Media Scanning in Practice

Think back to the example in the first lesson regarding the Josh Brown NFL domestic abuse case. We used that example originally to explore the difference between episodic and thematic media framing. Now, think about it from a public relations perspective. If you were working on the NFL’s PR team, you would be very interested in how media were covering the news itself. You would want to understand how the news was being conveyed and, in turn, how your organization (in this case, the NFL), was being portrayed. Is the news accurate? Did the NFL provide enough quality information, or do you need to provide additional comment? What context is being used to shape the story itself, and is there anything regarding that context that you need to address? Is there anything that warrants a comment or follow up with the media or public generally?

With those questions in mind, let’s quickly analyze the headlines for the Josh Brown articles. The first headline, from CBS News’ episodic article, reads, “NFL on defense amid new revelations about Josh Brown's wife abuse.” The second headline, from Washington Post’s thematic article, reads, “The Josh Brown affair shows that the NFL learned nothing from the Ray Rice case.” Now let’s add a headline from a third article not analyzed in lesson 1. This one, from Huffington Post, reads “The NFL’s Domestic Violence Policy Isn’t Working Because It Wasn’t Designed To—Josh Brown’s case is a reminder that the league’s updated policies were always about PR, not substantive action.”

Without even reading the articles themselves, as a member of the NFL’s PR team—who has just arrived at work and scanned the morning’s headlines—you have a few immediate takeaways. First, it seems we need to address the Josh Brown case more directly and make proactive statements regarding what the League is doing, and why. Second, we need to clearly state our player policies and outline the steps we are taking as a League beyond the specific Josh Brown case. After all, it seems at first glance the Huffington Post is explicitly framing league policy as a PR cover up. Are other news outlets doing the same? Finally, perhaps the biggest takeaway is the most important ethical consideration any public relations professional must remember when scanning and working with the media: today’s stories become tomorrow’s context. In other words, public relations is cumulative. What we do today provides the context for how media can frame our future news. And as the Washington Post headline indicates, the Ray Rice case from more than two years ago provides important context for today’s news. In an unrelated case, think about Volkswagen’s recent scandal regarding its use of an emissions “cheat tool.” No matter what amazing news the company has to tell for the foreseeable future, they should expect news media to provide the context of a company trying to recover from an emissions scandal. A news article reporting, for example, a donation of $500 million from Volkswagen to a humanitarian cause will include a paragraph reminding us about the emissions scandal.