital infidelity, which had been whispered for months.

Hart replied: "Follow me around, I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored".

A few weeks later, The Miami Herald put a tail on Hart and it introduced the world to a woman by the name of Donna Rice. End of campaign.

So yes...fight the allegations but never, ever invite further inquiry.

How do you handle lies and rumors about your organization? Do you have a strategy when gossip appears in the blogosphere? What do you do when rumors circulate about layoffs or about the CEO having an affair?

Rumors have always been around. But in the age of social media, they have become far more pernicious. A tiny bit of gossip can begin as a spark on an unknown blog and spread within hours to the mainstream media, creating a public relations wildfire that can do real damage to your organization or client.

In politics, the rumor and lying mill has destroyed candidacies. During his first presidential race, allies of President Bush spread rumors that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child---a lie that some believe cost McCain the important South Carolina primary.

Now comes the rumor that Michelle Obama once used the word "whitey" to disparage Obama's critics during the Jeremy Wright controversy. Rather than ignore these rumors, Obama's team has launched a Web site called fightthesmears.com.

Here's what the presumptive Democratic nominee said in the hours leading up the launch of the site:

"We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails, and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it. That gives legs to the story."

It's a profoundly simple site, as it should be. Lies are displayed on the home page, followed by "facts." To boost the campaign's side of the story, the Web site offers links to conservative bloggers who have also dispelled the rumor.

The most grabby section of fightthesmears.com is entitled, "Who's behind the lies." Here, Obama's truth squad attempts to trace the origin of the rumor.

As the site explains, the rumored "whitey" video tape appears to be a work of fiction lifted "almost word for word from a novel published in 2006."

Fightthesmears.com could become the model for crisis PR practitioners looking for innovative ways to fight the rumor mill both inside and outside an organization.

It's worth checking out.

With the price of gasoline topping $4 a gallon, is it any wonder the GM is looking for ways to show angry consumers that it's going green?

The car company announced this week that it will begin a new advertising campaign announcing its breakup with "Big Oil."

The campaign consists of a televised Dear John letter to the oil companies:

"We’ve had this great relationship for many years," the letter states. "We think we will both be a lot happier and healthier if we see less of each other."

The McCann-Erickson creation will appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 22, Katherine Benoit, corporate marketing director at GM told a group at the American Advertising Federation meeting, Advertising Age reported.

Does spending thousands of dollars to create a clever PR campaign mean GM is serious about going green? Will a "Dear John" letter to Big Oil help convince disgruntled motorists that this environmental push is for real?

Everyone wants to be seen as green these days, but green strategies can backfire if there is nothing real to the claim. There in lies the problem: GM has no real alternative to gas-guzzling vehicles, at least an alternative that has gone mainstream.

If Toyota had launched the Dear John letter and signed it "yours truly, Prius," the campaign would make more sense.

Hillary Clinton's former spinmaster-in-chief is now trying to spin his way out of his new designation by the media: Loser.

This is made all the more interesting because Mark Penn is the worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller. If anyone should know how to rehabilitate himself, it should be this PR kingpin.

But alas, the spin is not very good and will be demolished in the punditocracy.

Penn is falling back on the classic excuse for losing a national presidential campaign: It wasn't the message, he writes in an op-ed piece for The New York Times, it was the money.

Listen in:

While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.

Sounds good until you consider that Clinton won key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Indiana---states where she was outspent by Obama by 2 to 1.

Penn may want to try another line of reasoning. There are many of them:.

Clinton lost because voters want someone with a last name other than Bush and Clinton in the White House.

Clinton lost because her husband kept having temper tantrums, distracting the media from her message.

Clinton lost because voters were fed up with her thinly disguised references to race.

The problem with all of the above is that it doesn't serve Penn's purposes; namely, to reclaim his place in the political world as Grand Political Visionary and Maker of the Message.

Is Bill O'Reilly's demise just around the corner? Is the man finally losing it?

Readers of PR Junkie will remember the video clip we aired recently showing a crazed O'Reilly verbally beating up his camera crew because the teleprompter wasn't exactly how he wanted it.

Now comes this video showing an O'Reilly producer confronting liberal journalist and commentator Bill Moyers at a media event. I think you'll agree that Moyers left un-bloodied while O'Reilly's reputation suffered yet another blow.

Here's the set up:

Bill Moyers invited O'Reilly on his show for 60 minutes of unedited conversation. O'Reilly countered with an offer to Moyers, who was justifiably concerned. After all, most O'Reilly "interviews" consist of the Fox News commentator bludgeoning his liberal guests.

In an attempt to ambush Moyers on camera, O'Reilly dispatched a producer to confront the newsman at the National Conference for Media Reform. The tactic backfired when Moyers refused to run and hide, taking the producer on in front of a gawking crowd of bystanders.

But what happened next was even sweeter. The producer got a taste of his own medicine. His interview done, he tried to leave the conference center but was blocked at every turn by a reporter and a camera crew who ambushed him, demanding to know whether O'Reilly considered the Moyer's confrontation "real journalism."

The whole thing is on---where else?---YouTube.

Take a look at this video from The Uptake, a citizens journalism site with the wonderful subtitle, "Will journalism be done by you or to you?"

And make sure you watch this video to the brutal end......

Enjoy.

In yesterday's PR Junkie we talked about the rampant fear that exists among PR and media relations practitioners in the age of social media. We noted how companies are turning down interviews with reporters even when the stories would put their organizations in a favorable light.

Then we thought of the case of Mayhill Fowler and her interview with Bill Clinton.

Fowler is the 61-year-old blogger for the Huffington Post who asked Bill Clinton a leading question about a critical story about him in Vanity Affair. In her question, Fowler characterized the article as a “hatchet job” with the obvious intention of leading the former president to believe she was an ally. He took the bait and immediately slammed Vanity Affair reporter Todd Purdum for being “slimy” and a “scumbag.”

"[He's] sleazy," Clinton said about Purdum. "He's a really dishonest reporter. And one of our guys talked to him . . . And I haven't read [the article]. But he told me there's five or six just blatant lies in there. But he's a real slimy guy.”

Little did Clinton know that those comments would appear online, adding to the long-running story about the former president's issues with anger and stoking the controversy over whether he has been a help or hindrance to his wife's campaign. The president didn't know because Fowler didn't tell him.

This isn’t the first time Mayhill has pulled this stunt. A few months ago she reported Barack Obama’s comments from a closed fundraiser.

So what do we all think of this new "citizen journalism?' Will the Mayhills of the blogging world lead to more paranoia, more turn downs for interviews? How will your clients distinguish between a private conversation and an ambush from a blogger?

If you think Mayhill is an isolated case, then think again. She’s one of 2,500 people who work with Off the Bus. The project gives every day people like Mayhill the opportunity to cover the race to the White House. Arianna Huffington says “they’re not part of the professional gaggle, they can come up with their own views of what’s happening, which may be different from what the conventional wisdom is saying.”

Will the escapades of citizen journalists affect your clients' perception of the media? Will it ever feel safe again to agree to an interview?

Do you work for a company that is always running scared? If you're a typical reader of Ragan.com, the answer is probably a resounding yes. Sure there are a handful of exceptions, but most companies seemed frightened out of their wits.

This irrational fear of everything is at the heart of all bad communication, and it's why many Ragan readers are so miserable. You can't say anything clearly and with conviction if you're terrified that your words will come back to bite you.

This fear has always been at the heart of bad communication, but it's getting worse. It's getting so bad that companies now fear good news. Companies are actually refusing to cooperate with Ragan reporters on stories that are intended to praise their work.

Here is a recent conversation between one of my writers and the director of PR for a very large company based in the Midwest:

Reporter: We'd like to do a story praising the work of the writers on your communication staff.

PR Dir: Well, I don't know. What exactly do you mean?

Reporter: Uhhh..we really like the work you're doing with your employee publication, and we'd like to tell the world about it. Your communicators are really putting out some good stuff.

PR Director: I don't know about this. I am going to have to run this up the flagpole, and I'm not sure I'll get approval. Call me back tomorrow.

(Tomorrow)

Reporter: Hi, it's me again. We're you able to get approval on that story.

PR Director: I'm still working on it. People are a bit concerned about what the story is going to say.

Reporter: The story is about the great job your communicators are doing with the employee publication. The redesign is terrific. The writing has improved. We love it!

PR Director: Hmmm...Can you give me some examples of the questions you would ask in the interview.

Reporter: OK...let me see. How did you get to be so good?

After three days of negotiations, the company agreed to an interview and the story ran.
Now, if it's this difficult getting approval for a story praising your organization, one can only imagine what it's like when the same organization faces a media relations crisis.

Why have things gotten so out of hand? Why are companies so openly paranoid?

The fear of being burned by the media has always been around, but in the age of social media the possibilities for a PR disaster have skyrocketed.

One need only consider the recent Rachael Ray controversy to understand the rampant fear running through today's corporate communications departments. A woman wears a scarf that resembles the headdress worn by Yasser Arafat and all hell breaks loose in the blogosphere.

Social media and the Web have robbed companies of control over the message. Today a CEO
can say something outrageous during a town hall meeting with employees, and tomorrow it could be on You Tube.

Is it any wonder that conversations between reporters and PR directors have come to resemble something from Alice in Wonderland?

Oops, she did it again.

MSNBC’s gossip reporter, who writes “The Scoop” column for the cable news channel’s Web site, created yet another PR nightmare with her big mouth.

Courtney Hazlett’s latest goof comes a few months after she referred to actor Heath Ledger’s death as almost a “dress rehearsal" for Owen Wilson.

Hazlett decided to take on Spike Lee this time.

On the cable channel’s Morning Joe show, Hazlett described Spike Lee as having gotten "real uppity" in his fight with Clint Eastwood about the racial makeup of the director's films.

The online dictionary Merriam-Webster defines ‘uppity,’ as arrogant and presumptuous. But the word has racial overtones as well. Blacks have often been described by white racists as being "uppity" if they asserted their rights to vote, sit at a lunch counter or ride in the front of the bus,

The uppity remark rang the crisis communications alarm bell at MSNBC’s PR department.

MSNBC'S PR team quickly released a statement from Hazlett to smooth the ruffled feathers.

“Today on 'Morning Joe' I chose my words poorly in describing the relationship between Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee. I take my responsibilities as a journalist seriously and know that words can have a strong impact. I sincerely apologize to Spike Lee and to the viewers for my comments,” Hazlett said in a statement.

Despite her horrible choice of words, one wonders whether formal apologies in the age of social media just make matters worse. Millions of people who would otherwise have been blissfully ignorant of the entire escapade now know about the comments because of the apology.

Trotting out apologies seems to be a weekly occurrence in corporate PR. Witness last week's Dunkin'' Donuts and Rachael Ray paisley scarf fiasco. With a 24/7 blogosphere hungry for anything to write about, does an apology just extend the life of a mistake?

There's hardly a day that goes by that I don't watch a clip from Jon Stewart's Daily Show.

I began this habit years ago after listening to a lecture on The Daily Show's influence with Generation Y. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who in my mind is the country's foremost expert on communication trends, had done a study showing that a rising percentage of young people get much of their news from Stewart's 30-minute parodies. The comedian's mix of news and comedy matched well with the post-Boomer generations' upbringing in a culture steeped in irony.

While all generations from the Boomers on have been weaned on television, the messages beamed into our living rooms every night were profoundly different. The Boomers had the Waltons and The Dick Van Dyke Show, weekly reinforcements of the American myth of goodness, charity and middle-class happiness and stability. The generations that followed mine were presented with Homer Simpson and Seinfeld, South Beach and now reality television---deeply ironic shows that refuse to bow to someone's vision of what our culture ought to be like and instead told us what it is.

None of this could have happened if we didn't also live in the Culture of Bullshit. We are so accustomed to being spun by politicians, lobbyists, news commentators and celebrities that the blurring of the truth is something we accept as normal. We're so weary of the lies that we don't really even hear them anymore.

My generation tuned into Walter Cronkite every evening, a man who would have submitted to the tortures of the rack before he would have expressed a personal opinion. So legendary was his commitment to journalistic neutrality that his one foray into personal expression---his famous commentary suggesting that the Vietnam War may not be winnable---is credited by historians with turning the middle-class against the war.

Last night I watched Stewart's side-splitting comparison of the speeches delivered by Barack Obama and John McCain after Tuesday's Democratic primaries. I came to Stewart's clip after watching 24 hours of commentary on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and CBS.

Of all the analysis on all the news programs, none nailed it as completely as The Daily Show. By tapping into the culture of Irony, where nothing is what it seems, Stewart has become the real truth teller. His show actually awakens from its slumber what we reporters once called our "bullshit meters," that intuitive sense that we all have when confronted with fakery. It's no wonder that Generation Y gets most of its news from Stewart.

In a world of spin, one comes to trust anyone---even a comedian---with the magical ability to pull back the veil.

I collect escape clauses. These are the hackneyed excuses used by politicians and their brilliant tacticians whenever they're nailed for being stupid, dangerous or both. We hear these phrases so often that we don't actually consider their literal meaning anymore.

Let's take the example of Mark Penn, the worldwide chief executive of Burson-Marsteller and the latest symbol of PR decadence.

Like Karl Rove and many other political strategists, Penn had become a celebrity in the political world. Reporters crowned him as a visionary for his work in targeting miniscule voting blocs for Hillary Clinton.

Then the law of hubris set in. One day Penn was perched on top of the world, whispering in the king's ear. The next minute he's in the tower awaiting execution.

Penn lost his place as grand strategist for Hillary when he was nailed for meeting with Colombian officials to help lobby for a trade deal that Clinton opposed.

In an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, Penn dusted off one of my favorite escape clauses.

"With the benefit of hindsight," he said of his work for Burson-Marsteller. "I would have done things differently."

What does this really mean? How could Penn have not known what was in store for him? Did he really think that Clinton could tolerate her top strategist contradicting a very visible campaign pledge?

What he really meant to say is, "if I had known I would be nailed, I wouldn't have done it."

All of this reminds me of that great garage scene in All The President's Men. Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat lets a young and naive Bob Woodward in on a secret about the power-brokers surrounding Richard Nixon.

"Look, forget the myths the media's created about the White House--the truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

Earlier this week we wondered why PR writing is so horrible. Well, sometimes the pitch can be even worse. Thanks to our friends at the Bad Pitch blog for bringing yet another embarrassing press release to light.

Here it is in all its glory:

Subject line: Mailing Services are a hot trend for printers
Body: Hello! Could you run this in your publication.

Thank,
Celeste

Bad Pitch reports that Celeste CC’d about 90 media outlets. And to make matters worse, she didn’t blind copy them so everyone could see who was on the pitch e-mail. I don't think this pitch will land above the fold of tomorrow's New York Times but still, definitely a big no-no in the PR world.

Celeste, thanks for this gem of a pitch. Or should I say 'thank?'

The full text of the release:

Mailing Services are a hot trend for printers
LOCATION - DATE – CLIENT, known for traditional offset printing continues to grow their business through diversification strategies. Today the company announced the opening of their new mailing and fulfillment division. The new division is fully staffed and operating with state of the art equipment in a dedicated 12,000 sq. ft area.

The complexity of the continually changing U.S. Postal Service (USPS) regulations can make any printer think twice about getting involved in offering mailing services. However, adding mailing services is a hot trend for printers right now as a value-add for customers.
“In the past, providing a one stop resource for our clients was a goal. Today it’s an achievement” says NAME, president of CLIENT. The company is now able to deliver every aspect of projects, saving their clients the hassle of coordinating multiple vendors while improving quality, turnaround times and reducing costly delays.

CLIENT is a privately owned and operated full-service FSC Certified print communications company located in CITY STATE. The companies comprehensive communication services include offset, digital and variable data printing, Personalized web sites (pURL’s), prepress, finishing, inventory, fulfillment programs and mailing services. CLIENT prides itself with a reputation of continually providing their clients with creative solutions, cutting-edge technology and a committed support staff.

Now for the hard part: What to do with Hillary.

I have a question for all of you PR Junkies reading this. If you were part of Obama's inner circle, how would you handle this powder keg of an issue? If you were Communications Director, what would you advise?

But first let's review the game.

The long national nightmare is indeed over. The Democratic primaries, which now seem longer than the NBA playoffs, have come to a historic end. Barack Obama will be the first Black man ever to run for president.

Barack, take a few minutes off and enjoy the splendor of it all.....

Done? Good, now it's time to grapple with the Hillary question.

Like her husband, Hillary Clinton has this annoying tendency of never going away. And this could become a PR and media disaster for Obama if he doesn't handle her the exact right way. This newly victorious and articulate leader of the Democratic Party is one misstep away from alienating Hillary supporters. One soundbite, one ill-chosen phrase could unleash a civil war between the two camps.

Obama took the first step last night toward reconciliation by devoting a huge chunk of his victory speech to Clinton.

His homage to her was so persuasive, so all-encompassing that one wanted to rush out and add a Hillary Clinton statue to the National Mall in Washington.

Unfortunately, this will not be enough.

In a move that my PR friend Fraser Seitel descirbed to Fox News last night as "blatant chutzpah," Clinton told a group of lawmakers that yes, she would accept Obama's offer of the VP slot. By doing this, Clinton made sure that Obama would not enjoy his spotlight alone. By squeezing the vice presidential question into the news before the primary results from South Dakota and Montana were in, Clinton stepped into that circle of light. And believe me, she's not going away.

So what does Obama do now?

If he chooses Clinton as his vice presidential running mate, he must live with a candidate whose ego is so large and whose presence is so big that Obama runs the risk of being overshadowed. Is it possible for Hillary to take a subservient role here?

Then there's the very real political question involving the one word Obama pounded into our heads since Iowa: Change. How are you the candidate for change if you're putting the one person on the ticket who represents the old way.

“It’s backward looking to pick a Clinton at this point — and he’s all about forward looking, to being about change,” Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic organization to The New York Times this morning. “He’s all about a fundamentally new kind of politics. Picking a Clinton is by definition backward looking, and I just don’t think he wants that.”

Then there's the bizarre question of what to do about Bill. If you're having a difficult time grasping the enormity of this question, then imagine Bill Clinton in the vice presidential mansion with nothing to do.

Better hide the china because something's gonna break.

Will Scott McClellan's book tour and his perceived betrayal of Bush condemn an already feeble White House press corps to an even leaner diet of spoon-fed news?

It's a question I never considered until now because I have been too busy loathing the former press secretary.

Being the publicity hound that he is, I am certain Scott subscribes to Google alerts. So here is my open plea to the man: I beg you to go away. Stop going on late-night talk shows, responding to media inquiries and feasting at the buffet of all-you-can-eat free PR.

You’ve had a good run. You stirred up reporters, the White House and the PR community. Now it's time to head for the speaking circuit along with your former White House bretheran. If you hadn't burned the Bush bridges, you could have joined Karl Rove at Fox News, but I don't think that's in the cards now.

So exactly how does McClellan's book damage future White House press relations?

Members of the White House press corps say it’s likely to cut down on the little information currently doled out to reporters. “This might put some distance between the president and the press secretary,” veteran Associated Press White House correspondent Terence Hunt told Editor & Publisher.

Others predict more tension in the West Wing. “Any time something like this happens, it places a greater burden on the White House press secretary and the White House Press Corps,” said Chicago Tribune bureau chief Michael Tackett.

To understand what Tackett is talking about, you must first understand what it's like to cover the White House. My colleague Mark Ragan did this for several years as a political reporter for Copley News Service in Washington.

"It's kind of like waiting in a crowded cafeteria for food to be served," he told me. "Every once in a while the door opens and the press secretary walks in with a few Lean Cuisines for a starved room packed with salivating reporters.

"If that press secretary isn't trusted by the president's inner circle, you starve to death."

McClellan's confessional book will now throw up even more barriers between the Karl Roves of the world, those powerful few who control the President's airspace, and the press secretaries who deliver the news.

So come on, Scott. Have a heart. Please go away.

If this were the 18th century, they'd be meeting in a field at dawn with their single-shot pistols drawn and accompanied by their seconds. But we live in the Internet age, so the duel being played out by the Public Relations Society of America and CBS Sunday morning is happening on the Web, and it's a doozy.

For those of you who've been napping in a cave somewhere, here's the background:

In a commentary Sunday about Scott McClellan's tell-all book about the Bush White House, CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen condemned the PR industry as being made up of liars, cheats and frauds.

The code, said Cohen, "strikes me as if the Burglars Association of America had as its creed "Thou Shalt Not Steal. Show me a PR person who is "accurate" and "truthful," and I'll show you a PR person who is unemployed."

Cohen's artful jeremiad came complete with every explosive and insulting word one would use to prick on an opponent, including the sweeping statement that PR people are trained to be "slickly untruthful.

"During the time it took me to write this essay I'll bet dozens of PR people blatantly lied to their audiences, despite the presence of proclamations declaring that they should not, " Cohen continued.

The PRSA struck back with its own letter, sent to CBS and e-mailed to all of its members.

“Truth and accuracy are the bread and butter of the public relations profession,” PRSA’s CEO Jeffrey Julin wrote in a statement issued after Cohen’s commentary. And not having a PR job “is reserved for the professional who has lost his or her credibility.”

The battle raged on Monday as PRSA members flooded the Sunday Morning Web site with letters condemning Cohen, who issued a bizarre statement that began with a burst of new insults before winding down to a nonapology apology for condemning an entire industry.

Though Cohen was clearly using strong language to draw a crowd, his commentary raises two fundamental questions:

Is the very nature of the profession one of deceit, or is it possible to represent a bad client without becoming bad yourself?

Even if it is possible to maintain individual honesty as a PR professional, is a "code of ethics" just a silly attempt to provide cover to those who can't?

Here is a link to the Cohen commentary that ignited this war of words:

Every once in a while I'll sit down with a jug of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Advil and dig through old press releases to see if PR agencies have learned how to write.

Of course you know the answer. Was it ever in doubt? Bad writing among PR agencies is the one thing in this world we can count on. Ice caps may melt. Sunnis and Shia may one day make peace. And Hillary Clinton may one day stop running for president. But PR agencies will continue to bill their hapless clients for thousands of press releases that no one on the planet could possibly comprehend.

As my colleague Jim Ylisela likes to say, PR writing is so horribly consistent that agencies even have a template for it. It goes something like this:

name of company, the leading solutions provider for the name of industry announces the appointment, purchase of, merger, etc of name of another company, the leading provider of name of product or service

The template also offers a column of buzzwords for these college grads to use when pumping out press releases. You simply highlight the word with your cursor, hit "enter" and the word is inserted into various spots throughout the release. The column includes all of the old standbys, including our friends "Thought Leadership" (in all caps of course); "connectivity", "global", "forward thinking', "vision', "strategic", "influencers."

There is a reason for the template, of course. None of the kids hired by the agencies and billed out at $150 an hour have the slightest idea what they're writing about. They don't understand the product or the client. They have no background in the industry, and they never learned how to write in college.

Let's take a look at this press release from Ruder Finn to see if it follows the above template.

CHICAGO, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Ruder Finn, Inc., a leading independent
full-service global communications agency, today announced that it has been
appointed global PR agency for Alterian, plc -- the leading global
enterprise marketing platform provider.

Of course the template is there in all of its glory, as it is with six out of 10 press releases I came across during my whiskey-aided research.

So here's my question: Why do corporations continue to hire these agencies? Why do they continue to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on releases that no reporter will ever read, no media outlet will ever pick up? Is there no one at the client office that sees what we see?

Please explain this to us. We at PR Junkie are eager to learn. And while you're at it, we're collecting a list of new buzzwords to add to the template. We'd love to see your contributions.

I heard a new one the other day for layoffs:

"employee surplus management"

OK, your turn.....