Responding Better in Anger to the Media

Peter Loge, Director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary was punished for “abusive behavior” by social media platform Twitter and given a 12-hour timeout suspension. For a government spokesperson, that’s a significant public correction and penalty.

Twitter acted after The Associated Press reported Christina Pushaw, in an effort to defend her boss, conducted herself in such a manner that led to a reporter receiving threats and other online abuse.

Pushaw was angered by a story written by AP's Tallahassee, Florida-based reporter Brendan Farrington, who wrote about that one of DeSantis’ largest donors invests in a company making COVID-19 treatment drug Regeneron. This was obviously big news considering DeSantis “has been touting the monoclonal antibody treatment throughout the state,” AP reporter David Bauder writes.

Pushaw defended her upset at the reporting.

“The backlash (Farrington) is receiving is a direct result of his and AP's decision to cherry pick facts to prop up a false narrative, which sadly puts the lives of your readers at risk,” she said. “If people falsely believe Regeneron — a clinically proven lifesaving treatment — is part of a corruption scheme, they will hesitate to get it, and this causes harm.”

The AP stands by its story.

In another tweet, Pushaw wrote pressed Farrington to correct his reporting or she would “put you on blast.” She also stoked the fires on the platform, sharing a tweet that said “Light. Them. Up.” She also used a common, trendy phrase on the platform, meant to incite hostility, “drag them.”

Farrington has commented that he received online threats and hateful messages, even going so far as to say “For your sake, I hope government doesn't threaten your safety. I'll be fine, I hope. Freedom. Just please don't kill me.”

Is Pushaw’s attacking the media and a reporter paid to be a watchdog what she should be doing to question a message?

“Democracy only works if people have faith in our basic institutions, including the press,” says Peter Loge, the Director of Project on Ethics in Political Communication at The George Washington University. “Those who work in politics have an ethical obligation to strengthen, or at the very least not undermine, trust in democratic institutions. Ms. Pushaw's suggestion that readers go after a reporter because the governor disagreed with a story makes a journalist, someone doing the basic job of democracy, an enemy.”

“A robust, sometimes adversarial, occasionally maddening free press is central to a successful democracy,” he adds. “Encouraging partisans to gang up on a reporter runs counter to the core of our political system.”

Pushaw was very likely under pressure from DeSantis and feeling internal pressure to act yet she, like most leaders in duress, had choices, better ones.

“Elected officials can disagree with reporters, encourage voters to look at other sources, provide different angles or arguments and when a reporter gets the facts wrong, ask for a correction. Encouraging mobs, online or offline, to go after a reporter who wrote a factual story a politician dislikes is wrong,” Loge says.

To Pushaw’s claims that the facts are not there to write such a story, Loge replies.

“Reporters similarly have a responsibility to do all they can to get the facts right, provide information people need and can use, and make it clear when something is news and something is opinion,” he says.

When people, especially those in power, feel attacked, it is not uncommon for them to lash out in inappropriate ways. When politicians or spokespeople give in to base instincts however, they are sacrificing respect, pieces of credibility and trust. These costs are expensive.

“It's natural to want to strike back when you think someone has wronged you. Most press secretaries are under tremendous pressure, often working on tight deadlines and not a lot of sleep. No one ever called a press secretary and said, ‘thanks for the honest answer, I disagree but appreciate the perspective,’” Loge says. “Press secretaries spend a lot of time pushing string into an angry crowd, which can get old. They do what most of us do when we're stressed and tired and getting barked at a lot - snap at people we think are snapping at us. Press secretaries are people and tend to behave as people do, which is imperfectly.”

Loge, with 25 years of experience working in politics and strategic communication, including in senior staff positions in the US House and Senate, and at the FDA at the end of the Obama administration, is quick to also point out that this type of reactive communication behavior is problematic.

“But a reason is not an excuse. Just because behavior is understandable doesn't make it right,” Loge says. “Telling people to attack a reporter, online or offline, is not OK. Violence against reporters in the US is rising. Press freedom is declining around the world, which is both a sign of weakening support for democracy and helps accelerate the demise of democracies. Press secretaries, candidates, elected officials, and others working in politics need to stand up for a free and often adversarial press. Democracy needs journalists. Politicians should therefore promote journalism, even when they don't like a story.”

Pushaw and other politicians who have also reacted poorly to media are not just acting out frustrations and anger and causing problems for how they are covered and reported. They just do not think about the risk their ‘enemies’ might receive, whether that be overwhelming harassment or inciting physical aggression.

“Ms. Pushaw's lashing out might be understandable, but it is also dangerous,” Loge says. “It is one more example of a politician encouraging a mob to go after the messenger, rather than focusing on the message. Democracy relies on a robust marketplace of ideas, it's not fight club for politicians.

“I've been talking to reporters, for one reason or another, most of my life. Sometimes I'm the one in the press, sometimes I'm trying to persuade reporters to cover my boss or issue, and sometimes I really want them to find something else to do,” Loge says. “I learned a long time ago that if the press gets it mostly right, most of the time, then I should be happy. This is no slight on hardworking reporters, it's a recognition that like the rest of us they are working unreasonably hard against unreasonable deadlines.”

He tells a story to illustrate how his beliefs have developed.

“A number of years ago the staff of an organization I was leaving gave me a goodbye gift of a poster of my ‘greatest hits’ in the press. Some were dumb things I said that reporters accurately and appropriately quoted, some were clever, and one was an off the record remark that made it into print anyway, happily with the acronym SOL rather than what I actually said. It happens.”

How can a communicator work better with other professional communicators? Loge mentions what he does as a suggestion.

“Now when I get back to a reporter, as I'm doing now, I double and triple check what I say to be sure I'd be happy if anything I typed made it to the page. No matter the deadline, outlet, or issue, I take a beat and double check,” he says. “I have also gotten in the habit of fact-checking myself and sending supporting material to the journalist. I try to show my work and offer support for my claims. For example, I think attacks on journalists are rising in the US, but I provided links to outside sources to support my claims. I'm doing what Ms. Pushaw should have done - pause, reflect, and then reply.”

When articles or commentary are published and the message is negative, it’s painful and can be highly triggering for people and organizations. It’s not easy to effectively manage emotions and reactions and recover to make smart, ethical decisions. The Abraham Lincoln stress management technique of the ‘hot letter’ could be helpful.

WHENEVER Abraham Lincoln felt the urge to tell someone off, he would compose what he called a ‘hot letter.’ He’d pile all of his anger into a note, “put it aside until his emotions cooled down,” Doris Kearns Goodwin once explained on NPR, ‘and then write: ‘Never sent. Never signed.’ ” Which meant that Gen. George G. Meade, for one, would never hear from his commander in chief that Lincoln blamed him for letting Robert E. Lee escape after Gettysburg.

The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter
By Maria Konnikova
New York Times

“When a reporter says something I wish they hadn't I sometimes swear to myself and have a moment of venting,” Loge confesses. “If I want to give the reporter a lecture about other career options that involve uncomfortable parts of farm animals, I sometimes type an email with the ‘to’ line left blank, delete the email and figure out if a reply is really needed. It usually isn't.”

His experience has been that professional responses to most disappointing problems can be responded to successfully by regaining emotional balance and proceeding with a healthy relationship-focused approach.

“Most mistakes that matter are usually easily corrected. For example, a few times over the past few years reporters have gotten my university wrong, which seems minor but matters to universities. I've sent the reporter something nice ‘hey, great piece, minor mistake would be great if you could correct...’ note and the reporter has always apologized and made the change. In my experience if you treat reporters like people they respond like people, in part because reporters are people,” Loge says.

Losing track of the end game within a storm of stress is something relatable yet still a problem, a potential critical one with long-lasting repercussions.

“This approach requires keeping the big picture in mind. It's not the moment that matters, the goal is what matters,” Loge says. “In Florida it's getting people to behave responsibly about COVID and protecting the governor's reputation. This side show that Ms. Pushaw started does neither.”

“In addition to politics and political communication ethics, I'm a soccer guy. A couple years ago I wrote a book called Soccer Thinking for Management Success: Lessons for organizations from the world's game. When soccer players at the top level receive a ball, they have maybe three seconds to decide what to do with it next. If a player panics in the moment they give up the ball and maybe a goal,” he begins, adding “Lashing out by fouling someone can get a player sent off and cost their team the game.

“Zinedine Zidan's headbut in the World Cup final got him sent off and may have led to Italy beating France to win the greatest sporting event on the planet. He has gone on to coaching greatness, but he will always be the guy who lost his cool when it mattered most and could have cost his country the world title. Don't be that guy.

“Anticipate bad things, know which ones to respond to and which ones to ignore, and have a plan for when things go wrong. When the pressure picks up, time should slow down,” Loge advises.

Pushaw may or may not have thought out her actions on Twitter that led to a public correction and punishment. It’s debatable as to whether she considered whether or not her stress and responsibility to her boss and job leading to the subsequent anger directed towards the press would prove fruitful. She didn’t consider the risks.

“I won't speculate about what Ms. Pushaw was thinking. We'd all be better off if we stopped ascribing motivations to the actions of others. People tend to assign motives to others as a way of making sense of a complicated world. This is as true in politics as anywhere else,” Loge says.

“Voters assign motives to decisions made by politicians. At a time of rising negative partisanship, we're not just right, they're evil. It can be easy to say Ms. Pushaw put out the tweet to either silence the free press and put another nail in the coffin of democracy as her boss's response to COVID means it's a boomtime for coffin makers, or that her statement made it clear that true and honest Americans weren't going to get pushed around by the mainstream media anymore and that hers was one more nail in the coffin of the liberal elite who are trying to steal America for themselves. Both of those statement are obviously hyperbole, but hyperbole is the currency of social media.”

What matters, Loge says, is less ‘intentions’ and more ‘behavior.’ That’s the concern on which to put the focus, examine and debate.

“My interest is in Ms. Pushaw's actions, not her motives. She encouraged people to attack a reporter who wrote a story Ms. Pushaw didn't like. Knowing Ms. Pushaw's motive likely wouldn't make me condone the action,” he says. “I came up at a time when we were taught never to piss off anyone who bought ink by the barrel. That seems like a good rule.”

At the same time, Loge rues the platforms that certain people have been given to communicate under the impression of being reporters, blurring the lines between news and opinion even more.

“There are also a lot of people on air and online I really wish would take up a hobby that involved being nowhere near social media or a camera,” he laments. “I don't want anyone to kill them but I would like people to stop paying attention to, and paying them. Tucker Carlson isn't a journalist, he's a bag of manufactured outrage whose ranting is making him rich, putting people in danger, and making heroes of anti-democrats. He's not a reporter. I still don't think people should attack him. I just want him to decide to be a fly fishing guide or open a cat cafe somewhere with lousy wi-fi.”

Spokespeople, politicians or anyone feeling attacked -- justly or unjustly by the media -- can best communicate, with poise and assertiveness. In the case of Pushaw and her anger at The Associated Press, Loge says she could have chosen to give less attention to the reporter she held in contempt and directed more attention to examining the content in dispute. Make the response less personal and more critical analysis of the message.

“A different approach would have been to go after the story itself,” he says. “For example she could have said ‘as NPR and others report, Regeneron can be highly effective in treating some people with COVID. The governor's small investment is proof that that the market works. Thanks to countless investors, scientists and entrepreneurs are developing life saving vaccines and treatments like the ones that saved the life of President Trump and countless others.

“Yes, (DeSantis) is a small investor and yes, Rengeron saves lives; the governor made a smart investment decision. The implication that the governor shouldn't talk about a treatment saving the lives of Floridians because he is one of countless others with a stake in the drug working, is absurd. Get the COVID vaccine, and if you get sick do what the doctors say, you can worry if you made a buck for someone you disagree with later, after your life has been saved."

By using this response strategy, Loge asserts, Pushaw would be viewed as more in control emotionally, more professional and effective in her communication with successful rebuttal.

“This attacks the story, praises the governor, advances a marketplace agenda, promotes vaccinations, and never once mentions the reporter or asks anyone to attack anyone.”