June 8, 2004

After last week's MCN column about the 10 Ways To Get Journalists To Be Suspicious Of Your Movie and yesterday's aggravating pieces from major outlets, I decided to do another list.

10 FASTEST WAYS FOR JOURNALISTS
TO PISS OFF MOVIE PUBLICISTS

10. DON'T WRITE WHAT THEY WANT
This is one of the least effective ways to enrage a publicist because whether you know it or not, they expect it. Sure, they would rather be the entity that can control journalists with the power of mind control. But for the most part, they seem to know who they can play and how hard they can play them. Publicists are smart. Sometimes evil. Sometimes good. But almost always very smart. After all, they survived being assistants and junior publicists.

9. DON'T REPORT THE SPIN
This may been like a repeat of #10, but it's not. Publicists work on the perfect spin, not expecting many writers to swallow it whole, but at the very least, writers must acknowledge the spin that is being floated out there. It could be the budget for the latest blockbuster that cost $60 million more than they want to admit or their satisfaction with the hugely disappointing opening or how any disaster has a sunny side. You don't have to buy all the way in, but you have to give the spin its day.

8. TELL A STORY FROM ONE SIDE, AT LENGTH, WHEN REASONABLE ALTERNATIVE ARGUMENTS ARE LEFT OUT OR STUCK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STORY

This is one of my favorite new-ish editorial tricks. Editors and journalists use it when they've decided what the truth is, even if their reporting brings the legitimacy of that truth into question. Unfortunately for the publicists, the journalist can say "But I put in your side of the story!"

As someone who reads a lot of stories and scans tons of headlines every day, I have noticed this phenomenon grow and grow. The headline and the lead read as one story and often the second half of the story reads like a diametrically opposed set of truths.

This method is particularly popular when a particular outlet is on a mission. Suddenly, every news story leans in one direction. And make no mistake; any story can spin to either side, especially when a company or an exec is under fire. General beliefs act like a gentle coating of the intellectual stomach lining, so anything that doesn't jump off the page as false is immediately accepted.

Right now, for instance, you can write anything you like against Michael Eisner. Anything Miramax or any Eisner enemy is selling, many journalists are buying. Whatever Disney says in response is seen as an excuse that gets buried deep in the story.

This points up a bigger phenomenon, which is the tendency for the media to get stuck in groupthink. (See #4: The Pile On.)

7. REPORT GOSSSIP AS THOUGH IT IS FACT

Show business is not the only place where people assume that rumors are only unconfirmed facts. But we are exceptionally good at spreading that buzz.

There are few publicists who are not happy to gossip up a storm about every other studio in town. But when you start to pin the presumed tail on the donkey on their turf, get ready to fight off a mighty wind.

That said, there is no excuse for reporting gossip as fact. This is one of the areas where I think that the internet has loosened things up considerably, to the detriment of journalism as a whole. The daisy chain goes like this - 300 people see the Movie X at a test screening - seven of them write into movie websites with "reviews - The webmaster/editors of those site generally have little sense of the validity of the opinions of those they post - Traditional media is looking for someone to tell them what to think - If the opinion is bad, it gets reported in the traditional media. If it is good, the traditional media tends to hold that info in abeyance. - The negative report from the anonymous source gets legitimized by being printed in traditional media and others start to report that perception as though it was reported fact.

That's just test screening reportage. But it has had a deleterious effect on more traditional reporting as the loosened standards have led to more and more reporting of rumor that is assumed to be truthful, since it makes sense to someone.

Michael Eisner's dinner party chatter is an interesting example, since he must know who he said certain things to, so the journalist reporting it must know that the source is not reporting first hand info, unless the source is Eisner himself or a quietly authorized representative. Alternately, a journalist, when getting something like party gossip, must wonder exactly why the source is motivated to offer the controversial information and how reliable the details are, since the info wasn't first hand.

It is true that it is impossible to have first hand knowledge of everything. But the demands on sourcing have become less and less while the rush to go to print has become greater and greater. So if the story fits, you can expect to see it in print somewhere. And once one "legit" source prints the rumor as fact, everyone prints the rumor as fact.

6. EXPOSE THE PERSON BEHIND THE CURTAIN

There is a natural balance between publicists and journalists. As much bitching and moaning as writers do about publicists, journalists need the publicists as much as the other way around, probably even more so. It is a dirty little journalists' secret that most of what is written about the film business is somehow squeezed through the colander of a publicist.

But one of the very first things you learn is that very few publicists want their names in the media. It is a matter of professional pride and style. They are there to promote the product, not themselves. In addition, in a corporate universe, the hierarchy about who actually is allowed to be seen speaking on the record is very arch and the discomfort that can come from being quoted is real. When a publicist has spoken to a journalist and made it clear that they are not to be named or are on background and then their name is front and center… blood quietly boils.

Publicists are not the only studio staff that doesn't want to be on the record, though the responsibility for keeping the quiet players in the shadows falls to the publicist as well. There are all kinds of helping hands at each of the studios whose power is driven by their relative public anonymity. Sometimes, they are even the best sources. But consider when you see public statements from studio personnel… think about how rare it really is, coming from someone other than "a studio spokesperson." And by the way, when a journalist reads the phrase "a studio spokesperson," we all pretty much know which individual at the studio that the quote is coming from and why. But telling the public is still pretty much off limits… that is, if you want to get a call returned anytime soon.

The third version of this is running a truly troubling detail that someone has been kind enough to expose to you, but running it in a way that exposes the leaker. You don't get to see this part either, but when someone talks out of turn, a studio will turn itself upside down to figure out whom the big mouth is. The list will always get down to three or fewer. And by forcing the staff to spend time investigating itself, the journalist will pay. No one likes a tattletale.

5. ABUSE YOUR ACCESS

Access is the coin of the realm in entertainment journalism. Depending on your realm, it could be access to celebrities or access to executives, but either way, getting the access is what separates the players from the wannabes.

There are many ways to abuse your access and every one of them will get your friendly neighborhood publicist that got you that access into trouble, which in turn will create a new enemy for you.

a. Smiling Faces, Sometimes…
Working your way into the room by pretending to be buying into the studio's goals only so you can shiv them (and the talent) in the back as soon as you get out of the door with your gift basket… not good form. The old notion that people were banned from junkets or press days for bad reviews is no longer the case. But if you make a studio publicist look stupid to the personal publicist for convincing the personal publicist for putting the talent in harms way will get someone smacked.

b. Get The Access, Hide The Knockout Punch
If you get access to that star, exec, whomever, there is a natural expectation that you are looking for a response to whatever reportage you have done and will search for more info. But when you have a big story element that is going to get a lot of attention, especially if it is going to expose something the studio doesn't want exposed (thus inspiring your cowardice), and you fail to disclose, the reverberation surprise can be intense

c. Live And Abused
If you get someone to do a live interview on air or taped for air, you have a certain responsibility to let them know your intent, which is to say, not to ambush them. Did Nina Jacobson know that Claude Brodesser was going to do an entire interview pushing her to explain an array of Brodesser-perceived failures by Disney and Michael Eisner when she agreed to do the radio interview that ran on Tuesday? I doubt it. Will Brodesser get a high level studio exec whose studio has some heat around it subject themselves to his smirky questioning again anytime soon? Doubt it.

(A side note: It was one of the most unprofessional interviews I have ever heard and Ms. Jacobson handled it as well as it could be handled. Besides obsessing on Hildago three months after the fact, Brodesser's on-air comment to the head of the production that the title sounded like a social disease was embarrassingly self-indulgent. And his insistent questioning about an admitted rumor about Eisner's involvement in choosing the title, which Jacobson refuted strongly with facts, sent Brodesser into a fit of spin, looking for another reason to throw tomatoes at Eisner. It was not pretty. The whole show was ugly, with Michael Wolff seeming to back away from his hysterical Eisner-bashing Vanity Fair article with far more moderate arguments than seemed to tickle Brodesser's fancy. Only the actual numbers guy he had on seemed to offer a reasonable perspective… he wasn't on very long.)

d. Get Access But Still Use Obscure Sources To Make Your Point
No journalist is obligated to tell the story completely from his subject's point of view. But when you get the access to key players and you choose to go find a college professor who knows nothing about the subject beyond their academic perspective (or a similarly obscure "expert"), but who will annunciate what you think is true, your argument loses legitimacy and the publicist who hooked you up wants you dead.

Of course, the only journalists who can abuse away and continue to get access are the ones from the biggest outlets.

4. PILE ON

Journalists aren't often paid to think anymore. In an industry in which there is almost no real news to break - 95% of what you read is out there because someone wants it out there - quality is defined by the ability to paddle through all the junk information to find something real. But that paddling is a lot of work.

So, when a good story gets spun out there by a large enough, legit enough outlet, it evolves from being a story into becoming the trend. At that point, the work of most journalists becomes about maintaining that story, rather than thinking for his or her self and really examining what the story is, even in the face of constant reportage going in the other direction.

The pile on works both ways. Sometimes, the press repeats the story that works for the studio over and over. And sometimes, they repeat the bad story. Publicists are fine with positive piling on. I am not. But when you start piling on about the negative story, things can get very ugly, whether or not that negative story is accurate or inaccurate.

Eventually, as the pile grows like Jack's beanstalk, the pressure on the publicists grows. And eventually, someone ends up covered in cooked stalk. Unless, of course, if the movie grosses it's weight in beans. But even in that happy event, the pressure coming from cranky talent and execs who are tired of being beaten up, even as the laugh their way to the bank, can also create explosive publicists.

Groupthink is not unique to journalists. But journalists are, by definition, not supposed to be falling into that trap with everyone else. Truth is the only real goal worth chasing as a journalist.

3. WRITE LAZY

No one likes to get slammed in the press. But the right to slam goes hand-in-hand with the responsibility to do the detail work. Sledgehammers are for Gallagher. Journalists should be working with paring knives.

Going back again to the Eisner dinner party comment that was turned into a story about a spreading rift with Miramax. Anyone paying attention - and Waxman and Holson are - must know that facing a contract battle with the Weinsteins, Disney and its execs are utterly responsible for figuring out every possibility regarding what will happen when the Miramax deal ends. The dinner rumor and the likely-better-sourced retreat story of discussing options led the paper to a $2 billion figure.

So what is the next step? Do you work on a story about whether Miramax is worth $2 billion at this point? Or do you make it into a Michael v. Harvey: Round 27?

To be fair, The Time-ettes did ask around and found a Weinstein supporter and co-investor in the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 to say that he thought the company was worth that much. Others disagreed… but in much less detail.

But the price on a company like Miramax is not impossible to determine, even if just by comparative shopping. Is Miramax's library of 500 or so films and the company's potential future worth 50% or 40% of the apparent price for MGM's 4000+ film library and potential future? Is it worth one-sixth of what Universal was worth, with thousands of pictures in its library, a full distribution arm, theme parks, a strong television business and cable nets?

If $2 billion for Miramax looks silly in that perspective, is it possible that Eisner's comment was a blithe comment in the vein of, "No idiot would pay that kind of money for something I think is worth less that $1.5 billion and if someone would, I would let the sucker bite?"

In point of fact, the New York Times had a golden opportunity to create real news with some legitimate insight into what the future might hold for Disney and Miramax. But instead, we got another Chicken Little story that fit nicely opposite the growing possibility that Pixar could be back because - oh no - it's in their best interest. It is much like the stories about who might replace Eisner, if he were to be dumped. What? You say you haven't read one? That's because they rarely get done because the list is so short. It took 30 seconds for Mel Karmazin to be The Great Next Hope and about 4 days for everyone to realize that he really wasn't qualified for the job. Which is not to say that Michael Eisner can't be replaced, just that arguing for "anyone by Eisner" is a foolish indulgence. And amusingly, the tiny list of candidates that keeps being repeated shows a classic lack of industry imagination, which is, ironically, how everyone got surprised by The Les & Tom Show, including Karmazin and Dolgen.

How about putting a price on Roy Disney and Stanley Gold's crusade against Eisner? How much has that cost stockholders? How many opportunities have been lost because of the siege mentality that has been forced on the company? It doesn't mean they are wrong about everything, but this all must be hurting the company, right? Why isn't anyone counting that up?

When you talk to publicists about bad stories about their companies - and Disney is far from alone here - they don't enjoy taking heat. But they almost always zero in on the details that the reporters left floating in the wind, not taking enough time to fill out the facts that were not even that difficult to report.

It is impossible to say for sure whether the next door in a story goes unopened because the goal of the story could be impaired by pushing further or if it's just plain laziness or pressure to deliver on a deadline or something similar. (The same is often true about assuming intent based on studio actions.) But the result will piss off publicists in a heartbeat each and every time.

2. TELL THEM HOW TO DO THEIR JOBS

Oh, they do hate this! And I am guilty, guilty, guilty of this one.

Publicists tell reporters what they should be reporting and how they should be reporting it all the time. But you tell a publicist that they've done something that doesn't work… fireworks.

I do understand. There are a lot of chefs in every studio kitchen and when the heat is on, an outside voice that doesn't know everything that is going on behind close doors backseat driving must be irritating.

1. PITCH ONE STORY, WRITE ANOTHER

No other irritation seems to be more often reported by publicists than this one. Like so many of the irritants, but has to do with catching the publicist unaware. It also is pretty much self-explanatory.

Journalists have an absolute right to write whatever they can report truthfully. But as soon as you drag the publicists into the mix, a degree of responsibility accrues, at the very least, for you to be honest to those who are giving you the access you crave.

We live in an era in which lying to achieve an end in which you believe has become somehow acceptable. Ironically, Ronald Reagan's passing seems to be an appropriate testament to this thinking, as he set the bar in the post-Nixon world with Iran-Contra, an ideologically-based lie. Almost 20 years later, we were reduced to debating a president who lied about oral sex. Our next election may be determined based on the public sense of how egregious a lie George W. Bush told in the name of attacking Iraq.

But in the name of journalism, there are lines that should not be crossed and can't be swept away by a call for First Amendment privilege. I suppose that the sin ends up defined by the evil it prevents. But certainly in entertainment, there are almost no sins severe enough to demand manipulation that equals a lie.

One could argue, as Nikki Finke recently did in her LA Weekly column, that the companies lied first and lied worse. I disagree with her assessment of how much honesty can be expected from people in the midst of corporate process. Too much lying is no good. But too much truth can be an indulgence that is equally or even more damaging. Like our representative government - which is also flawed - one hires the best people possible and then one has to let them do the job without answering to every stockholder every minute of every day with every thought.

But this isn't about studio lies. This is about journalists who piss of publicists. Pitch one story to get access and then write a different one. You will achieve your goal brilliantly.

E ME: Thank you for all the condolence notes yesterday. They are greatly appreciated. So… what do you have to add to the piss off?