« Calacanis, AOL and 25 Million Smackers | Main | Biz Author Faces Critic »
October 11, 2005
Did H&M Bribe Reporters?
Eventually Sweden will be just as crass, commercial and consumerist as my beloved U.S.A. In the meantime, there are still a few pockets of resistance and a few quaint cultural differences. Swedish contestants in the multiple rounds of qualifiers for the Eurovision Song contest, for example, tend to wear the same expensive, sparkily outfit at every single event. Apparently they're not required, as American contestants would be by peer pressure if nothing else, to bankrupt themselves with a new costume for each appearance. That's so sane, so Swedish--you gotta love it!
One cherished national ideal is that Swedes are honest. And mostly they are. But not always, so newspapers report on the apparent exceptions (think bribery and corruption) with enthusiasm and zeal. That's as it should be. The hubbub over a recent press junket is intriguing. On October 6, Karin Olsson reported in Resume (a trade pub that covers Swedish media, marketing and PR) that homegrown clothing retailer H&M was being investigated for bribery because it paid for leading fashion journalists to view its fashion show in New York last April. H&M picked up the costs of this "luxury trip," as Resume calls it, which included a two-night stay in a supposedly swanky hotel, the flight and one dinner, which were worth about $2000 (15 000 SEK) per person. (A junket is utterly against the rules at many U.S. publications, including the Washington Post and the New York Times. Others appreciate the help and don't bat an eyelash.)
According to Olsson (here's an English summary from a different pub), disapproving colleagues blew the whistle by contacting the head of some official corruption office. About 200 journalists from several countries flew in for the event. H&M declined to tell Resume how many of that total (including 15 Swedes) had their trips sponsored. Here's my English version of the Resume-H&M exchange:
H&M "We think it's completely wrong to talk about bribery. We made no demands. It's not in the interests of H&M to expose journalists to anything that can be considered pressure," says press spokesperson Annacarin Björne.
Resume But didn't you pay for the publications so they would write about the clothes?
H&M This is about giving all journalists an opportunity to travel given that so many publications have small budgets.
Resume Do you mean you only invited editorial staffs that were poor?
H&M It's up to every editorial staff to decide whether to take the trip. But we don't want to discuss this further given that there will be a preliminary investigation.
Olsson helpfully contacted the police officer investigating the case to see if a staffer at H&M or any of the jet-setting fashion scribes had reported a suspected crime. You know the answer: Nope. As Björne told Resume, junkets like this are "normal in this industry." And not only fashion. Press junkets are common in the travel and entertainment industries. Online scribes are also wooed now that Blogville is a regular stop on the buzz-building circuit. Tech journalists are often invited on free trips and radio pundits get free trips as well. (Earlier this year the Department of Defense chased airtime by underwriting a trip to Iraq, an especially savvy move now that opinionated blather is regularly mistaken for actual news reporting.) It's not just media types on this gravy train. Policiticians are intimately familiar with the pursuasive power of junkets, they've been taking them for years. Bureaucrats and judges, too.
Hmm, maybe Olsson and Resume were right to get their knickers in a knot. Is the entire U.S. power structure getting handouts, or does it just seem that way?
One of the Swedish fashion editors (she either went on the trip or sent someone else) said the freebie wasn't an issue because her publication wasn't going to write any more about H&M now than it did before the trip. She was saying that there is no actual conflict of interest if the publication's coverage isn't affected. Was H&M wrong to host the junket? Were journalists wrong to accept? Or is the problem not that reporters took a free trip but that readers won't know about it?
People have attempted to buy the attention of reporters about as long as there have been reporters. But rarely do they attempt to buy actual column inches. Publicity hounds are usually so besotted with the fabulousness of themselves, their company or their product that they're convinced that press coverage is inevitable. If they can get a reporter to sit down, shut up and listen to their pitch (or watch their demo or view their fashion show), they think a cover story is bound to follow. Often this conceit, while charming, is dead wrong.
(I'm never surprised when someone wants to buy my attention, only that they believe it's a cheap purchase. At Macworld we used to sling all the freebie T-shirts into a box. When the box was full, we'd take it downtown and give the shirts to homeless people, people who really needed them. In fact, we didn't want toys or meals or t-shirts, we wanted interesting, reliable info. That is, stories of interest to our readers. This is not news to any PR pro but it is a remarkably tough concept for some execs to grasp.)
Now I'm no paragon of virtue, and I'm not convinced there's an easy answer to every ethical question, inside journalism or out of it. Is it enough to disclosure real and potential conflicts of interest to your editor? Your readers? The planet? Should journalists disclose their conflicts more publicly than judges or senators and, if so, why? (Last time I checked, hacks weren't empowered to haul people into jail or enact legislation. Don't tell me we have a greater public trust than folks with true power.) And why do ideas about press disclosure seem to apply to writers and reporters but not to the editors who assign, shape, edit (often drastically) and approve the final published or broadcast story? It's a mystery to me.
What's your take? Anybody try to "bribe" you recently?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at October 11, 2005 09:49 AM
Comments
Publishers pay for my time and occasionally so do others. What they're buying is my attention. But that's all that's for sale to a non-publisher. No one can buy my opinion.
Consider this: if the publisher pays for the trip then they have expectations of a story justifying the cost. The vendor is only hoping for the opportunity to tell you the story which, maybe, you might incorporate into a published piece.
Some of my best stories have come from meetings arranged ny the vendor. Most of the worst come from events my publisher paid for but which offered nothing of any real interest.
How many journalists ever pay trade show registration fees? How many consider not paying those fees unethical? So why is it OK for vendors to collectively pay for your attention, but not individually?
Yes, just like all walks of life there are unethical people in journalism. But why punish all for the crimes of the few?
-dave
Posted by: David A. Kearns at October 12, 2005 05:14 PM
I think the real answer to more ethical reporting is blogging like this.
When Deborah posts both the facts and her analysis the journalistic process becomes transparent. This is what has been missing. In the past we never knew how many junkets, dinner parties, or outrageous appearance fees were used to buy favorable reporting.
David is right too. There are ethical writers who don't let a few dollars buy more than their attention. But then there are the others.
Readers need to know all the details so they can judge the difference fairly.
Posted by: laurence haughton at October 17, 2005 07:50 PM