Part two
IN last week’s column, we answered MJ’s inquiry if it was possible for PR practitioners to fight fake news, a sad reality we face these days.
We were able to get some very valuable insights from Katie Creaser, senior vice president for Affect, who, in an article in PR Online News, gave some tips on “How PR Can Fight #Fake News and Why It Should”.
Creaser underscores how important it is for PR practitioners to work hard “alongside our partners in the media, supporting their work to keep the public informed of the truth”. In short, we should be a source of credible, reliable news in all our communications. That way, we cannot only protect our brand, but prevent the rise of alternative news.
Creaser has five suggestions in her article:
1. Pitch real news and real value to media;
2. Use real sources to demonstrate our deep expertise and knowledge;
3. Create real content, working on our own materials and skills;
4. Be ethical and transparent, as we are gatekeepers to content that is shared with the public; and
5. Use your powers for good by discouraging the spread of fake news within our networks, and consider supporting organizations committed to supporting journalism.
With the proliferation of so much fake news during the last few weeks, we would also like to share another article with our PR colleagues on how we as practitioners can insure the quality of our content.
In MarketingProfs.Com, Ilana Plumer not only gives some tips, but also gives us some very interesting background on the rise of fake news. She writes in how it all began in “Fake News Means Fact-Checking Must Be Part of Your Content Strategy”.
“In 2005 comedian Stephen Colbert popularized the term ‘truthiness’, which he defined as the belief in what you feel to be true than what the facts will support. The word tapped into the zeitgeist, and the Oxford Dictionary decreed it Word of the Year 2006.”
Ten years, hence, in November 2016, “a Buzzfeed News analysis found the 20 fake news articles about the US election” shared most frequently on Facebook were interacted with almost 1.4 million times more than the 20 most shared real news stories about the election.
More alarming, “with money to be made in peddling phony news, sites have sprung up in countries like Georgia and Macedonia with the sole purpose of generating ad revenue”.
What can we do? “Fact-checking has been discussed as a way to debunk fake news [Facebook recently announced a partnership with a fact-checking network]. But as Plumer says, fact-checking isn’t just for journalists. It’s important for content marketers, too.”
Here’s why fact-checking is important. It is “an issue of credibility”, Plumer said. “If your brand can’t be trusted to post accurate content, why should customers trust its claims about its products? If your brand doesn’t have a strong reputation, it doesn’t have much.”
Fact-checking also minimizes your brand’s vulnerability to libel lawsuits or another dangerous mistake, plagiarism.
Plumer then gives some tips on how to incorporate fact-checking into your communication’s editorial process. She begins by describing how in her firm, “fact- checkers have become a vital part of our editing process and give us valuable peace of mind. They correct our errors, clarify areas that are vague, and steer us clear of any major mistakes that could misinterpret the topic.”
She has, in fact, a content strategist, writer and fact-checker on her team, who have a process of working and reviewing the content before sending it out to the client. While the process may be different in each company, it is important to include fact-checking as its own step, separate from editing and revising.
But how does a fact-checker ensure the information is accurate? She shared with us some tips:
• Confirm against multiple sources. “Information is more reliable if it comes from one source,” Plumer said.
• Provide context. This, Plumer said, can be especially important for statistics as “numbers are tricky things. Be wary of quoting a statistic or number without context or a clear source”.
• Check for plagiarism. “Even an honest writer with good intentions will sometimes pull a quote from an article and forget to cite the original author,” she cautioned. “A fact-checker will identify text taken from somewhere else and make sure it’s either properly cited or rewritten.”
• If in doubt, leave it out. “If you can’t verify a fact from multiple sources or if a statistic seems strange for some reason, don’t include it,” she said. “Instead, find something you are confident is accurate and genuine.”
The key is to make fact-checking a part of your editorial process “to make sure there is no truthiness in your content, just hard, cold facts”. “In the end,” Plummer said, “it feels good to publish content you know is authoritative and accurate”.
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the UK-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier association for senior professionals around the world. Millie Dizon, the senior vice president for Marketing and Communications of SM, is the former local chairman.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer the reader’s questions about public relations. Please send your comments and questions to askipraphil@gmail.com.