Media Manipulation - fact or fiction

Media Manipulation - fact or fiction - a frank conversation with Ryan Holiday (@ryanholiday), author of Trust Me I'm Lying -- Confessions of a Media Manipulator and Peter Shankman (@petershankman), VP, Small Business Evangelist at Vocus.




Broadcast Live - August 1st, 1:30pm ET (GMT-4) - at http://www.youtube.com/ducttapemarketing




The live Google+Hangout will also feature guest commentary from David Meerman Scott (@dmscott), author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Amy Cosper (@EntMagazineAmy), Editor-in-Chief, Entrepreneur magazine and Shel Holtz (@shelholtz), Principal, Holtz Communication + Technology.


The event moderator is John Jantsch (@ducttape) of Duct Tape Marketing.

• Category

  Howto & Style

[Instig8iveJournalism]

Here's the elephant in the room: reporters don't deserve sources. Either they should find them, or do without. A source from HARO was selected to confirm something, while a real life source should be able to change things.

[Ryan Holiday]

You said it better than I did. I talk about this a little in the book but HARO is the confirmation bias embodied.

[richardgarand]

What drives someone like Michael Arrington to write the way they do? Reader demand. As long as we are willing to accept lower standards and reward them, we will get them. The line between news and entertainment is changing and we haven't figured out where it lands yet.

[TRAdamTM]

I find it a bad analogy with monster.com. in the recruitment world we have a culture of vetting resumes, in journalism (apparently) we don't. also, recruitment might lose you some cash for hiring someone unskilled, misinformation is a systemic problem of society and therefore far higher on the ethics scale than recruiting someone that lied on his resume.

Peters assertion is false that HARO has -no- responsibility in the matter. They don't have -all- the responsibility of course, but -some-.

[Kayode Nwanze]

Peter Shankman can't fathom the idea that someone would write a book to make a point. All he can say is 'Ryan's trying to sell books, he should admit it' And I can only assume that for him to think this way is because he himself would only write a book to make sales. Which is why I've never heard of his book.

[Rosie Taylor]

I love David's question about monster.com vetting resumes. That says it all. I also like what Shel says about clients vetting their PR and marketing professionals. In the end, the best question is "What do we do?"

[Rob Dobson]

If Peter was less defensive and less angry he'd come across a LOT better. All he really needed to do was say "Yes, HARO can be abused, it's very difficult for us to get round that but we're looking into it" and then add a ratings system for sources on the site, or an up-front warning on the site, etc. He would have side-stepped all this easily. Instead he decided to fight from a position of weakness, and whilst he was emotionally compromised.

[Gavin Doran]

Look, Peter, we sit here and talk about values & you bash Ryan, yet for some reason want to just shuffle responsibility entirely on the journalist. Just because checking sources isn't 100% in Haro's 'job description', if you know about a problem and have the ability to take steps in a direction to make an entire system better, you would think that a company with good values and ethics would jump on that chance to better the system, just based on principle alone. Drop your ego and open your eyes.

[Itshalffull]

I think anyone involved in the system needs to take responsiblity for their part. HARO and journalists should both take their responsiblity.

[Dianne Davis]

This guy Ryan comes across as such a punk. And I am not really sure what his ax is to grind with HARO?! Shouldn't his issue be with reporters and not HARO, Craigslist, etc!?? HARO is a resource, nothing more. Good conversation. Thanks for organizing.