Anatomy Of A PR Spin (AKA How To Lie Like A Pro)
From: The Ilana <>
Reply-to: The Ilana <>
When: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 03:12:28 -0600
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Anatomy Of A PR Spin (AKA How To Lie Like A Pro)
How do you know when a Facebook PR person is lying? When their lips
move (or they issue a statement!) ba-dum ching!
Weâve been taking a beating today on our story about Facebook working
on a branded mobile phone. Just like last year with the Google Phone,
lots of people threw tantrums about how we made the story up right up
until Google launched their own branded phone, the Nexus One.
And thatâs whatâs happening today, due in no small part to Facebook
PR issuing what looks like a blanket denial of the story this morning.
âThe story is not accurate!â
Except the story is accurate. Facebook has been working with hardware
manufacturers to explore building their own phone. We donât know the
timing, and we donât know how deep the software stack is that
Facebook is contemplating building, but we know that as of very
recently the project was alive and well.
Hereâs how Facebook is able to issue a blanket denial to a true story
and get away with it:
First, give a solid soundbite that everyone will love. âThe story is
not accurate. Facebook is not building a phone.â
Note that those two sentences sound like theyâre supposed to go
together, but they arenât. Technically what theyâre saying is that
at least one fact in the story is wrong. Also, Facebook is not going
into the hardware building business. But what most people read is a
flat denial. The story is wrong! Tabloid journalism!
Except, uh oh.
Second, Insert a ton of additional sentences that seem to support the
initial dramatic statements. But what theyâre really doing is putting
in language that they can point to later that shows they werenât
technically lying. âDeeper integrations!â âINQ Phone!â
Third, and this is purely optional, add a good kick in the nuts on the
way out. Maybe something about how people tend to exaggerate things to
get headlines.
This is the statement that Facebook sent to everyone in the news
business today, except us. Despite us asking for it.
So why did Facebook do this? Normally they would just say âwe donât
respond to rumors and speculationâ when anyone talks about leaks
around future products. But this was d…
Sent from iPhone, sorry for the typos
