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Re: About IETF communication skills

2008-07-31 15:39:09
On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:08:57 +0100
<michael(_dot_)dillon(_at_)bt(_dot_)com> wrote:

Maybe IETF should be thinking about what actions and 
policies, uniformly applied, will result in the most accurate 
representation of its work to the community.

In my experience, the best action to take would be to advise,
or teach, people how to handle media interviews. Back when I 
used to regularly talk to journalists I had no problem with
their articles because I planned the interviews in advance. 
I made sure that I had no more than two or three key points
to make, I prepared a sound bite or two, and I repeated myself.

There is an art in taking complex technical material and
explaining it in layman's terms, but that is exactly what
you must do with journalists if you want them to accurately
represent your message. Even journalists who cover technology
are not technologists themselves. Their specialty is writing
and they can only write what you CLEARLY and consistently
explain to them.

It can be especially hard for people with a deep technical
understanding of something, complete with a multitude of 
corner cases, to summarize in laymans' terms and gloss
over the details. That's why I agree with Keith that some
IETF action would be beneficial here.

I agree that learning how to talk to reporters is important.  You won't
always get what you want, but it will help.  However, I don't agree
that "official" IETF action is a good idea.

Note that one way to approach the issue is to hold official
press conferences at which only accredited members of the
press can ask questions. By doing this you focus attention
on a few people who would, hopefully, prepare for the event
and understand how to explain the work to ordinary people
like journalists and their readers. This doesn't prevent the
press from attending other meetings and it doesn't prevent 
IETF members from talking to the press. What it does do is
hold out the carrot of quality communication, and one hopes
that the press will appreciate the effort and make full use
of it. Indeed, the invitations should explicitly solicit
clarifying questions about anything that the journalist
has already begun working on.


I don't know what "accredited" means anymore.  Too often, it turns into
ways to exclude unfriendly or non-mainstream reporters, or to plant
favorable ones.  See
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/09/white.house.reporter/ for one
example, but the opposite effect -- excluding unfriendly reporters --
has also happened.  Back when I was an editor of one of my university's
student papers, New York City press passes were issued by the police
department to "members of the working press".  This, of course,
excluded student reporters, and since police brutality towards student
demonstrators was an issue then this was a non-trivial handicap.  These
days, the analogous issue is whether or not bloggers are "real"
journalists.  I would hope that most IETFers would object to that
distinction.

To put it bluntly, I'm not at all in favor of trying to manage news
coverage, especially by organizational mechanisms.  Say what you mean,
say it clearly, and publish your own blog/newsletter/whatever if you
need to.  Complaints about misconstrued quotes are also appropriate,
because any system needs a feedback channel.  But trying to control the
press is not only worse than the disease, it's counter-productive.
(I'd be astonished if the reporter in question were not reading this
thread -- what will the next story be?)



                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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