PRSA’s Strategy to Out-Communicate Misinformation

Doug Downs (00:05):

You've no doubt heard the story about Mark Twain and how journalists mistakenly reported that he had died. Well, here's what happened. In May, 1897, there was a rumor among newspaper journalists that Mark Twain was either dead or dying of a serious illness. It was actually his cousin who was ill. And Frank Marshall White of the New York Journal, mixed up his Twains and sent a note to Mark Twain's publisher asking if he died yet. Twain himself responded by letter. "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." You've heard that. Now, the irony in all of this is that's not what Twain actually wrote in his letter. In fact, he wrote "The Report of My Death was An Exaggeration," slightly different, but the famous quote is the one that still goes around. Here's another irony, despite what some online sources might tell you, including Chat GPT, no obituary for Twain was ever published at that time.

(01:04):

It was a simple inquiry from the journalist to the publisher. Now, 10 years later, Twain did get a premature obituary of sorts while he was yachting, the waters his boat was supposed to be in became rough and the air foggy. The New York Times published a piece saying he'd likely been lost at sea. But in fact, Twain's boat hadn't even set sail yet that did go public. But when Twain corrected it, he didn't have a pithy quote at the time. So it's not nearly as famous and memorable.

(01:36):

Truth is we can't blame social media or generative AI for misinformation. It's always existed, but technology in 2024 makes it circulate so much faster and various forces are making use of that to spread mistruths and try to dictate narratives. With 50 countries holding elections this year alone, that's a big deal today on stories and strategies, the Public Relations Society of America is taking a fresh approach to misinformation. One that recognizes it has and always will exist. One that's more community focused as Mark Twain once wrote. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it's because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities and truth is not.

(02:39):

My name is Doug Downs. My guest this week is Ray Day, joining today from one of my favorite cities, Detroit, Michigan. Hey Ray.

(02:46):

Hello, Doug. How are you? I'm good.

(02:49):

So I used to like to say I lived in South Detroit, which the inside joke is that that's Windsor, right? There is no South Detroit I lived in London, Ontario, but beautiful

Ray Day (03:01):

Area. Absolutely. And Detroit is a great city. I'm very proud of my hometown and a lot of things happening, including as we're taping this, the NFL draft. So good things are happening for Detroit

Doug Downs (03:12):

And the Lions were making a push.

Ray Day (03:14):

Absolutely. Great to see. This is our year. I'm hoping

Doug Downs (03:17):

Tigers. We'll see. Ray, you're the vice chair of Stagwell supporting StagWell's more than 70 global agencies with a focus on communications, public relations, corporate affairs, and reputation. You have more than 30 years experience as a chief communications officer, leading global communications teams, brands and agencies for companies like IBM and Ford. You have your accreditation in public relations or APR and you are PRSA's 2024 Chair elect. Congratulations on taking on more work. That sounds,

Ray Day (03:51):

Sounds exciting. Thank you my friend. Thank you my friend. It's a great organization. I'm honored to be part of the leadership.

Doug Downs (03:56):

Absolutely. So Ray misinformation, and I know we're using that as kind of an umbrella term because there's misinformation, there's disinformation, and there's malformation all, which to me it's all bad, but it sort of gets steadily worse on that scale. What PRSA has done here, and it's the reason I love this because we've done episodes on, oh, misinformation is bad, but what PRSA has done is collect perspectives from more than two dozen communicators, news media as well as academia. This is a stakeholder engagement exercise to form ideas on how to tackle that umbrella term for misinformation. Tell me a bit about that collective effort just to start.

Ray Day (04:41):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think first starting with PRSA and what our purpose in life is, we do three things really, really well. We build each other and we build the profession, we connect each other and we influence. And when it comes to influence, that means from time to time being advocates and taking on some of our professions and frankly, society's biggest issues and miss this. And malformation is certainly one of them. And you're right, there are different definitions. I think the nuance between the three is one is false information, which is bad. It confuses people. But what really, really gets ugly is the intent to do harm and whether to influence election, whether to impute someone's reputation, whether to take down a company, whatever it is. We as an organization said, we've all been talking about missed dis and malformation from some time. We brought together the icons of the industry to start to take action and that was really our charge, that there was no shortage of people out there having opinions, writing papers, white papers, term papers on this subject. What we decided to do was bring together agency CEOs, chief communications officers, publishers and editors from the news media and academia and academics who are studying this and becoming experts in this space, all with the intent of doing something about it.

Doug Downs (06:13):

Where did you land? So I love this idea. How did you get to the action steps and what are those?

Ray Day (06:18):

Yeah, absolutely. We said, first of all, as we approached this, we all came together in New York in person for an evening and we had three things that we wanted to achieve together. One, we wanted to calibrate on what we were talking about. So let's get the definitions out there. And that was quick and easy. We all talk about this all the time. Two, we wanted to get to the root cause, what is causing dis in malformation, and I've been a part a lot of these discussions in the past. And nine times out of 10 in my past discussions, people said, well, if we just didn't have social media, this would go away. Well, I don't know

Doug Downs (07:00):

That that's true

Ray Day (07:01):

Though. It's not true at all. And we quickly said, this is not a technology issue, it's a human behavior issue. And then we spent most of our time saying, okay, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it in 2024? And then we'll build from there. So the three action steps that we agreed in, kind of a fourth as a preamble was number one, we all agreed that we compete with each other vigorously were agency people, were communications people, we're business people who all compete at like industries. And this is a full context sport, communications and pr, and we do it really, really well. But what we decided, and again in the first five minutes of coming together, we're going to put all that away. We're going to put down our guard and we are going to work together like never before.

(07:49):

And to do that, the three action steps we talked about was number one, helping communications people, anyone who communicates, whether you are a student, whether you're a teacher, whether you're in a business, whether you're in an agency, show communicators how to get back to excellence in communications because as we are dissecting what's going on and who's causing misinformation, the malformation, what really came down to the conclusion is we're being out communicated. These bad actors out there are in many times communicating better than we are. So first and foremost, get back to basics and start achieving and upping our game for world-class communications. That was number one. Number two was creating an education campaign and helping educate consumers about how to spot MS now and misinformation and then help them how to call it out, be more skeptical and in their circle of friends, in their communities, in a respectful way, start to do something about it.

(08:57):

And really the lesson we pointed to is the truth initiative and all the education that has been done in the last couple of decades on education around tobacco use, not just in this country but around the world. And again, it was bringing together leaders, thought leaders, influencers around facts and data, but then educating, educating, educating, educating. What that's done now was create a movement and we know where we are in terms of the reduction in tobacco use. And then our third agreement was to partner together like never before to bring together cross industry cooperation, to bring together best practices to bring together learning. There is some fantastic facts, data and learning happening in academia that until we all got around a big table together, the icons in the industry we'd never seen before. And that sort of partnership is what we need to do. So world-class communications, educate, educate, educate and partner together like never before.

Doug Downs (10:04):

I want to dig in, I think it's into number two in particular because when I hear the term educate, I must admit the hairs on the back of my neck start to pop up a little who's trying to educate me? Why are you trying to educate me? Who do you think you are to educate me? But you and I have talked before that recording this, it's really a community level approach. The education doesn't need to be from the top down. In fact, maybe it kind of shouldn't. The education can be a sharing from the community level up. Can you expand on that a bit? I love that idea.

Ray Day (10:39):

Yeah, you're spot on. And we said early on this was a human behavior issue and we all have to respect and think about human behavior. None of us likes to be shouted at, none of us likes to be preached to. None of us, particularly in the US likes to be told what we can and can't do. We need to respect human behavior. So it does start at the grassroots level. And one of the academic experts we're working with is actually leading the pilot program in South Florida right now where she is bringing together communities, communities that have formed around faith, around sports, around interest, around race, age, whatever it is.

(11:25):

She identified 20 communities and within each community she has placed one, what she calls communicator navigator in that community. And then navigator's role is to be attached to that community. And then the 20 navigators get together once a week. And the discussion is what are you hearing? What are you hearing that's going well? What are you hearing that's not going well? And what are you hearing at a misinformation and what do we need to do to help these communities help themself? Let's not us go take them over. Let's teach them, let's educate them and let's help them learn how to self-Correct. And it's early days for this pilot program, but Doug, you are absolutely right and everything we've seen starting with the community level and really being respectful of people from a human behavior standpoint, we can shout facts and data at people every day of the week. What we learn from the truth initiative is first what people, most people just want to be heard. If they have a point of view, if they have heard something that they believe is accurate or not, they just want to be heard out. So first, listen to people, talk with people, then educate them with your perspective, your facts and data. Let them come to their conclusions. And I can absolutely tell you that nine times out of 10, it's going to be a much more respectful and successful process in the end.

Doug Downs (12:59):

And it could be just process. They may at the heart of it, not disagree with the right side of the equation. There could be something for them on the left side of the equation that's an impediment to getting to where we need to go. So flipping that around, part of what you want to become is an industry-wide communications partnership, a respected entity here. But how do you become that partnership when we've sort of had one the last a hundred plus years, the news media, the news media, its originality was to persuade, there's no doubt about it going back a couple of centuries, but morphed into journalism objective, just truth, fair, honest. And the news media quite frankly ranks very, very low on our scale of trusted entities these days. So how do you do this?

Ray Day (13:56):

Yeah, absolutely. And it's the reason we involved news media in our discussion and part of our partnership. We had the publisher of Axios with us as well as several others who are gladly part of the process. And first and foremost, we all need to respect our role in the communications process. The agencies and the corporate communicators and the academics can't live and do their jobs without the news media. And we have to all come to that. And we had this discussion at the table that this is an ecosystem, this is a communications ecosystem with on the news media side, a broken business model. And we really need to help the news media fix that business model from a business perspective so that we have long-term continuity, but all of us coming together around a common interest of trust. I have a passion and I've had a passion for many, many years that there is going to be a shakeout in what we all do for a living and it's going to be based on trust.

(15:05):

And the winners are going to be those who people are going to ask the question, whom do I trust? Whom do I really trust and who don't I trust? And when you look at institutions in general, there are different degrees. The news media might be a bit lower than or on par with government and businesses more trusted. But trust in general today has been shaken. And there is one of the stats that we have out there and misinformation is 50% of Americans today don't know what they're reading something, whether it's true or not. And I think it's a stat particularly on social media. But when one out of two people aren't sure whether they can trust something, that's a pervasive issue for all of us. And it is something we all agreed that trust is what unites us. Trust is core to what we all do for a living. Trust is core to communication. So improving trust long-term by near term solving one of these issues that erodes trust, misinformation, malformation, disinformation will serve us all whether you're in the news media or whether you're an agency, CEO,

Doug Downs (16:25):

Excellent. When truth is fact, you use the tobacco industry. We're far enough along, we have fact we can't debate this anymore. And there are no doubt other things in today's world where some of us say that's fact. The scientific process has been applied and it's fact stop debating and others who say, oh, no, no, I have anecdotal evidence that suggests otherwise when truth is fact and it's scientifically proven, that's one thing. But when truth typically begins as theory as it should, because then you need to test the theory. How do we come to a consensus point when my lived experience is blue and yours is red and all we have is scientific theory? How then do we find truth?

Ray Day (17:11):

Absolutely. It goes back to human behavior. And it goes back to you said it well, it's process when we have a debate, when we're trying to educate human beings and we start out with science or facts and data and we become very rational, emotional people bristle often about it. And I think we have to combine rationality with emotionality as we're having this discussion. Amen. And again, realize we are all human beings. And even on tobacco, there are still people out there. You said the facts and the science are clear. There are people out there today who still don't agree with those facts in science. And those people to be able to have a respectful dialogue with them, they first want to be heard. And I think one of my dreams in my career and in this communications industry is that we can start to have civil discussions with people.

(18:26):

We can provide our point of view. Your point of view. We can weave in some facts and data from trusted or somewhat trusted institutions, and then we can agree to disagree if that's where we come out and then still go have lunch together or still go to the bar together and not have civil discourse. And that's another part of what PRSA is pushing for is civility. And this goes part and parcel with communications. It goes part and parcel with mystic and malformation is we're trying to improve civility. We are a very divided word. One of the things my company has been working on is looking at the language we use today in informal conversations, in news releases, and it goes to this project or misinformation. And there are just absolute trigger words that set people off and they shut down. And that's part of the education is help people understand that when you use these trigger words, you may have the best intent. You're not going to be able to have people hear you, hear any facts or even come to the conclusion you're trying to lead people to. And again, that second bucket of education is really just helping people be able to have respectful, constructive, and positive discussions with people. And at the end of the day, bring people together. People are divided enough. How do we as communicators collectively bring people back together?

Doug Downs (20:07):

Completely agree. And I can't help but think maybe we need to stop identifying one another along these tribal lines, Republican, Democrat in Canada, liberal conservative or NDP. We have three main parties and then others left or right. We keep applying labels to people. I'm not a label. I might lean left on something, but I might lean right on something else. It doesn't make me a label. The only label I accept is Doug.

Ray Day (20:37):

Absolutely. And even I was just talking the other day with a researcher who is studying eastern culture versus western culture, the way we've labeled cohorts and generations in the Western society versus the way other parts of the world are extremely different. Why do we do that? Again, we're putting a haphazard label on people. It was started for the sake of marketing at one point in time, but does a Gen Z person versus a millennial people, do those two labels really do justice, do Gen Z?

Doug Downs (21:14):

They don't all think alike, right? Absolutely. All the Gen Zs think the same, don't they?

Ray Day (21:17):

Absolutely. Absolutely. So you're spot on in terms of labels. So again, it's important for us all to understand all of that about human psychology, about human behavior, and that's core to starting to take action on misinformation. It is absolutely core for us to be able to move from just talking about this to start to do something about

Doug Downs (21:38):

It. I love that. One of the big points is step one for us in communications or marketing is identify your audience, right? Well identify your goal, but then identify your chosen audiences. And what we're saying is let's start to split that apart in the interest of a more civil society. Absolutely. Ray, how do people get involved? Do I have to be a member of PRSA to get involved in this? How can anyone get involved?

Ray Day (22:03):

No, absolutely not. We want, again, this is a partnership to bring everyone together and PRSA is doing this as part of our commitment to be advocates for this great communications industry. And I say that in the broadest way. So psa.org, you go to our website and you check out all the resources. We've produced a playbook as a result of this initial discussion with these industry icons. It is chock full of what we all agreed, what we're working on near term. And I think what I love the most about this playbook guidebook is the resources. There are so many hyperlinks that will point you in so many different directions. If you're leading a community group, there is a resource for you to tell you how to start it. You also can get connected to like-minded people in communities. So psa.org, whether you're a member or a non-member, and for those who are members of PRSA, particularly those who are listening, who are chapter leaders, each member, each of these industry icons who were at the table have agreed while they're on business travel to go out and spend time in monthly forums or whatever the chapters want.

(23:27):

They will come in person and present what we're doing on this mail and disinformation. So added bonus for those on the PRSA side.

Doug Downs (23:37):

There you go. That sounds like an event. Ray, I really appreciate your time today.

Ray Day (23:42):

Absolutely appreciate all you're doing on a very important topic. Thank you, Doug.

Doug Downs (23:47):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest Ray Day, we've got some contact information in the show notes. If you're a member of prsa, you can download the guidebook. As Ray was saying, there is a link to that actually in the show notes too. You can go to prsa.org or just scroll through the show notes and click the link. It's all right there. Member or non-member, you can get the guidebook stories and strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. Those mean the world to us here and we read the reviews on future episodes. Lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.