Re: About IETF communication skills

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On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:08:57 +0100
<michael.dillon@xxxxxx> 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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