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Reporting Incorporated: Gene Randall, Chevron, and the 'Dark Side'
Will journalists’ flight toward PR mean the end of reportorial integrity?
Former CNN correspondent-turned-PR consultant Gene Randall's video "report" for oil giant Chevron might be unprecedented for how it blurred the line between public relations and journalism. But the Randall-Chevron production raises not only ethical questions, but also the question of whether a surge of newly pink-slipped reporters might go, as one media critic put it, "over to the dark side" and how that might further muddy the line between news and corporate advocacy.
As detailed in a recent New York Times article, when Chevron, America's third largest corporation, heard that 60 Minutes was preparing a report about the $27 billion lawsuit filed against it for allegedly contaminating the Ecuador region of the Amazon rain forest, Chevron hired former TV newsman Randall to craft a video from the corporation's perspective, which was posted on YouTube and Chevron's Web site three weeks before the 60 Minutes report aired on May 3.
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley's investigation presented multiple perspectives while Randall's included only Chevron officials and consultants. Everyone interviewed in Randall's piece, in other words, was paid by Chevron, including Randall himself.
Randall's video also clearly strives to resemble an authentic news report, employing classic stylistic TV news techniques, while never informing the viewer it's a Chevron production. Most deceptive, however, is that Randall-looking like the consummate TV newsman-begins the video with the accompanying graphic "Gene Randall Reporting" and concludes with the voiceover: "This is Gene Randall reporting."
Yet Randall, who was laid off from CNN in 2001 and runs the corporate consulting firm Gene Randall Enterprises, told The New York Times, "This is not a news report. This is a client hiring a provider to tell its side of the story." Moreover, speaking with the National Journal Online, he said, "I don't portray it as a piece of journalism, but I used journalistic techniques in telling Chevron's side of the story." (Reached by phone, Randall declined to comment for this article.)
Author and media critic Norman Solomon thought it was absolutely "deceptive" for Randall "to sign off with the claim that he's been ‘reporting.'"
"And the whole effort by Chevron is just another attempt at media spin by a huge corporation with plenty to hide - with the added twist of hiring a former journalist to implicitly pretend that he's being a journalist while flaking for Chevron to defend the indefensible," Solomon wrote in an e-mail interview.
Kelly McBride, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism training center in Florida, agreed that Randall's use of the word "reporting" in the video was clearly intended to mislead.
"I guarantee you that is intentional," McBride said in a phone interview. "He was hired to imitate journalism and that's what he did." Yet she was not surprised to see it and expected such techniques to become increasingly prevalent because of today's ease of distribution.
"You can just put it up on YouTube now and if you can get it to go viral, you can easily trick your audience into thinking this is an authentic news report," said McBride.
Steve Rendall, senior analyst at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a national media watch group, found Randall's defense "disingenuous" and a distortion of the truth. "He is technically using some journalistic techniques...but in a selective and biased way," Rendall explained in a phone interview.
Solomon also saw Randall's approach as part of a broader effort by Chevron to exploit the air of credibility that journalism and venerable news outlets can lend, pointing to its relationship with PBS's NewsHour:
"Under Jim Lehrer, the NewsHour takes big bucks from Chevron and then allows Chevron to be, in effect, part of the program every night - presenting itself as imbued with a civic spirit, environmentally committed, noble and all-around good neighbors of everyone on the planet."
McBride said that as more corporations begin to package public relations and publicity messages in news formats, unemployed journalists flocking to corporate PR jobs are not the only cause for concern.
"Even if we weren't having the economic crisis in journalism...but we still had the same opening of the floodgates of information [via online social media], I think that it would be happening," McBride explained.
Rendall hopes that "media economics would not cause an exodus of journalists going over to the dark side" but believes "it's inevitable that we'll see some of that."
Whatever the future holds, McBride said, "As a society we are going to have to educate ourselves about what's really news and what is information that's meant to do something different than news."
With a burgeoning army of out-of-work journalists to lure with lucrative PR contracts and the simultaneous explosion of viral media, corporations are well positioned to gain from journalism's loss.
A legion of Gene Randalls "reporting" is certainly an unsettling future.
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14 Comments so far
Show Allthis is ma g reporting
we are here in fascist united states where the nwo/contollers are in firm control of the ever restless sheeple/saps
sure there is a rough spot now and then but generally we have the situation well in hand with the hired hands really going that extra mile for the corporations: fox news (i still get a kick ot of that one), fat boy, billy o'fuckball, glen beck (rumor has it though he is just one more faggy cry from being removed - i love my country man) and others
we have now secured the cash of the treasury via the bogus bank scam, the wars are well under way, we have gotten the sheeple detracted from that whole bill of rights/constitution bullshit, our citizen snooping program is bigger and better than ever, the housing mortgage default are still at an all time high but they are being seriously challenenged by the upswell in credit card defaults, the business default crisis is just around the corner - its always nice to have something to look forward to
brother obama has turned out to be a better judas than we had ever hoped - and we had high hopes
he's got more balls than dick tracy and he knows no shame
the little bastard had the nerve to go to egypt and give them arab boys a lesson on the history of the state of israel - like they never noticed the goyims had moved in.....
crassness you can believe in
meanwhile the sheeple/saps still know nothing about the geo-politics of the area - hey we don't want to cloud their minds) and we have been busy building bases are over hell's hal acre, funding psycho militants of every sort - pro-government or anti-government who gives a shit so long as they are killing someone
we continue to encircle those damn ruskies and we continue to squeezed the chinese out of the oil and gas of the area
in the homeland things are going well - we have already been quite successful in destroying the constitution, the bill of rights, habeus corpus, posse comitatus, and we have now stablished that torture is legal - hey it s even a lot of fun once you get those body parts bouncing around
the sheeple are homeless, no health care, no jobs, no hope and the banks are having the best year ever
talk about a perfect storm
soon...soon...we will start the final war for world domination and all i can say about that at this time is that china and russia better be wearing a stainless steel cup brother
this has been ma g reporting
Sioux Rose
MA G: If you could travel back in time 28 years would you be able to believe your own words?
Today I spoke with my life mentor who's 84 and breathes through an oxygen device. He tells me he wants to be liberated from this world, and I can understand his sentiments sometimes. I was telling him about the developments in the Homeland Security State when he tried to offer a response of optimism. He said, "Well, things will be better now under Obama." And that's when I had to bring him up to date with what is REALLY going on. I suspect in his assisted living facility the elders are herded into a major room to watch CNN (probably not Fox, it's in New Jersey!) and still trust that brand name to provide at least SOME truthful components. A lot of smart people have really been fooled by the dual team extravaganza brought to U.S. by lobbyists, unlimited. A lot of people hear Obama's words and because policies are volleyed around AS IF the words still mean something, they lose sight of the actual bills being passed and how these are tightening the grip on Americans while giving too much of their treasure to all the wrong, most corrupt players. It's very strange to see what's going on and realize how many do not. In fact, I think this is all premeditated to make the voices of truth sound like "the crazies," so divorced from mainstream "consensual reality" (even if it has been manufactured by the media-industrial complex) that no one should pay their rants or analyses the slightest regard. I don't think Orwell could have imagined how far things have declined! Truth is becoming harder and harder for persons to locate or discern in the cloud of lies, obfuscation, and purposeful deception that engulfs our nation like a stalled storm system.
so when are we going to nationalize our oil companies like the rest of the contemporary world?
interesting that the thing we call reality, not only is different from every single perspective, but can't actually be defined at all.
though i tend to accept things from a similar perspective ma g (and appreciate your intent), it is apparent that every other human accepts their perspective as the right one as well.
maybe we need to get back to square one...what is reality?
reality is the connection between our spirits, our bodies, and the delicate balance of inter-relatedness within the living world around us...the world that has provided the very molecules, we, and every other living thing, use to build and maintain our bodies...the molecules we actively exchange with every other living thing via every breath and heartbeat...every bite and defecation...we are all part of a wondrous, closed system, drifting through the frozen reaches of space, slowly turning on a spit at just the right distance from a huge, long-burning fire to stimulate temperature swings that keep things stirred up nicely without doing too much damage...the 'closed system' part is where responsibility regarding chemical alteration and resource useage (human life demands) comes in...
Geez, ma g, you need to get laid worse than I do.
This may not be as dire a development as the author, Brad Jacobson, implies. In the rapidly dying prior news media model of newspapers and network TV news, said outlets carried an inaccurate public imprimatur of impartiality. That has now been put paid, and what beckons before us is a multitude of media where their biases will be more readily evident. Just remember to always consider the source.
also, tv is optional...if the product is doubtful, why purchase? when is one asking to be misinformed?
yes thanks dubet and yes thanks ma g on your reply that seems to have disappered
it seems the worst we can do, after personally having spent all of the last 26 yrs trying to achieve something,(lol) is to try to achieve anything in this already perfect system...
Sioux Rose
Astrological correlation: Jupiter is the planet that is said to govern the publishing world. It is also the governor of all academic disciplines. Its orbit is 12 years.
Neptune is the planet of duplicity, deception, and delusion. (It also governs fossil fuels and all forms of drugs, including big pharma's long list of dubious concoctions). Neptune's orbit is 165 years.
Aquarius is the sign of Truth, however with the planet of deception crossing it (since l998, the cycle is completed in 2012) the very NATURE of truth is being diluted. It's a toss up whether reporters would fall under the winged "god" Mercury's purview. Mercury generally relates to local forms of communication. In today's global media nexus, I think Jupiter qualifies as the major influence over published news.
Therefore the current symbolic MERGER between Jupiter and Neptune not only is showing us that every Truth spoken by our man from hope has inverted upon itself and fallen into the category of deception, but as this article portrays, a great many who won respect as reporters are about to use the skill of semblance to further blur the lines between corporate truths (which is to say truthiness, its "substantial equivalent") and the REAL thing. But no worries mate, it's all in the interest of growing the Mammon-Mars mass media machine which feeds on insatiable profits, and the cost? Why just EVERYthing, inclusive of the sacred!
It seems we approach the point where everything OUTSIDE ourselves that is stated as "fact" is suspect.
How can we determine the truth when that which is presented as truth is in fact some PR campaign for a Corporation or a disinformation campaign launched by some group like the CIA?
Or that is some long held myth formulated long ago by some "wise" man as a means to controlling the other?
We look here for truth but even that is tainted by the continual exposure it has to lies and falsehoods. We all look for our own Messiahs, be they Journalists, Political leaders, Humanitarians, Wiccans, Christians, Muslims, Astrologers, Scientists, Financial analysts or Political theorists.
What is really TRUE and what is something that LOOKS like truth but is simply an opinion shaped by our being birthed in a world of lies and deceptions?
The Gnostics believed that the physical world and our physical bodies, all that is material was SIN and created by an inferior god.
I suppose if we really want to learn what is TRUE we have to look within and try to understand the SELF. Intuition, hunches and what FEELS right is quite possibly as close to the truth as we will ever get.
I lived in Fort Macmurray Alberta and moved up there when that vast area North of the town was still forests and lakes and hills and stream. When I "Looked" at it , there was great beauty. Look at it now and it all UGLINESS. Perhaps it looks ugly because in truth it IS?
The Chevrons of the World take what is good out of nature and turn it into a cesspool for profits sake. They have people killed for profits sake. They enrich a small handful and impoverish the many for profits sake.
It does not feel right to me. In my heart it is wrong. Looking on pools of black oil on the forest floor feels wrong and looks obscene. That is all the TRUTH i need.
Anything one does not know probably deserves some suspicion.
A useful focus may be to distrust anything paid for by corporate advertising. If you see the ad, figure you have some idea whose POV you're getting.
...presenting itself as imbued with a civic spirit, environmentally committed, noble and all-around good neighbors of everyone on the planet except Nigerian citizens whom they seem to gun down at every opportunity.
Chevron is about Greenwashing the public and supressing electric car technology,ie the NMH battery patents they bought and sat on.(see Who killed the electric car GM and Chevron)I believe one of thier former board members a retired Marine general is in the Obama administration now taking Condelesa Rices place' for Chevron in the proxy government.Didn't "Condi" have a Chevron single hulled tanker named after her until it was renamed? peace