Media Curmudgeon

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September 30, 2009

Lots of Content Is Good for Democracy

One of the 6,387 themes in Dan Brown’s new best-seller, The Lost Symbol is that God is not an external force or being, but is within each of us. The same might be said of content.

In my last blog, titled “Content Is Not King,” I made the point that the explosive growth of the internet has led to such a proliferation of content out in the long tail that it is now virtually infinite. To say that “content is king” in today’s world is like saying “a grain of sand is precious.”

One of the reasons for the proliferation of content is that anyone on the internet can self-publish – blogs, YouTube, Facebook updates and comments, Twitter, Flickr, personal Websites, and on and on. Everyone can create content and publish their views, and the surfeit of opinion creates debate and argument, which is good for the democratic process.

In 1990 historian Chris Lasch wrote an essay titled “The Lost Art of Political Argument” suggesting that the decline in participation in the political process in the U.S. correlated with the rise of professional journalism, and put forth a convincing argument as to why.

Our search for reliable information is itself guided by the questions that arise during arguments about a given course of action. It is only by subjecting our preferences and projects to the test of debate that we come to understand what we know and what we still need to learn. Until we have to defend our opinions in public, they remain opinions in [Walter] Lippmann’s pejorative sense—half-formed convictions based on random impressions and unexamined assumptions. It is the act of articulating and defending our views that lifts them out of the category of “opinions,” gives them shape and definition, and makes it possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own experience as well. In short, we come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others.

Thus, by bloggers, journalists, and pundits creating content on the Web and elsewhere, they not only hone their own opinions, but they also add to the diversity of the debate and allow others to shape their views – a process that leads to the wisdom of crowds.

The First Amendment wasn’t written to protect facts; it was written to protect debate, and the plethora of content, argument, and debate is a good thing.

The outmoded idea that “content is king” was based primarily on its scarcity. But on the internet, content, like all the sand on all the world’s beaches, is not scarce. And this plethora of content may make gems harder it find, but the search and the ensuing debate generated by searches is good for our democracy.

Posted by Charles Warner at 2:01 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

September 23, 2009

Content Is Not King

Content in not king, unless your first name is Stephen.

In an article in the October issue of The Atlantic titled “The Moguls’ New Clothes” authors Bruce Greenwald, Jonathan Knee, and Ava Seave write:

Media executives lament what the Web has done to their business. But that complaint conveniently ignores the dismal financial performance of most media conglomerates in the pre-digital era. Until media companies are willing to get back to basics and jettison the flawed thinking that has guided them over the past two decades, they will continue to disappoint their shareholders.

To support their claim, the authors list four myths that have led media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone to disappoint shareholders: 1) Growth Is Good, 2) The Gospel of Going Global, 3) Content Is King, and 4) The Cult of Convergence.

The myth that most resonated with me was that content is king. Here’s what Greenwald, Knee, and Seave write about this myth:

But content cannot be king, because the talent required to create it cannot provide a sustainable competitive advantage. Even if the ability to produce compelling content perennially inhered in certain individuals or groups, there is no efficient way to monetize this skill for the benefit of shareholders rather than for the producers themselves. Big media companies may consistently exploit some creative artists, but over time, that exploitation does not produce superior corporate value. For starters, where the media companies have executives clever enough to consistently exploit the talent, these executives are typically clever enough to ensure that they are paid enough to reflect that skill. Furthermore, when particular brands seem like sure things, as in the case of a popular film franchise, more often than not a well-represented creative artist essential to that level of certainty ends up appropriating much of that value.

Furthermore, the explosive growth of the internet has led to such a proliferation of content out in the long tail that it is now virtually infinite. To say that “content is king” in today’s world is like saying “a grain of sand is precious.”

There are gems mixed in with the infinite content, but the conundrum is finding those jewels. In the age of the Web, the puzzle has been solved by Google, which has become the largest media company in the world by being an aggregator of content, not an originator, a creator of content.

Content is no longer king, marketing and search are the rulers now. If excellent content ruled, the best movies would be the most popular. But the movies that sell the most tickets are the ones that are marketed the most heavily, regardless of their artistic merit. And as the authors of The Atlantic article point out, established, branded creative artists such as actors and directors end up appropriating much of the value of a hit movie, leaving the corporate conglomerates with barely enough profit to cover the fixed costs of a bloated distribution and marketing bureaucracy.

If creative types such as actors, directors or writers – Stephen King, for example – establish a well-known personal brand, they don’t need the media moguls’ swollen bureaucracies to exploit them: they are in the driver’s seat. See Stephen King’s slick and robust Web site for a model of effective self-marketing, self-distribution, and an artist capturing the majority of his content’s value.

You can see from Stephen’s Web site that content is king only if it’s capitalized.

Posted by Charles Warner at 1:37 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

September 18, 2009

What I Learned From Jay Leno’s Prime Time Debut: Part III

I watched Jay Leno’s prime time debut Monday night and learned: 1) Don’t watch Jay Leno’s new prime time show; it’s dull and overly scripted. 2) Don’t watch prime time terrestrial network TV entertainment programming; it’s not entertaining. 3) Don’t read about TV in the NY Times; its coverage is insipid and inaccurate.

At 11:00 p.m. Monday night, after the Leno show on NBC, I made a second mistake. I watched WNBC-TV’s local news with veteran anchor Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons.

What did I learn from watching WNBC-TV’s late news, “News 4”? 1) I was absolutely right in my decision ten years ago to stop watching local TV news; it’s worthless, boring, and old-fashioned. 2) Never watch local TV in the days and weeks before election because you’ll hate all politicians and you’ll avoid voting. 3) Someone should wake up Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons –it’s safe because I Googled sleepwalking and it’s a myth that it is dangerous to wake up someone who is sleep walking.

After watching the deadly dull, formulatic, old-fashioned “News 4,” I Googled “wnbc-tv new york” because I wanted to check to see who Chuck Scarborough’s female co-anchor was. I got several search results, so I clicked on the top one and got this page which looked nothing like a typical television station Web site – for comparison, see WCBS-TV’s, WABC-TV’s, and WNYW-TV’s(Fox). WCBS-TV’s is the best, WNYW-TV’s is the worst.

On the first WNBC-TV page (yes, there are more than one WNBC-TV pages) I saw the headline banner was “NEW YORK” in a modern font with no mention of WNBC-TV or “News 4.” Underneath the NEW YORK head, in a casual script font, was the sub-head “is laughing about Obama’s Wall Street reform speech.”

I was shocked – I would have expected this trash from Fox News, not NBC – but when I clicked on a news story to read, under the heading “DON”T MISS,” a hardly journalistic headline, I understood what was happening. When you click on a story, you go a page containing that story and to the right of the item is a column headed “WE ARE” with six responses listed underneath: “Laughing – 29%,” “Furious – 26%,” “Bored – 18%,” Thrilled – 12%,” Intrigued – 8%,” and “Sad – 8%.”

Under the “WE ARE” list is a drop-down menu labeled “I AM,” with the six emotions listed so you can vote on how you’re feeling about a story – sort of like choosing a mood ring. Check it out so you’ll get the feel of it better.

So it’s come to this: A once respected, now desperate-to-be-hip local news operation, in an attempt to interact with its audience and appeal to entertainment-obsessed younger people is headlining news stories based on how people feel about them. In other words their emotional response to news is what counts, not their rational response to a news story’s importance or relevance to helping them make a decision in a democratic society.

WNBC-TV has another Web site that is less moody and touchy-feely and that features a photo of CBS anchor Walter Cronkite with the caption “Cronkite Remembered.” Why on earth would WNBC-TV be promoting the traditional CBS News icon, Cronkite, several weeks after his passing? The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that WNBC-TV is so embarrassed by the moronic pandering of its NEW YORK Web site that it is trying to counterbalance its effect by associating itself lamely with “the most trusted man in America” 45 years ago.

But WNBC-TV’s NEW YORK Web site mirrors the reality in television news today – it’s all about pandering to emotions (mostly anger), not about appealing to rationality and searching for the truth. TV news has become America’s 21st century EST, a phony scam that makes its promoters richer and its victims poorer and more removed from reality.

What did I learn by going to WNBC-TV’s Web site? 1) WNBC-TV and NBC News has strayed so far from the journalistic principles that once drove its great news operation that it is no longer in the news or journalism business; it’s in the business of pandering to the emotions of intellectually arid young people. 2) That WNBC-TV’s Web site has become the New York Post of TV. 3) I am so grateful for intelligent news and opinion sources such as The Atlantic, the New Yorker, Talking Points Memo, NPR, and Pro Publica so that I never have to watch news on TV again or go to Web sites associated in any way with a TV network or TV station.

Posted by Charles Warner at 8:13 AM | Comments (2) | Print |

Bruce Braun at September 20, 2009 5:50 PM writes:

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KMashek at September 18, 2009 11:15 AM writes:

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September 17, 2009

What I Learned From Jay Leno’s Prime Time Debut: Part II

I watched Jay Leno’s prime time debut Monday night and learned: 1) Don’t watch Jay Leno’s new prime time show; it’s dull and overly scripted. 2) Don’t watch prime time terrestrial network TV entertainment programming; it’s not entertaining. 3) Don’t read about TV in the NY Times; its coverage is insipid and inaccurate.

At 11:00 p.m. Monday night, after the Leno show on NBC, I made a second mistake. I watched WNBC-TV’s local news with veteran anchor Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons.

It has been at least about ten years since I have watched the late news on the NBC owned-and-operated station, but what amazed me was that the newscast looked the same as I remember it from almost a decade ago. It was as though Scarborough, Simmons, and the producers and writers of the program had been frozen in time and were sleepwalking through the exact same format that it used in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

It was dull, boring, formulaic, and old-fashioned. It was as though management had said, “don’t make any changes or you’ll wake up the audience.” The newscast led with the death of actor Patrick Swayze, the second story was about the death of the female Yale student, and the third story was about a rape in New York. All stories to be expected on a local TV station in New York the day the president of the United States gave a major policy speech about the excesses of Wall Street.

The next section of the newscast, the B block, I’ll just call “Pimping for Jay.” Because WNBC-TV is an NBC O&O, word certainly came from the top to pimp the Jay Leno show for all it was worth. Station news departments and producers generally hate these top-down pimping edicts – they come all the time for TV specials – because they are so clearly promotional and have no real, serious news value.

The first story in the pimping segment was about the Leno show’s debut and the lead was, of course, Kanye West’s tearful apology for his interrupting Taylor Swift in a mic-swiping incident at the MTV Video Music Awards, certainly a more important, newsworthy, and momentous event than Obama’s Wall Street speech.

The second story in the “Pimping for Jay” section of the newscast was rather creative. A News 4 reporter did interviews with a group of New York working comedians who had gathered in a bar and were watching Leno’s prime time debut. It was clearly a passive-aggressive way to get back at the suits who had ordered the Leno show pimped because the comedians generally panned the show and made fun of Jay’s looks and grey hair, saying he looked too Teddy Kennedyesque.

The comedians got it right; the general consensus was that the show was not funny, was dull, and was just like the old “Tonight Show.” I think one comedian repeated Jerry Seinfeld’s best line – the one about how in his day when someone retired, they stayed retired. Like all good humor, this line was based on a harsh truth. The line may not have been repeated by a comedian in the News 4 story, but if it wasn’t it should have been,

Then there was a commercial break, one with the new General Motors chairman announcing GM’s 60-day money back guarantee and daring people to compare GM’s cars to all others and “may the best car win.” I’m afraid GM will regret this campaign because the best cars probably will win.

The next story was a brief reader about Obama’s Wall Street speech, followed ominously by a story about how banks (that were bailed out by the government) are finding new scams to bleed money out of people (my wording, not News 4’s) by charging customers with debit cards for overdrafts – a direct ripoff from a NY Times story I suspect.

The weather was next, and an attractive, upbeat black weatherwoman gave a quick weathercast and spoke of the good, sunny weather “if you go to the beach.” On a frigging Monday? She must have assumed all of the News 4 audience was retired or jobless – probably a good guess.

Next, a commercial break had six commercials in the pod and four of them were for political candidates running in the next day’s primary. All four of them touted being endorsed by the NY Times. Because of all of the political commercials in the newscast, the NY Times was mentioned more during the half-hour newscast than News 4, which is probably the first time that has happened in years.

The next two stories were health related. This section of a newscast is generally referred to as the C Block, and clearly it had been reserved for health related stories because research shows that health is one of the top issues people are interested in especially local TV news viewers, the majority of which are 65 and older.

The stories were about preventing Swine Flu by sanitizing your hands. It told people to wash their hands a lot. Thanks. The next story was something about bacteria in shower heads, but it was completely incomprehensible. I have no idea what the message was; it must have been about making sure your shower head is clean.

No wonder I stopped watching local TV news a decade ago.

Five more commercials, four of them for political candidates, but this was the not-endorsed-by-the NY Times group. Not that anyone would care or ever know the difference, but the previous pod with the NY-Times-endorsed front runners was clearly considered a better position than the second pod with all of the non-endorsed candidates. I assume WNBC-TV charged more to be in the first pod (“we’ll put you and all the front runners in the first pod”). If it didn’t, it missed a money-making opportunity.

But, come to think about it, that does sound like NBC.

Sports was next, sponsored by Verizon Fios. Sports must be the only section that NBC allows to be sponsored. I guess because no one cares about a perceived sponsor influence on sports. Short and sweet: Federer loses, Yankees and Pats win, out.

The last story was the required kicker – a supposed light story that gives viewers a going-away smile. Research shows that people remember stories in a newscast based on primacy and recency. In other words, the first and last stories they watch. So, start ‘em off with death, disaster, crime, blood, and guts, and leave ‘em laughing.

The kicker was about a mascot of Virginia college football team. He fell of his horse and looked like a fool trying to get back on. What a thigh slapper.

Next were two promos and then six commercials for political candidates, half of them endorsed by the NY Times (some repeats of earlier commercials), but two for candidates for governor of New Jersey. These NJ candidate commercials were nasty. They both deserve to lose for running such negative, disgusting advertising.

So, I left the News 4 newscast not with a smile from the silly kicker but with loathing for politicians – a nice lead into the “Tonight Show” with Conan O’Brien. His opening monologue was funnier than Jay Leno’s earlier and he looked a lot more at ease than Jay did. No wonder, he didn’t have to live up to all of NBC’s hype, expectations, and pimping.

What did I learn from watching WNBC-TV’s late news? 1) I was absolutely right in my decision ten years ago to stop watching local TV news; it’s worthless, boring, and old-fashioned. 2) Never watch local TV in the days and weeks before election because you’ll hate all politicians and you’ll avoid voting. 3) Someone should wake up Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons –it’s safe because I Googled sleepwalking and it’s a myth that it is dangerous to wake up someone who is sleep walking.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

What I Learned From Jay Leno’s Prime Time Debut: Part I

Monday night I watched the Yankee game on the Yes network in New York. It was an exciting game highlighted by good pitching, timely hitting, excellent base running, and savvy managing. It was great television because it was unscripted and, thus, had an unknown and surprising outcome.

During commercials and pitching changes in the Yankees game, I switched to ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” which featured another unscripted and, thus, unknown and surprising outcome as Tom Brady of the New England Patriots coolly and confidently brought his team from behind to beat a tough Buffalo Bills team with only two minutes left in the game.

I then remembered that Jay Leno was making his prime time debut at 10:00 p.m. on NBC, so I quickly switched to Channel 4. I caught Jay introducing his first guest, Jerry Seinfeld. I haven’t watched Jay Leno’s “Tonight” show in over 15 years and the last time I watched a prime time regularly scheduled network comedy or drama program was the last episode of “Seinfeld” in May of 1998.

I now know why I stopped watching prime time terrestrial network TV programs (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) – they’re boring, scripted, and totally predictable. The new Jay Leno show was no exception. The interview with Seinfeld was stiff and overly scripted; even the phony pre-taped appearance of Oprah was stiff, boring, and predictable. The apology by Kanye West was maudlin and gave unnecessary exposure to a clearly troubled young man.

Jay’s faux interview with Obama was way too cute and disingenuously self-deprecating – a suit that does not fit Leno, who looks uncomfortable in any suit. And his final bit of showing goofy headlines and ads was a tired rehash of his old “Tonight Show” routine. It featured lowest-common-denominator, puerile, smutty humor – exactly the kind of dumb material that appeals to the majority of people who still watch prime time terrestrial network TV programs: the poorly educated, the poorly informed, and the culturally and intellectually barren.

Therefore, Leno’s prime time debut got great ratings, according to the NY Times’ Bill Carter in his Media Decoder blog, by attracting 18 million viewers, which “exceeded expectations.”

I’m baffled by the notion that NBC “expected” fewer than 18 million people to watch Leno’s debut program after the incredible hype NBC produced for the show. It must have forgotten H. L. Menken’s line “that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

Leno’s new program was touted to be “the future of television” by Time magazine. Of course, this quote was featured in a story in the NY Times by the constantly error-prone Alessandra Stanley, who, once again, in spite of being caught making serial mistakes in her obit of Walter Cronkite, was wrong in her facts once again. Her squadron of fact checkers were asleep at the switch again (they must be members of the NY Times union – the New York Newspaper Guild – and, like Stanley, can’t be fired).

In her story she writes, “the reading of goofy misprints taken from newspaper headlines.” Leno’s final bit did not consist of all misprints. Many were merely headlines that could be read in an unintended and different way, and they were not all from newspaper headlines. Many were from stupid ads, such as the final one, an ad for a Chinese restaurant – The House of Poon – which Leno leered at.

Stanley also gave the Leno debut show a tepid (and insipid) review that made a big deal out of the Kanye West apology, which was apparently serendipitous, and never mentioned the much longer and more substantial faux Obama interview. Did she watch the program?

Not only was Stanley’s review poorly written and inaccurate (which has become her MO), it had no bite, which I’m sad to say has become de rigeur for NY Times TV coverage – it was taken on the personality and characteristics of the medium it covers.

So what did I learn from watching Jay Leno’s debut and reading about it in the NY Times? 1) Don’t watch Jay Leno’s new prime time show; it’s dull and overly scripted. 2) Don’t watch prime time terrestrial network TV entertainment programming; it’s not entertaining. 3) Don’t read about TV in the NY Times; its coverage is insipid and inaccurate.

In other words, as always, I didn’t learn anything new on network TV.

But what did I learn by watching WBNC-TV’s local news right after the Leno show? I'll tell you in Part II.

And what did I learn by going to WNBC-TV’s Web site after I watched the local news? I'll tell you in Part III.

Posted by Charles Warner at 4:10 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

September 9, 2009

The Verizon-Citi Visa Scam

My BlackBerry 8830 died a painless (to me) death this summer, so I went to a Verizon wireless dealer in Rhode Island to see if it could be fixed. No. So I got a new BlackBerry 9630, which I really like, especially because I got a $100 rebate – until I actually got a notice of the rebate.

I still like the Blackberry, but I hate Verizon’s rebate scam. Instead of a check for $100, I got a Citi Bank Visa card with these messages: “Here’s your Verizon Wireless Rebate Card – Use everywhere Visa debit cards are accepted!”

I don’t want a frigging debit or credit card; I want my $100!

But the letter said these were my options to get my money: “Rebate Card: Use the attached rebate card instantly everywhere Visa cards are accepted; Bank Transfer: Go online to move rebate funds to your bank account; Cash With Card Use your card to cash by taking your card and identification to any Visa member bank (see package insert for details); Paper Check: Go online to get your rebate funds via paper check to deposit or cash at your bank.”

In other words, I had to go to a lot of trouble not to accept a Visa card that I don’t want. After getting bailed out by the government to the tune of around $300 billion, Citi is finding new ways to get high-interest rate credit cards in people’s hands. Here’s what a February 28 Wall Street Journal article noted:

The taxpayer never sleeps when it comes to Citigroup, which yesterday got its third rescue in recent months from Uncle Sam. The amount and terms of the taxpayer commitment keep changing, while the management stays in place. The only institution that has a comparable track record on those two scores is Congress.
We don't mean to laugh, but we have to in order not to cry. No company on Earth has failed more often than Citigroup without being put out of its misery. Taxpayers have already put more than $50 billion in capital into the bank, while guaranteeing $301 billion of its bad assets, and the bank still can't stop its slide.
In a better world, Citi would have long ago been put into bankruptcy. The FDIC could have taken over and disposed of the bank's assets, while protecting insured deposits as it always does. The profitable parts of Citigroup could then have been sold off to people who could better manage them.

So how is Citi going to pay the government back? One way is to find new, underhanded ways to get Visa cards into people’s wallets. Citi probably paid Verizon something to have the phone company send rebates in the form of debit cards. Verizon saved money by not having to pay postage, buy envelopes, or cut a check. Citi gets millions of cards in people’s hands.

Just what the country needs in the middle of a debilitating recession that was caused by, among other things, too much consumer debt, too high interests rates on that debt, and by greedy bankers.
I wouldn’t have been so upset if, at the time I bought the new phone, the clerk who told me about the rebate had asked me if I wanted the rebate in the form of a check or Visa rebate card. In other words, if I had had a choice.

I called Verizon outraged and the Verizon service person was very nice and polite and filled out the online form to get my check in the mail. So I was somewhat mollified, but I still believe this is a scam that shoves unwanted and unneeded Visa cards in unsuspecting people’s hands and that an ethical, transparent, customer-focused company should give people a choice about accepting a Visa card.

But I don’t hear a lot of people using the adjectives ethical, transparent, or customer-focused to describe Verizon or Citi Bank. This current scam isn’t going to up the count.

Posted by Charles Warner at 5:10 PM | Comments (2) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at September 9, 2009 6:09 PM writes:

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Scott Brewitt at September 9, 2009 5:23 PM writes:

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September 2, 2009

A Hippocratic Oath for Media Executives

This week as I prepare to teach my first graduate class, Media Sales and Sales Management, I’m recording the first two presentations I give to students: “What Is Selling” and “Sales Ethics.”

I begin the semester with the ethics presentation/lecture to reinforce the vital importance of being honest with customers (advertisers) and consumers (readers, viewers, users), especially in the current environment in which the media in general has such a bad reputation and low credibility.

The slide of the media into the reputational gutter is greased by the emotional, hateful, and pandering ranting of entertainers, wearing the transparent mask of commentators, such as Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, and Rush Limbaugh. The consistently top-rated program on cable TV is “professional” wrestling and porn or semi-porn content on the internet continues to thrive.

Julia Angwin’s excellent book, Stealing My Space tells a story of greed and unethical business practices in pursuit of personal wealth and individual interests rather than any consideration of the public’s interest.

Rupert Murdoch bought the smarmy My Space for strategic reasons – to make his News Corp. empire more profitable – which is why he tolerates Beck’s and O’Reilly’s hateful ranting on Fox News.

I don’t want my students at The New School in the Media Management Program to become Rupert Murdochs or Sumner Redstones (Viacom and CBS) – people who are obsessed with their personal wealth and not in the least bit interested in the public’s interest. Therefore, in addition to teaching ethics as an integral part of the four courses I teach at The New School, I ask students to take the Hippocratic oath for managers, as proposed by Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria in “It’s Time to Make Management a True Profession,” Harvard Business Review, October 2008.

Here’s the oath:

A Hippocratic Oath for Managers

As a manager
I serve as society’s fiduciary for one of its most important institutions: enterprises that bring people and resources together to create valued products and services that no single individual could produce alone. My purpose is to serve the public’s interest by enhancing the value my enterprise creates for society. Sustainable value is created when the enterprise produces an economic, social, and environmental output that is measurably greater than the opportunity cost of all the inputs it consumes. In fulfilling my role:

I recognize that any enterprise is at the nexus of many different constituencies, whose interests can sometimes diverge. While balancing and reconciling these interests, I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. This may not always mean growing or preserving the enterprise and may include such painful actions as its restructuring, discontinuation, or sale, if these actions preserve or increase value.

I pledge that considerations of personal benefit will never supersede the interests of the enterprise I am entrusted to manage. The pursuit of self-interest is the vital engine of a capitalist economy, but unbridled greed can be just as harmful. Therefore, I will guard against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise I manage and the societies it serves.

I promise to understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct, that of my enterprise, and that of the societies in which it operates. My personal behavior will be an example of integrity, consistent with the values I publicly espouse. I will be equally vigilant in ensuring the integrity of others around me and bring to attention the actions of others that represent violations of this shared professional code.

I vow to represent my enterprise’s performance accurately and transparently to all relevant parties, ensuring that investors, consumers, and the public at large can make well-informed decisions. I will aim to help people understand how decisions that affect them are made, so that choices do not appear arbitrary or biased.

I will not permit considerations of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, party politics, or social status to influence my choices. I will endeavor to protect the interests of those who may not have power, but whose well-being is contingent on my decisions.

I will manage my enterprise by diligently, mindfully, and conscientiously applying judgment based on the best knowledge available. I will consult colleagues and others who can help inform my judgment and will continually invest in staying abreast of the evolving knowledge in the field, always remaining open to innovation. I will do my utmost to develop myself and the next generation of managers so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.

I recognize that my stature and privileges as a professional stem from the honor and trust that the profession as a whole enjoys, and I accept my responsibility for embodying, protecting, and developing the standards of the management profession, so as to enhance that respect and honor.

Don’t you wish we could get executives and managers in the media to take this oath and then to live up to it?

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:22 AM | Comments (2) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at September 7, 2009 8:49 PM writes:

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scrozier at September 7, 2009 8:29 PM writes:

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