I strongly oppose my recent behavior: Facebook, Burson, and digital PR

(Before I begin let me say this blog post reflects my own, personal opinions and no one else's.  I'm by no means perfect, personally or professionally.)

The big story in the tech media this week (other than a blogger outage) is Facebook's botched clandestine PR efforts against Google. For those who don't follow all things Facebook so closely here's the skinny from The Daily Beast, which broke the story.  Other people can talk about the business/legal/tech/whatever ramifications.  I have two thoughts.

First, I find it interesting that Burson threw its (now former) client under the bus, never an easy decision.  They acknowledged that they ignored their own "policies" on transparency, but this was the work that was presented to them and "the assignment under these terms should have been declined" - i.e., this was Facebook's idea and the only mistake we made was not realizing it sooner.  Facebook sort of pushes back, suggesting "no 'smear' campaign was authorized or intended," but they go on to say they wanted third parties to speak publicly while sidestepping the assertion that they wanted to hide their own identity in recruiting those third parties.  Burson is a legendary PR firm with a tradition of success - they wouldn't be where they are if they used these tactics all the time.  Facebook's record also speaks for itself. Both companies are acknowledging what they did was wrong, yet both companies are hinting the other company is responsible.  Awkward.

My second observation has to do with the exchange between PR guy and blogger.  Looking at the emails it doesn't seem that the Burson exec has a relationship with the blogger he contacted.   Set aside for the moment the enormous issue of transparency.  Is there ever a situation when an out-of-the-blue request to by-line a ghostwritten op-ed in the Washington Post is an appropriate or effective way to introduce yourself?

Building relationships with bloggers BEFORE your clients need them is not an easy thing to do.  It's time consuming.  It's uncomfortable. It's hard to justify to clients sometimes.  But if the people at either company had real, strong relationships with the bloggers they clearly needed to know ahead of time, they would have been able to deliver the message directly and transparently.   That's why I'm constantly telling my colleagues to always reach out to bloggers, whether you have something to pitch or not.  It's why I advocate for bloggers to the point of annoying colleagues.   It's why I'm still talking about the 3 R's of "blogger relations."

EPIC FAIL, revisited

A year ago today the Deepwater Horizon exploded and gave us the worst man-made environmental disaster ever.  I'm re-publishing one of the posts I wrote about a month after the initial blast  - it includes a lot of links that give us some historical context.

"It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact will be very, very modest."

(BP CEO Tony Hayward, May 18, 2010)

I was planning to write the obligatory "what the oil spill means for social media" blog post but that's really just ridiculous.  To be honest this is as close to a 20th-century media crisis scenario as we've seen in some time.  The public is heavily reliant on professional journalists to get the story, a very large company is doing its best to control the flow of information (and compounding the damage to its own reputation in the process), the federal government is flailing about, and Members of Congress are threatening to write very sternly-worded letters if things don't improve eventually.  Oh, and there's a CEO out there saying some profoundly stupid things.  Sure there are some nice tech tools in play here - obviously - but this is a straight-up, mainstream media-driven story.

But as always the real story is the actual debacle, not the PR debacle. And we're learning the scope of this EPIC FAIL one merciless drip at a time.

• Eleven people are missing and presumed dead.
• Estimates of the flow of oil were wildly understated at the outset, and the current "official" estimate prompts scientists to laugh in disbelief.  Now when asked the company and the government simply evade the question.
• The company has to dig a "relief" well to stop this flow, and that won't be ready until late summer.
• The "best minds in the world" haven't been able to staunch the flow in over a month.
• The first hugely technical and scientific idea to fix this was a big metal box.  It didn't work. (but remember - this idea didn't "fail," it just didn't succeed yet.  Or something.) 
• The second big idea was a smaller box.  It failed before it started.
• The third big idea was a tube. It really didn't work either.
• The fourth big idea is to dump mud and stuff in the hole.  Like a cork. Even if it "works" I think won't completely stop the flow of oil.
• Because remember, none of this stuff has ever been tried a mile below the ocean surface.
• And we're dumping "dispersants" (i.e., moderately toxic chemicals) into the oil flow to diffuse it.
• Even though there are more effective and less toxic chemicals available.  No there aren't.  Yes there are.  So stop.  No.  OK, slow it down.  No.  Seriously, slow it down or I'll think about saying stop again.
• But hey, it's not like this is a big deal or anything.  In fact, it's tiny.
• And BP will reimburse people whose claims BP considers "legitimate."
• And at least we know exactly who is at fault here - someone else. BP says it's Halliburton and Transocean's fault.  Halliburton says it's Transocean and BP's fault.  Transocean says it's BP and Halliburton's fault.

Meanwhile, in the government...

• The White House issues a moratorium on new outer continental shelf drilling permits.  But I don't think "moratorium" means what they think it means.
• Then we learn the government agency that regulates this industry is the one with the Bush-era folks who were having sex with the lobbyists, snorting crystal meth on toasters, getting plastered at lobbyist-sponsored parties and sleeping it off in lobbyist-paid hotel rooms because they were too drunk to drive.  
• Oh, and they were letting the companies fill in their own inspection reports in pencil which they would later trace over in pen.
• But not to worry, because the White House has assembled a(nother) blue ribbon panel of outside-the-box scientific thinkers.  Like the climate change denier / "proud homophobe" guy.  Oh, wait.
• And the guy who assembled the panel of experts - the Secretary of Energy - is apparently learning the details by reading about them in the papers. 
• But it's BP's responsibility.
• But we're putting boots on throats and will push people out.
• But we don't know what we would do differently if we were in charge, so we're not in charge.
• But we're in charge. 
• And we think BP should pay for everything. 
• Except we don't.

Meanwhile, the politicians and beltway clowns jockey for soundbites and political advantage.  The Republican governor of Louisiana who likes the idea of small government and refused that stimulus package money is nowdemanding more money from the feds and wants the Army Corps of Engineers all over the place STAT.  The Senate Assistant Majority Leader istrying to come up with two-word catch-phrases that begin with the letters B and P.  And the Chatty Kathy's of the very serious Washington punditry club were first falling over themselves to call this "Obama's Katrina," then when that didn't stick they were wondering aloud "where is the oil?" and now thatthe oil is all over marshlands and pelicans and stuff it's the liberals who are all pissed. 

And Gulf Coast fishermen are wondering if they'll ever work again.

There are so many things wrong with this I barely know where to start

OK, not a social media thing but I saw this in Tuesday's Washington Post and I'm flabbergasted:

When a drug to prevent babies from being born too early won federal approval in February, many doctors, pregnant women and others cheered the step as a major advance against a heartbreaking tragedy.

Then they saw the price tag.

The list price for the drug, Makena, turned out to be a stunning $1,500 per dose. That’s for a drug that must be injected every week for about 20 weeks, meaning it will cost about $30,000 per at-risk pregnancy. If every eligible American woman were to get Makena, the nation’s bloated annual health-care tab would swell by more than $4 billion.

What really infuriates patients and doctors is that the same compound has been available for years at a fraction of the cost — about $10 or $20 a shot.

Oh, it gets worse. I've probably pushed the bounds of fair use here so I'll just let you go to their website to read the whole thing.  But please read it, because it's as profound an indictment of our system as anything I've ever seen.  SO, let me see if I have all of the factoids from this story straight:

• There's a drug that the FDA just "approved" to help prevent premature births.  That's the good news.
• A full course of the drug costs $30,000.  And most moms in at-risk pregnancies don't have that.
• A full course of "the compound" (i.e., the same drug) has been available for about $200 to $400.
• Along with FDA approval, the company also got a patent and sole rights to manufacture "the compound."
• Which means it's now no longer available for $200 to $400.
• The company that now owns the patent says it's charging that amount to recoup the costs for FDA-mandated clinical trials. 
• The leading advocacy groups and medical specialists were apparently surprised by the new price.  Seriously.
• The "main study" to prove the drug's effectiveness was apparently an NIH (i.e. taxpayer) funded study, but the taxpayers receive no return on this investment.

Again, from the article (sorry):

A form of progesterone known as 17P was used for years to reduce the risk of preterm birth, but it fell out of favor after the manufacturing company stopped making it. In 2003, the NIH study showed that 17P could cut the risk of preterm delivery if given in the first 16 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. That led to a resurgence in the use of 17P. Because no companies marketed the drug, women obtained it cheaply from “compounding” pharmacies, which produced individual batches for them.

Doctors and regulators had long worried about the purity and consistency of the drug and were pleased when KV won FDA’s imprimatur for a well-studied version, which the company is selling as Makena.

So this company basically did some research to verify the safety and efficacy of a drug that people were already using but either did or didn't already have FDA approval.  And here is where it REALLY gets weird:

In an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, an FDA official said that, if requested, the agency could approve a lower-priced generic version of the drug for another use that doctors could prescribe “off label.”

In addition, the official said the agency would not prevent compounding pharmacies from continuing to provide 17P unless patient safety is thought to be at risk.

“We have our hands full pursuing our enforcement priorities,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. “And it’s not illegal for a physician to write a prescription for a compounded drug or for a patient to take a compounded drug. We certainly are concerned about access of patients to medication.”

So an unnamed FDA official is telling the Washington Post that they could approve a generic drug that would be prescribed off-label?  And they won't enforce the company's right to market the drug as the sole provider - a right that FDA itself granted - because they're too busy?

If by the FDA's own admission it's ok to prescribe drugs off-label, then why do we have an FDA in the first place?

So, to sum up:  our systems of drug approval, intellectual property and taxpayer-funded research have taken a relatively well-known and commonly-used drug that cost about $300 and made it $30,000 for the next 7 years.   It costs that much because now we really know it's safe and effective - after all, this company and the taxpayers have invested millions to make sure.

Of course the company gets a financial return on its investment but the taxpayers don't.   But then again, the company loses too - because the company that invested its own money and time in creating this drug will now have to compete with a gray market that the FDA tacitly condones.   And that's because the FDA has anonymously suggested to the Washington Post that patients and providers ignore the very reason we created the FDA in the first place - making sure drugs aren't marketed or prescribed "off label."

SO....

Compounding pharmacies can look forward to lawsuits from the company that actually got FDA approval.
The company that got approval can look forward to ridiculously bad publicity - even though it played by the rules.
Moms with at-risk pregnancies now get to choose between: a) that worry in the back of their mind that the medicine they're getting isn't really FDA approved or b) a $30,000 price tag
Someone at the FDA gets to explain to his or her boss why they just undermined the mission of the FDA in the Washington Post.

But hey, lawyers and PR guys are probably gonna get paid, so it all works out.

Media Overhype and the Profound Wisdom of the Warlock Assassin

Over the past week I've watched with everyone else the nightmare that's happening in Japan.  I've seen the surreal videos, the ongoing drama of the situation at Fukushima, and the incessant commentary on it.

The team at Global Voices Online asked me to provide a summary of what science bloggers were saying about the whole mess, and I have two posts there now - one that provides explanations of earthquakes and tsunamis, and one that looks at what's being said about the partial nuclear meltdown.

I'm really struck by two things, however.  First, the panic the US media has instilled in everyone through their horror-movie graphics and end-of-days tone.   Earlier this week I heard Eliot Spitzer teasing upcoming segments on CNN by saying things like "is the situation as bad as the pictures tell us, or is it even worse?" and then peppering people on his show with questions like "so what is the worst-case scenario for us here."  Never mind that the worst-case scenario isn't close to being the most likely scenario, but hey, if it bleeds it leads.

The next morning CNN reports that people in the United States are stocking up on iodine pills, despite the fact that they're not even remotely necessary here and these pills have some side effects.   And I do note the irony that the media reports on the frenzy it helped create.

The second thing that strikes me is how amazingly polarized the discussion about energy is becoming, and how that is affecting our willingness and ability to plan. Rita King wrote a great piece at the Scientific American Guest Blog and summed it up thusly:

Opinions around nuclear energy tend to be binary, with industry proponents acting as if nothing could possibly go wrong while critics, terrified of nuclear apocalypse, remain convinced that old nuclear plants are time bombs.

She's right.   A very significant portion (though not all) of the environmental movement is now NO NUKES- NO WAY.  Make it 100 percent safe before you do it.  But the truth is there's no such thing as a 100 percent safe anything - particularly when it comes to energy.  Coal mines will cave in from time to time.  Oil rigs will explode.  Hurricanes will hit refineries.  Even windmills have their issues (though not nearly on the same scope).  And we sometimes forget that we have enormous energy needs and the only way we can meet those needs right now is through those high-yield, high-emission fossil fuels.

What's worse to me, though, is the PR position of the energy industry - perhaps in reaction to the environmentalists, but I think more likely in reaction to the regulatory environment - the idea that so many things that could go wrong are simply not possible.  The messaging apparently became part of the culture at BP and other companies.  It's why you submit a disaster response plan for the Gulf of Mexico that's simply cut and pasted from your disaster response plan for Alaska.  It's not like anything's going to happen anyway, so who cares?

We have moved forward on energy siting and building decisions with an incomplete notion of contingencies.  And of course, this isn't isolated only to the energy sector - essentially any company or government or NGO that has anything that serves as a potential risk is vulnerable.

Shockingly, so much of this can be resolved by following the advice of Charlie Sheen, the self-described warlock assassin with tiger blood coursing through his veins - PLAN BETTER.  Seriously, suck it up and acknowledge that crazy stuff can and eventually will happen and you should be ready for it.  Embracing this notion will make companies more, not less credible with their neighbors, customers and the media. The evidence that we don't do enough of this is staring us in the face in the Gulf of Mexico, in coal mines in West Virginia, and in Fukushima.

Arizona: what we've really lost and what we must do

By know everyone knows what happened to Congresswoman Giffords, Judge Roll, and the other victims in Tuscon. But I can't stop thinking about this.

Aspiring politician Christina-Taylor Green was born in the midst of tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001, and died Saturday morning while trying to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

The strong-willed 9-year-old third-grader had gone to meet Giffords with a neighbor when she was shot. She died later at University Medical Center.

And not surprisingly, this:

Jittery members of the U.S. House of Representatives concerned about security jammed telephone lines Sunday during a rare bipartisan conference call a day after a gunman tried to assassinate U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords outside a supermarket near Tucson.

A bipartisan group of House leaders took the unusual step of inviting spouses and staffers to dial into the conference call held to update members about Giffords, brief them about the shooting and discuss steps being taken to tighten security.

I want to show some restraint in commenting on this because there was no initial "proof" that this (alleged) assassin's actions had any groundings in politics.  And frankly I found it disturbing at how quickly the punditry on both ends of the political spectrum absorbed this news and once again used it as proof they have been right about the other side all along. As usual, I won't hide my politics - the punditry on the right has gotten so defensive about this and the tone their rhetoric has taken it almost begs the Shakespearean retort, "the lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Before we delve into the depravity of today's political discourse, it's important to take stock of what we've really lost.

• We have, of course, the unfathomable tragedy of the loss of life - not only a vital public servant in the form of a federal judge, but also five other innocent people, including a nine-year-old girl.  And we have those who were badly wounded, and those who were traumatized by witnessing the event.
• We will likely see further physical separation of the government and the governed.  We will have fewer public events, more security and isolation for Members of Congress and this Administration, less access for the taxpayers and even the media.  This means that more government will be done in private, among only those privileged and moneyed enough to have access to those in power.
• We will see even less incentive to go into public service.  If I run for Congress I already know I'll spend most of my time asking lobbyists for money, I'll have a grueling travel schedule, I'll have to maintain two residences,  and I'll spend the majority of my "floor" time talking about symbolic things that have very little impact on the daily lives of people.  Now I get to wear kevlar while I do it. This is not a line of work I'd ever want my son to enter - not right now, anyway.  We used to worry about our children getting hurt if they joined the military.  Now we have to worry if they run for Congress.

I can think of two major changes we need immediately.  While we don't know for sure if the accused was listening to the political rhetoric of the right or saw the now scrubbed image of Congresswoman Giffords' district in the cross hairs of a rifle sight, we need to understand the status quo is not sustainable.

First, the news media needs to understand its own responsibility here and act accordingly - stop giving rhetorical bomb-throwers air time. We all know who they are.  We all know what networks put them on television. And sadly, we also know they drive ratings.  But you know what - it's really not news.  We've reached the point in our politics where you're rewarded not by working hard with people across the aisle but by calling those people un-American or worse.  It's time for our professional media to be the grown-ups in the room and say no, you don't get to go on TV if all you have are thinly-veiled references to guns, boldface lies  or asinine suggestions that people aren't citizens.  And don't give me guff about the first amendment.  Remember Daniel Webster: "liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint."  Editors edit.  Start doing your jobs.

Second, transparency in government just got a whole lot more important.  If we further restrict access to members of Congress and others in the government, we must know immediately who DOES have access  and where campaigns are getting money. Further, front-groups that don't disclose their funding sources - the groups that have fueled so much of the "vitriol" we've heard about without a shred of accountability to anyone - are a cancer on our democracy.  OWN YOUR WORDS.

One final point - there are moneyed interests who have contributed to the current state of political depravity.   I can't stop thinking about what I wrote in August 2009, when corporate interests were instructing angry, ignorant mobs to storm town meetings much like the one Congresswoman Giffords held this weekend.

There can be no doubt that people in my profession are organizing this sort of thing, stirring up fear and hatred and dehumanizing an enemy, in the name of "freedom," going on television and telling outright lies. They are actively trying to suppress discussion and debate. They are telling unstable people some unstable things, then they're pointing at someone and calling them "Hitler." And they're hiding their true identities (and their funding) by setting up "non-profit" groups that have names with words like "freedom" in them.

They are undoubtedly aware that the more they do this, the more likely someone is going to commit even greater acts of violence. They know this and they do it anyway.

Now those same interests find themselves more able to hide their funding, and actually have more access to government leaders as public meetings become more restrictive.  And of course, no one is accountable. 

The Fierce Urgency Of We'll Get Back To You

Contrary to my post of earlier this week, I do have a couple of observations on how social media has changed how we handle crises - specifically as they pertain to the oil spill - which conservative estimates now peg at almost double the size of the previous "worst spill" in US history (until they revise upward again).

First, social media gave smart people a platform to contribute and disseminate information, despite the fact that they were not in the inner circle of those dealing with the problem. I'm specifically thinking of the scientists who scoffed at the initial estimates of the rate of flowing oil from the pipe.   While BP has clear incentives to obfuscate or not measure the flow rate, NOAA doesn't.  What started on a small handful of mainstream outlets quickly exploded on blogs and Twitter.  The steady stream of criticism on this issue from both mainstream and online media channels meant that the government could not credibly maintain its "official" estimates.  

That's actually a very big win for transparency, and Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts deserves a lot of credit for this.  Markey and his staff have been tech-savvy for quite a while, and knew exactly how feasible it was to deliver a live video feed from the disaster site. It was a great idea  and it really took some guts to keep pushing for it. From a political perspective, the White House probably didn't need a constant visual reminder of their inability to fix this beamed directly to the world.

Second, social media in a wired country like the US just demonstrates how quickly and efficiently people can consume and process news today.  The news that the "top kill" approach may be working came just a few minutes before the news that the head of the Minerals Management Service had been asked to resign.  It came the day before the President was scheduled to visit the affected area and give a press conference.  It punctuated a month-long soap opera in which the feds in Washington seemed impotent at best.  Now (hopefully) the leak has been plugged before the President can tell us what he plans to do. 

TOO SLOW.

The social media-infused news cycle demands milestones and results.  It demands decisions and actions.  The political entities involved spoke only about process.  Whatever "threats" the government made have been essentially empty (see the whole dispersants issue).  The takeaways I got from the federal government's response: 

• They showed up at the platform "on day one" - and did what, exactly?
• They had a lot of boats around which I think set up some buoys and set patches of ocean on fire.
• They put a bunch of scientists in a room - no word on what ideas they generated, though.
• They told BP to stop using a particular dispersant but when BP said no they said OK.
• They continued to give out offshore drilling permits and waivers after the President said they wouldn't.
• They fired a person who had been on the job for less than a year.
• The president has shown less emotion on this crisis than Tiger Woods does when he hits a golf ball into a sand trap. Seriously.

Meanwhile, I've heard nothing about what we plan to do about these massive plumes of oil and chemicals meandering under the surface, and there are too many reports of people in Louisiana telling government and company representatives about oil washing up in front of them - and getting nothing more than "we'll get back to you."

Social media tools have the effect of pushing more, faster feedback on to you than you may be ready to handle.   Maybe this is a no-win situation.  It's certainly not a fair criticism of all the actions the feds HAVE taken, especially the amazing folks in the Coast Guard.  But each day they could be estimating how much damage they have prevented.  They know how much "oily water" they've recovered - 11.5 million gallons as of May 27.  How much oil is that?  What does that mean?  That might suggest what they're doing has made a real difference, and that's the story the government hasn't told.

How EPIC is this FAIL?

"It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact will be very, very modest."

(BP CEO Tony Hayward, May 18, 2010)

I was planning to write the obligatory "what the oil spill means for social media" blog post but that's really just ridiculous.  To be honest this is as close to a 20th-century media crisis scenario as we've seen in some time.  The public is heavily reliant on professional journalists to get the story, a very large company is doing its best to control the flow of information (and compounding the damage to its own reputation in the process), the federal government is flailing about, and Members of Congress are threatening to write very sternly-worded letters if things don't improve eventually.  Oh, and there's a CEO out there saying some profoundly stupid things.  Sure there are some nice tech tools in play here - obviously - but this is a straight-up, mainstream media-driven story.

But as always the real story is the actual debacle, not the PR debacle. And we're learning the scope of this EPIC FAIL one merciless drip at a time.

• Eleven people are missing and presumed dead.
• Estimates of the flow of oil were wildly understated at the outset, and the current "official" estimate prompts scientists to laugh in disbelief.  Now when asked the company and the government simply evade the question.
• The company has to dig a "relief" well to stop this flow, and that won't be ready until late summer.
• The "best minds in the world" haven't been able to staunch the flow in over a month.
• The first hugely technical and scientific idea to fix this was a big metal box.  It didn't work. (but remember - this idea didn't "fail," it just didn't succeed yet.  Or something.) 
• The second big idea was a smaller box.  It failed before it started.
• The third big idea was a tube. It really didn't work either.
• The fourth big idea is to dump mud and stuff in the hole.  Like a cork. Even if it "works" I think won't completely stop the flow of oil.
• Because remember, none of this stuff has ever been tried a mile below the ocean surface.
• And we're dumping "dispersants" (i.e., moderately toxic chemicals) into the oil flow to diffuse it.
• Even though there are more effective and less toxic chemicals available.  No there aren't.  Yes there are.  So stop.  No.  OK, slow it down.  No.  Seriously, slow it down or I'll think about saying stop again.
• But hey, it's not like this is a big deal or anything.  In fact, it's tiny.
• And BP will reimburse people whose claims BP considers "legitimate."
• And at least we know exactly who is at fault here - someone else. BP says it's Halliburton and Transocean's fault.  Halliburton says it's Transocean and BP's fault.  Transocean says it's BP and Halliburton's fault.

Meanwhile, in the government...

• The White House issues a moratorium on new outer continental shelf drilling permits.  But I don't think "moratorium" means what they think it means.
• Then we learn the government agency that regulates this industry is the one with the Bush-era folks who were having sex with the lobbyists, snorting crystal meth on toasters, getting plastered at lobbyist-sponsored parties and sleeping it off in lobbyist-paid hotel rooms because they were too drunk to drive.  
• Oh, and they were letting the companies fill in their own inspection reports in pencil which they would later trace over in pen.
• But not to worry, because the White House has assembled a(nother) blue ribbon panel of outside-the-box scientific thinkers.  Like the climate change denier / "proud homophobe" guy.  Oh, wait.
• And the guy who assembled the panel of experts - the Secretary of Energy - is apparently learning the details by reading about them in the papers. 
• But it's BP's responsibility.
• But we're putting boots on throats and will push people out.
• But we don't know what we would do differently if we were in charge, so we're not in charge.
• But we're in charge. 
• And we think BP should pay for everything. 
• Except we don't.

Meanwhile, the politicians and beltway clowns jockey for soundbites and political advantage.  The Republican governor of Louisiana who likes the idea of small government and refused that stimulus package money is now demanding more money from the feds and wants the Army Corps of Engineers all over the place STAT.  The Senate Assistant Majority Leader is trying to come up with two-word catch-phrases that begin with the letters B and P.  And the Chatty Kathy's of the very serious Washington punditry club were first falling over themselves to call this "Obama's Katrina," then when that didn't stick they were wondering aloud "where is the oil?" and now that the oil is all over marshlands and pelicans and stuff it's the liberals who are all pissed.

And Gulf Coast fishermen are wondering if they'll ever work again.

My Mom Is NOT a Porn Addict

Facebook's QA Team

I generally don't write about family stuff here but this time I got permission.

My mom joined Facebook yesterday - at least she tried to.  Folks have been telling her she should join because she has a local business, and she likes seeing the pictures that other family members post there.  So she went through the steps, and started building a profile - name, hometown, interests.  She uploaded a handful of pictures she took, all rated G. (Not even one breastfeeding pic.  We all know they're sensitive about that.) She followed the automated steps and sent out a couple of friend requests.

Then she got that all-too-familiar email:

Your account was disabled because it was in violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Nudity, sexually explicit, and other graphic content is not permitted on Facebook, nor is any content that contains self harm, depicts violence, or attacks an individual or group. In addition, harassing others through unsolicited friend requests or messages is prohibited.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to reactivate your account or respond to your email directly. This decision is final and cannot be appealed.  You can visit the Warnings section of the Help Center for more information: 

http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=421

That was it.  Account terminated, no appeal.  Ciao, bella.  Not sure whether Facebook will claim ownership of the half-dozen pictures or demographic information she entered.

It's obvious Facebook made a fairly innocent mistake here.   But this is just the latest indication that Facebook has reached "too big to fail" status and quality control has slipped.  They just don't have the resources to properly evaluate and review disputes because they're much too busy converting your personal information into marketing profiles for companies. 

It's not a new concern.  Let me put it this way - when the Attorney General of New York calls and says you better do something about sexual predators on your network, you don't ignore him to the point where he has to issue a subpoena.   I'm sure those couple dozen messages just "fell through the cracks."

It's also clear that they're leveraging this new status to make it more complicated for people to protect their information.  They've taken "opt-out" to the next level - so far that members of Congress are again planning to regulate them more strictly.

But here is Facebook's conundrum: it requires significant resources to do real quality control and pay real attention to settling disputes when your network is 8.2 gazillion people.  What little resources the company actually has are mainly dedicated to serving advertisers.  If they move to an opt-in system, they know they will lose all sorts of information and value for advertisers and won't make as much money.  If they do real quality control and have human analysis for everyday disputes, they'll spend a lot more money.  "Less money in, more money out" isn't the best business model.  And asking subscribers to pay to make up some of the difference?  Ask the folks at Ning how that's going.

UPDATE: got this from a pal who works at NIH...

@dwescott1 for some reason your blog is being blocked by NIH's firewall.less than a minute ago via TweetDeckJonathan Gitlin
drjonboyg

Geez, you use the word "porn" in a blog post title ONE TIME...

UPDATE 2:  turns out NIH was blocking all blogspot URL's for some reason.  Susan was right.  Apparently I'm not that much of a rebel...

ummm... so what's up with Utah?

I don't usually take this space for political rants, and I don't think this will be all that mean - but I just have to ask a question.

Seriously, what is going on in Utah politics?

Let me see if I get this right - the majority leader of the Utah House of Representatives told everyone that 25 years ago he got naked in a hot tub with a 15-year-old female employee of his. He was 28 and married. But seriously, they were just naked in the hot tub as a "spur of the moment thing" and that was it. Then in 2002, when this guy was running for Congress, the girl resurfaces and he pays her $150,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement. It's not hush money, he says, but something to "help her heal." And he says he treated it like any other event in his life. He's coming forward now because that woman is starting to call reporters.

He says all this, and then members of the Utah legislature give him a standing ovation and hug him.

This is a couple of months after the majority leader of the Utah Senate resigned after his arrest for DUI. Reportedly this guy's father was killed by a drunk driver.

And don't forget, this is the legislature where one guy insists "climate change" is actually a conspiracy to control population, and another guy thinks they should cut the 12th grade to save money. Or he did until people called him nuts, now he just wants to make it optional, maybe, or something.

I suppose we've all done some really stupid things and said some really stupid things. But seriously, have most people done or said things that stupid? And rise to the ranks of Majority Leader of a state legislature?

Is it me?

And there are people in Washington who WANTED this

Seriously - there are people who planned for this outcome, who told lies to work people into a frenzy, who appealed to the worst in us, who felt that this outcome served their interests best. This is what they wanted. And they want more of it. Where there is discussion and debate, they want to bring noise. To literally shout down the lady in the wheelchair.

How does one negotiate with people who plan this?Again, this is a disgrace to my profession - we're supposed to encourage and facilitate debate, not shout it down - and a disgrace to our democracy.

A long time ago I was actually an elected Town Meeting member, in my New England town. Things got a little rowdy sometimes, though nothing close to this. And everyone - EVERYONE - got to say their peace without ever having to worry about hecklers.

What a perversion.

John Aravosis Is Just Not That Into You

If you're a PR flack, that is.

Seems John has a bit of an email firehose problem, and he's starting to resent it:

I get hundreds of emails a day. Far too many of them garbage like this from people who have added me to their email list without my permission. Then they send me crap. I'm not writing this to whine about my bad emails, I'm trying to make a larger point. Email is a critical part of the day to day work for many of us. The volume of email we are receiving keeps growing. And for many of us, it passed a tipping point, beyond which we are now losing emails from people, not even seeing them as they come in, because of the velocity of traffic hitting our in-box.

And crap like this isn't helping. Actually, crap like this is the problem. I already have a spam filter that catches all of my spam. This crap is what's ruining my in-box.

And he concludes:

If you're sending the same email to fewer than five people, it's not junk.

If you're sending the same email to five or more people, it's probably junk.

It's an interesting rule of thumb. And while one man's junk is another man's priority, it's probably the truth.

There's no easy solution to John's problem - we all get more email than we want, and just when you think you've found the fix someone finds a way around it. And this diatribe won't stop the PR flacks and other goobers from assaulting his inbox - because frankly, they don't really read his blog. They just know he's a big-time political blogger with regular access to the President's communications team and a bunch of big wigs on Capitol Hill, and a lot of other blogs link to his. They just want John to cut and paste whatever they're sending him and post it on his blog. For free.

John can't just stop using email like some of the social media "gliterati" keep saying they have, over and over again, sometimes via email. For those of us in the real world, and who depend on communicating with people other than our closest techno-geek pals, email is the communications vehicle of necessity.

There are a couple of things John could do - for example, he could start actually following the people he cares about on Twitter - he's currently not following anyone and seems to be using Twitter like it's just another RSS feed. By being selective about who he's following, he can accept direct messages from them (getting an alert in his email essentially "validating" the sender) and send them back. He could also get a fairly interesting stream of content - sure, there's a lot of "brushing my teeth" tweets but also some useful breaking news.

Or he could continue to write about his email problem and develop a reputation among Congressional offices as a bit of a snob. Of course, John isn't a snob at all - he's trying to do his job and he's expressing the same frustrations many of us feel - but you see, there are so many people politics and in PR whose egos are bruised far too easily. Last week Robert Scoble (if you know tech business and/or tech PR you've heard of him but if you don't you haven't) unleashed his inner diva just a bit on a podcast about how he hates lousy email pitches and PR flacks let him have it, with one notable exception. I can say this - I don't think "you suck" is the most constructive piece of advice, but it should make us review what we're doing.

Personally I go to Susan Getgood first when I'm thinking about this stuff. Her latest on the topic is here. She's said before that we tend to pitch things that are our client's passion but the bloggers' distraction. So we shouldn't get surprised when most bloggers react this way. She's right.

And I'm going to recommend the "Aravosis Rule" to my social media team. I've always recommended against blast emailing anyone. But this is my "validating third party" for my 3R's post a while back. It's hard to make the case why John should care about something if you're just blasting it out to everyone.

If you want space on John's blog, it's really easy to get it - buy an ad. Make it compelling enough for people to click on it and go to the site you want them to, or put enough info in the ad to prompt action right there. John has been called a lot of things, but he's not the trained monkey of PR flacks.

Note to Self: Never Promote Arm Girdles to Feminists.

So late last week I and a couple of my colleagues in the social media world got an email from a prominent blogger - she was forwarding a series of emails from a PR pro pitching a new product.

If you read this blogger for even a week, you know immediately that this blogger is progressive in her thinking, clearly a feminist, and the mother of young daughters.

The PR pitch's opening-line grabber - "What might you have in common with Oprah Winfrey and Caroline Kennedy?"

I may be a guy, but I can tell you I'd love to have a lot in common with these two people -brains, ambition, a strong work ethic, charisma and a commitment to helping people. Those people would certainly appeal to a progressive, feminist mom. It turns out, however, that this wasn't exactly what the pitch was going for:

That's right, jiggly arms. Someone is pitching arm girdles to feminist moms, just in time for the holidays. I'm not linking to the company because I don't want to drive their traffic, but you can see the company name above.

This pitch is utterly crap-tacular on multiple levels. I think I should probably leave it to Joanne "PunditMom" Bamberger, who also received the pitch (she wasn't the one who forwarded it to me), to explain the sort of message this sends to young girls. And kudos to Susan Getgood (who got the forwarded email along with me) for breaking down the ethical shortcuts taken here, like invoking celebrity names and pictures even though they haven't endorsed the product. When Susan calls you a scumbag, believe me, you've earned it. I took a look at the picture of Caroline Kennedy (she looks pretty damn good in this picture if you ask me) and noticed that they lifted the picture from a story about her butterfly tatoo, not her non-existent arm flab, from the Huffington Post.

My beef with the pitch is it assumes social media is simply "online media relations" where you blanket the world with your pitch. Maybe there are people who think this product is a good idea. But it's clear that had this PR pro done even a little bit of vetting, if this person took even a few minutes to understand the community involved, the flack would know this was a huge mistake.

But it gets worse. The blogger who passed this on to me also sent me her response to the PR pro who pitched her, and that PR person's response back.

The flack basically said that nobody was questioning the accomplishments of Caroline Kennedy or Oprah Winfrey, but the product was still important - and hey, Oprah's friend said last week that Oprah was worried about her weight. Further, in another show of disrespect to the blogger, the flack also mentioned a couple of other placements the company scored - the Rachael Ray show and the NY Post.

Seriously.

This flack is not suggesting Caroline Kennedy or Oprah Winfrey are insecure or insignificant - just that they should wear arm girdles. And maybe you should too - if you read the NY Post, you might know that.

Happy holidays.

Sigh.

Earlier this year I wrote a rant about how the Commonwealth of Kentucky was cutting education funding for the second time in a few months to cover a budget shortfall - and higher education leaders were actually applauding the move as an act of political courage by the legislature.

Now we're looking at yet another cut in education, which the State Education Commissioner calls "devastating."

Once again, Kentucky's answer to an economic downturn is to make its future workforce less able to hold the high-skill, high-wage jobs the state needs to build its way out.

Waiter? Check, please.

They Have Become What They Despise

Sifting through last night's debate transcripts I'm struck by just how awful the questions were. The debate moderators just did a terrible, terrible job - focusing almost exclusively on the silly questions like who said what about Bosnia or bitterness when and who wears a flag pin and do you agree with this crazy statement that someone else said. The first hour of the debate was completely devoid of issues-based questions. Nothing about education, health care, the environment, the economy, or real foreign policy. Even the "substantive" questions were posed as hypothetical ideas designed to push a candidate into a corner. Just disgraceful.

But what really ticked me off was Charles Gibson's embarrassing defense of the pathetic flag lapel pin question - "it's all over the Internet."

Umm.... NO. It's not all over the Internet. It's not even close. It's barely a blip on the radar. Anyone who looks at Virtual Vantage Points "community clouds" pages for politics and issues can see what's all over the internet. For the past several months, liberals have talked about the war, health care, the subprime mortgage crisis, gas and food prices, the economy, and (not surprisingly) how bad the mainstream media is at doing its job. Conservatives have talked about taxes, terrorism, the war, immigration, and (again, not surprisingly) how bad the mainstream media is at doing its job.

Furthermore, there are dozens of prominent online communities talking about health care policy, education, child care, the environment, personal finance and taxes - and once again, how lousy the mainstream media is at doing its job. We follow them every week.

Not a flag pin in sight.

For years now we've heard top-tier journalists and pundits dismiss the "citizen journalists" of the blogosphere and social media as angry, ranting lunatics holed up in their basements, wearing pajamas and eating cheetos and furiously typing out irrelevant screeds and spreading gossip that no one should ever read.

Last night the traditional media had its chance to ask the questions that the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania really care about, and ask the candidates to discuss the issues that working families need to hear - and they came up with stories about sniper fire in Bosnia, some random sentence about bitterness, the rantings of a former pastor, some dude from the Black Panther Party, and flag pins.

I hope this debate serves as the wake-up call for the traditional media. This is why we can't yet say "social media" is "all media." When all media is truly social, the most prominent and important questions will be raised. That's why the YouTube debates were so effective and so important. It's only a matter of time - and not much time, at that - before they become the norm and not the exception.

The people will demand it.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not alone in my assessment. Though I don't know what planet David Brooks was on last night.

UPDATE II: Craig Fuller, GOP heavyweight and former Chief of Staff to George Herbert Walker Bush, gets it.

Scariest PR Pitch EVAH.

I don't have the words.

But I will raise this with my wife.

The Tragic Sinkhole of Low Expectations

While I discuss politics and technology on this blog often, I usually try to avoid taking a side on controversial political issues.

Not today.

Today the Kentucky legislature will likely pass a budget that sends me a very clear statement: "we don't want your kind here." This budget cuts higher education by three percent - on top of the three percent cut already imposed a few months ago.

Kentucky has long been one of the poorest, least educated and least healthy states in the union. Smart and talented people leave the state for better educational opportunities and better jobs every day. They don't often come back. Since I've lived here, I've watched the Kentucky legislature waste its time debating false solutions like eliminating the prevailing wage for state construction projects and opening casinos, and side-show issues like requiring the flagship university to be a "Top 20 Public Institution" (whatever that means) by 2020 or posting the Ten Commandments in the State House while our education and health infrastructures continue to deteriorate.

The only way this state will ever reverse its fortunes is to make a substantially increased and sustained investment in the education and training of its people. But apparently that's a decision for another legislature at another time. Instead, by cutting higher education another three percent, the legislature tells people like me - educated professionals looking for a place to start a family - that Kentucky values cheap cigarettes over high-skill, high-wage jobs and a quality education for kids.

But it's the insult on top of the injury that prompted me to write this. What truly has me flummoxed is the reaction of Kentucky's leaders in higher education - they're not just pleased, they are - in their own words - ecstatic.

"Given the revenue constraints they had, I think it's a remarkable showing of how much both chambers value us," said Doug Whitlock, president of Eastern Kentucky University. "We recognize the realities of the situation."

Wayne Andrews, president of Morehead State University, said the lesser cuts mean the school won't have to hike tuition by double digits.

"I can say with confidence it's going to be less than 10 percent," Andrews said.

The universities must submit their proposed tuition increases to the Council on Postsecondary Education by April 25. The CPE will take action on the proposals at its May 9 meeting.

"I'm quite ecstatic," said Brad Cowgill, interim president of the council. " It's like a coming from behind win for the home team. Higher education has staying power with this legislature, and we're grateful for that."

University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd issued a statement saying that "our legislature and its leaders have indicated that they strongly believe that continued investment in our public universities is critical to Kentucky's future."

I'll try to be clear here: a six-percent cut in higher education is NOT an appropriate reason for college presidents to take a rhetorical victory lap. It's a reason for outrage. This budget is NOT an act of courage or a sign of commitment to education. It's a suicide pact that will send smart people looking for opportunity - the only hope for Kentucky's future - heading toward the exits. It's a sure sign that Kentucky is trapped in a cultural and political sinkhole of low expectations and profoundly wrong-headed thinking.

These statements were made in the context of the Governor's initial budget proposal of a 12 percent cut (on top of the three percent cut) in higher education - a manufactured political crisis intended to deliver the equine industry the windfall of a casino cartel it so desperately wanted. They were made in the context of a place that has historically placed education near the bottom of its list of priorities. The political tone was set from the very beginning - we could choose less education or no education. And for some reason that still escapes me, we hold no one to task for setting up that false set of choices.

This legislature gave lip service to raising revenues - specifically, increasing our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax or possibly the sales tax - to support higher education and human services. Again, no deal. The leadership of this state apparently gave more consideration to the idea of lopping off one-eighth of the higher education budget than it did to trying to keep pace with the education systems of other states. It also refuses to give state universities the ability to secure bonds, a common practice in nearly every other state. This is madness.

Despite a ridiculous statutory mandate to be in the "top 20," among public institutions by 2020, the University of Kentucky currently holds the 122nd spot among "national universities" in the US News & World Report Rankings, with at least 55 public universities ahead of it. The legislature did not make the University's job any easier.

And now, a message from Boing Boing to flacks

Buzz off.

Apparently our profession has become so pathetically bad at this - Boing Boing has a page devoted to HOW YOU SEND THEM STUFF, you know - that it's just a matter of time before bloggers say "you can send me stuff just as long as you don't do that sort of thing for a living."

Seriously - there's used car salesmen, then just below them there's lawyers, and just below them there's politicians, and then below them there's IRS agents, and then, at the bottom, there's us.

Facebook's worst nightmare

I know Facebook is spending a lot of time right now worrying about a lawsuit. The downside of social networking mega-sites, however, has absolutely nothing to do (well, almost nothing to do) with lawsuits. Facebook's worst nightmare is stuff like this:

Pro-anorexia websites offering tips on extreme dieting are nothing new, but their growth on social networking sites is a disturbing new twist and brings them within reach of a wider audience.

I can only imagine the anguish the parent of a child or teen with anorexia or bulimia would experience reading something like this. Social network sites are now so commonplace among teens. New groups pop up on Facebook every day. Youngsters (and adults) are looking online for health information, and for real-life stories and support from people who have common experiences. It's just too easy for a child suffering from these conditions to have unfettered access to this. Parents know to look for stalkers online, but now they have to worry about "health" information?

Facebook has done an incredible job building an outstanding social networking utility, and by opening up their platform to developer-generated applications, even the founders of Facebook can't predict its power and growth. However, with that power comes an incredible responsibility. The larger ISP's were reasonably effective in shutting down many of the most harmful "pro-ana" sites. The advent of massive social network sites brought this problem back. The capacity exists on facebook not only to send kids harmful messages, but to actually develop IT-based tools designed to "help" kids develop "strategies" to maintain this condition. Parents have to pay even closer attention to what their kids are doing online -- a "healthy diet and lifestyle" group or application may not be what it appears at a glance.

Facebook clearly has some liability and responsibility here as well, and there are a few options. For example, Wikipedia is monitored by a cadre of volunteers that fight against "vandalism" and inaccuracies. It's not a perfect system, but it's a model the for-profit Facebook should consider. Clearly this is a proceed-with-caution, free speech issue, but I really can't think of anything more important than health and safety.

While some might move to shut down social networks (or keep kids away), I think the answer is actually more engagement, not less - if for no other reason than these should not be the only voices in a discussion online, and they're not going away. I see two takeaway lessons here for companies in the food, nutrition, and health industries.

First, these companies need to move into the social network space strategically and quickly. The audience is there, and frankly, many in the audience may not be anywhere else online. While they may not be visiting blogs or branded health sites, they're still looking for the information companies provide. Seed the environment with facts, not over-the-top marketing platitudes. The audience is there and they're talking about the relevant issues and companies anyway. Be transparent part of the discussion, and part of the solution. This is your audience. Be where your audience is.

Second, vigilance is an absolute necessity. Keep track of what's happening on Facebook and other social network sites. Monitor the groups that are starting up. Companies won't necesarily be notified in a Google alert if someone is talking about you or your issues. Take action and notify the administrators when there's something wrong. Make sure the company is providing the facts and is responding to questions directly in the environment. Companies monitor everything else that's said about them - this should be no different.