greg's virtual dwelling | CGA and other campus organizations need to better understand working with the media

CGA and other campus organizations need to better understand working with the media

If it bleeds, it leads.

This is a popular saying in newsrooms all across the country-meaning, if there's a big story, the newspaper is going to run it and make it a big deal. The media looks for controversial stories. It looks to exploit stupidity and to cover tragedy. The media looks to give its readers something to be interested in. If in a reporter wonders, “What were you thinking?” there is a pretty good chance the story is going to the top story in the next edition.

From the Beta poster controversy of last week to the low voter turnout for CGA elections, this semester has given everyone on campus some insight into mismanagement of a crisis. If the events of the last two weeks have taught us nothing else, they've taught us that most people, particularly organizations, don't understand the media.

The people and organizations affected negatively by news coverage often return to blame the media. They see it as media's place to expose other wrong doings, but when the negative publicity comes back their way, they are scurrying for cover and ready to blame the media. If anything, organizations with negative publicity should be thanking the media for giving them a forum to give their side of the story.

The Community Government Association's (CGA) official response in last week's paper about the secrecy of elections was a very well worded response in an attempt to quell the possible student uprising. Their letter was everything that a response letter should be. It was simple, concise, and to the point.

But where the CGA succeeded in giving the official response to the student body, they failed miserably within their own organization. When they didn't properly stop Johanna Moss, one of their own senators, from trashing a private student, CGA demonstrated a complete lack of organization integrity. Moss' letter was so inflammatory and libelous that many of accusations she wrote never made it to print.

In fact, Moss didn't even acknowledge that she was indeed a CGA senator. Had The Voice not checked her background, The Voice would have printed a letter that looked like it had come from a private citizen and not from an elected representative of the student body. Moss tried to seem high and mighty by showing that she can name five people in CGA. She played the CGA up like she was just an informed citizen. She tried to play us all.

What worries me even more was the fact that members of the CGA Executive Board had a problem with the editor's note at the bottom of the page. They didn't think that it was right to attach “CGA Senator” to her letter. And, to make matters worse, they continually hounded Voice staff, trying to get them not to run the letter, as it wasn't an official response.

The most important point for any crisis is to have one voice and one message. The public gets confused when more than one person is spouting more than one message. What the CGA should have done was control the message from the very beginning and none of this would have happened. If CGA President Matt Resnick had sent a letter to every student at the beginning of the semester like the one he sent as a letter to the editor, this entire ordeal would have been avoided-simple as that. Instead, they decided to go the damage control route and blame apathetic voters.

Besides the lack of organization control, I am always amazed after a big story breaks and the organization affected says that the columnist or letter writer should have come to them first. This in and of itself is why organizations get negative publicity. Instead of blaming the media for not "getting the facts straight," the organization should be blaming itself for not making the facts clear enough.

A private student wrote the original letter that started the whole CGA controversy that ran in The Voice on Sept. 14. It is simply amazing to me that a private citizen can have that much of an effect on an organization like the CGA. Outside of the university, tons of angry readers write letters to the editor in newspapers across the country, many of them disparaging the government. But the government doesn't respond to each letter. I don't understand why this huge controversy ensued over one private student's gripe about the student government system.

When you work in government, you put yourself out for criticism. It's just that simple. If you can't take negative criticism without resorting to libelous remarks as in Moss' letter, you should not be in office. Believe me, I get a ton of letters telling me how much of an idiot I am. If I took every one of those letters personally, I would most likely be in a mental institution by now. Instead, I realize that readers hate my ideas and I can separate myself from my criticism. If I couldn't take it, I wouldn't have become a columnist in the first place.

If you don't want to become a front page news story, don't do something to attract attention. After all, if you don't make it bleed, it's not going to lead.