Story of the Day: Gene Randall 'Reporting,' Inc. (CJR Article)

My article published today in Columbia Journalism Review:

Former CNN correspondent-turned-PR consultant Gene Randall’s video “report” for oil giant Chevron might be unprecedented for how it blurred the line between public relations and journalism. But the Randall-Chevron production raises not only ethical questions, but also the question of whether a surge of newly pink-slipped reporters might go, as one media critic put it, “over to the dark side” and how that might further muddy the line between news and corporate advocacy.

As detailed in a recent New York Times article, when Chevron, America’s third largest corporation, heard that 60 Minutes was preparing a report about the $27 billion lawsuit filed against it for allegedly contaminating the Ecuador region of the Amazon rain forest, Chevron hired former TV newsman Randall to craft a video from the corporation’s perspective, which was posted on YouTube and Chevron’s Web site three weeks before the 60 Minutes report aired on May 3.

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley’s investigation presented multiple perspectives while Randall’s included only Chevron officials and consultants. Everyone interviewed in Randall’s piece, in other words, was paid by Chevron, including Randall himself.

Randall’s video also clearly strives to resemble an authentic news report, employing classic stylistic TV news techniques, while never informing the viewer it’s a Chevron production. Most deceptive, however, is that Randall—looking like the consummate TV newsman—begins the video with the accompanying graphic “Gene Randall Reporting” and concludes with the voiceover: “This is Gene Randall reporting.”

Yet Randall, who was laid off from CNN in 2001 and runs the corporate consulting firm Gene Randall Enterprises, told The New York Times, “This is not a news report. This is a client hiring a provider to tell its side of the story.” Moreover, speaking with the National Journal Online, he said, “I don’t portray it as a piece of journalism, but I used journalistic techniques in telling Chevron’s side of the story.” (Reached by phone, Randall declined to comment for this article.)

Author and media critic Norman Solomon thought it was absolutely “deceptive” for Randall “to sign off with the claim that he’s been ‘reporting.’”

“And the whole effort by Chevron is just another attempt at media spin by a huge corporation with plenty to hide — with the added twist of hiring a former journalist to implicitly pretend that he’s being a journalist while flaking for Chevron to defend the indefensible,” Solomon wrote in an e-mail interview.

Kelly McBride, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism training center in Florida, agreed that Randall’s use of the word “reporting” in the video was clearly intended to mislead.

“I guarantee you that is intentional,” McBride said in a phone interview. “He was hired to imitate journalism and that’s what he did.” Yet she was not surprised to see it and expected such techniques to become increasingly prevalent because of today’s ease of distribution.

Read the rest of the article HERE. (Don't miss the particularly devastating quote by Solomon on PBS NewsHour's relationship with Chevron.)

Comments

[Brad Jacobson]

Gene Randall 'Reporting,' Inc. (CJR Article)

[ckerst]

Corporations have been doing this forever. They send out press releases that are nothing more than advertising dressed up as a news story. Only the most gullible or lazy editor would run one as news.

[Paul]

In point of fact, the piece is more than a mere study in shabby ethics. It's an act of wire fraud, one count for each broadcast, one count for each YouTube download/playing.

[Anna]

Randall can claim he was forced to take the gig because of the hardships he’s facing in the job market, but the fact that he uses the word “reporting”, when he’s clearly not reporting, is deliberately deceitful. Chevron is simply trying to manipulate viewers by packaging its message as objective news.
For the truth about what happened in Ecuador, check out this blog: http://www.thechevronpit.blogspot.com

[donne russe]

It's an act of wire fraud, one count for each broadcast, one count for each YouTube download/playing.

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