LETTERS - Letter to the Editor

Chief Executive, The, July, 2001

Back to Media School

Hallelujah! It's about time someone wrote an article telling CEOs to wise up and prepare for dealings with the media ("Business Smart, Media Dumb," CE: May 2001).

Coaching CEOs on dealing with the media not only helps them and their companies, but it makes for potentially better relations with the media and the public. When a reporter wants a story, he or she doesn't want a PR firm or pat, deflective answers. Editors and reporters zero in on top executives or anyone in the organization who'll talk.

Either craft your story for the media or they'll create their own--and the results may not be pleasing. With training and planning, corporate/media relationships can be efficient and productive for both, regardless of the sensitivity of the topic.

William W. Taylor

CEO

Media Advisors International

Dallas, TX

Case for a Communications Officer Critiquing CEOs' media relations shortcomings is becoming a rite of passage for consultants as predictable as the yearly decoding of annual report semantics.

This is not to suggest that Bernice Kanner didn't accurately and provocatively portray how otherwise confident and sure-handed CEOs botch their relationships with the press ("Business Smart, Media Dumb," CE May 2001). The newspapers regularly provide case study material and Kanner thoroughly covers and analyzes the most recent lot of executive bloopers.

But, as Mark Twain once noted, "A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."

Which may give us hope for the next generation of CEOs, if not the incumbents, who have built their careers avoiding anything that can't be charted on an income statement. From their earliest days at MBA school, right through corporate promotions of increasing responsibility, the focus and emphasis of these CEOs' purview was on criteria that can be quantified. Anything as remotely nebulous as perceptions or as subjective and skeptical as media scrutiny was not on their agenda. MBA electives in communications, with their golden rules of conduct, don't cut it.

Helping, not hectoring, CEOs would be a better service.

Quality of management, a popular standard evoked often, is a result of pluralism. A select core of executives define it for the company, along with the CEO. Fault transfer is not a prerogative.

If, for example, the chief legal officer takes responsibility for the company's legal affairs, why shouldn't the chief communications officer be similarly accountable for harmonious external relations?

Isn't that where the buck really stops?

John F. Budd, Jr.

Chairman & CEO

The Omega Group

New York, NY

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