Two cities remind us why we need journalism to tell truths that PR-infatuated governments don’t want to tell:
* The former mayor of Birmingham, Larry Langford, died Jan. 8. The city’s official web site posted this stirring obituary of Langford.
What it neglected to mention was the uncomfortable truth that Langford was a felon, arrested and convicted of public corruption while Birmingham’s mayor.
The obit also included this sentence:
Perhaps Langford’s most well-known achievement was helping to form the West Jefferson Amusement Authority to finance construction and operation of Bessemer’s $60 million Visionland amusement park in 1998. The park was later sold and reopened as Alabama Adventure.
It neglected to mention the uncomfortable truth that VisionLand led to a $100 million debt and the largest public bankruptcy to date in U.S. history. (A private company bought it for $5 million.)
Protip: When you read something written by PR folks in passive voice (“was later sold,”) ask yourself: What else is missing?
Sure, it’s an ethical challenge sometimes to determine whether to include the bad news of a person’s life in an obituary. But when it’s a lifelong politician who is released from prison so he can die, it’s an ethical no-brainer to tell the whole story. And given the pain that landed on the city of Birmingham and its residents because of the decisions Langford made, the city’s decision to hide the bad news seems silly.
* The City of Dearborn, Mich., wouldn’t allow publication of a historical magazine that reminded citizens that its most famous citizen, Henry Ford, was an anti-semite whose propaganda campaigns in the early 1900s may well have influenced Adolf Hitler. The magazine’s editor was fired. The editor was a former journalist, who thought that telling the truth was the point of running a history publication.
The story was published elsewhere, of course, and the city’s decision became national news quickly. See: Streisand Effect.
One Response
Yes! The background of the magazine editor is notable. I think that as more former journalists move into PR as a second career (by choice or necessity), some will find it hard to leave their journalistic sensibilities behind. Because some PR organizations do not value such sensibilities, I anticipate clashes and censorship such as this will only increase in frequency.