Salzman: Tancredo excels at playing the media

'Big fish' tactics revealed, reporters must take care in covering controversial figure

Saturday, December 9, 2006

You have to admire U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's former press secretary, Will Adams, for his honesty in telling the Rocky Mountain News about his former boss' PR strategy.

Adams told the News on Dec. 1 that "the key to \[Tancredo's] strategy is to get a big fish to respond" to his controversial statements and thereby generate an irresistible news story.

And the big fish are definitely biting at Tancredo's PR bait.

In the latest controversy, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush bashed Tancredo for comparing Miami to a "Third World country," scoring major media coverage for Tancredo.

"Tancredo allies, opponents and outside analysts all see \[Tancredo's controversies] as part of a combative public relations strategy that has helped the Littleton Republican turn his back- bench seat in Congress into a national bully pulpit," the News reported in its excellent article, "Jeb: Fat lady sings in Tancredo feud."

OK, Tancredo's PR tactics have been exposed. If you're a reporter, what do you do now?

"It's a dilemma for all journalists who cover Tancredo," said News reporter M.E. Sprengel- meyer. "How do you resist a controversy? Or should you?"

"We hear the complaints that we only focus on the controversial figures and that the less controversial figures, even in our own \[congressional] delegation, don't get their due coverage."

Sprengelmeyer says he weighs these concerns before writing stories about a Tancredo controversy.

But, he says, "every other politician, every other activist, has their own PR strategy," and Tancredo has chosen to "speak his mind and take the criticism that comes with that."

It's true that some politicians are more media hounds than others. Some avoid news coverage completely. That's their PR strategy.

Tancredo's strategy is to make news through controversy.

So, you could argue that journalists should resist his manipulative tactics.

Trouble is, Tancredo is a congressman and people should hear what he's up to, especially when someone like Bush responds to him.

What to do?

In covering Tancredo, reporters should get beyond the tit-for-tat of reporting his controversial statements and the retorts.

Journalists should explain how his behavior is guided by a PR strategy, which the News wisely did Dec. 1, documenting that his goal is to bait the big fish. Ask PR people to explain his PR tactics and assess their efficacy.

Reporters should be extra careful to check Tancredo's facts. For example, Colorado Media Matters noted that Tancredo told Denver's 7 on Nov. 28 that "Miami is the murder capital of the world."

Was this falsehood a premeditated lie? If not, why did he make this serious mistake? Denver's 7 didn't ask.

Also, reporters should ask Tancredo, not his spokesman, to explain the basis for his controversial statements.

For example, why does he think Miami is a Third World country? Has he been there? (This was downplayed in the dailies' recent coverage, and should be emphasized in the future.)

Border Street. Tina Griego is hitting her stride in her series of News columns about an unnamed street in a low-income Denver neighborhood.

On Monday, Griego wrote that the residents of "Border Street" see her, the journalist, as representing "The Establishment."

Some residents think she'll respond to their complaints about trash. Others worry she'll get them in trouble.

I think most people, rich and poor, see reporters as part of The Establishment, even if reporters don't like to see themselves that way.

You can't blame people for making this association. Look how much news comes from officialdom. That's mainstream journalism.

The celebritization of journalism fuels this perception.

Local television stations, in particular, celebritize their anchors to market their news programs, making journalism - a high-profile job to begin with - star-studded and even more establishmentlike.

How many giant faces of news anchors on billboards can you count on your way to work?

The sad part is that if journalists are viewed as establishment figures, they scare off part of the community, and journalism suffers. What can journalists do about this?

• Spare us the embarrassing promotions of the anchors.

• Get out of the office whenever possible to report a story.

• Make the extra effort to contact non-establishment sources.

Clarification: In my last column, I wrote that Denver Post publisher Dean Singleton overturned the "unanimous" position of the Post's editorial board to endorse John Kerry in 2004. Jonathan Wolman, the Post's editor of the editorial pages, informs me that there was a "consensus" of the board for Kerry, but that Singleton "wasn't alone in his preference" for Bush.

Also, I wrote that Singleton's veto of the Post's Kerry endorsement hadn't been reported prior to the publication of my article. Actually, in a 2004 column, Westword's Michael Roberts made a convincing case that Singleton overturned the Post's editorial board.

But Roberts did not prove this definitively because, in an interview with Roberts, Singleton wouldn't "fess up" to torpedoing the Kerry endorsement, according to Roberts.

Jason Salzman, president of Cause Communications and board chairman of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.