THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KEITH OLBERMANN, GUEST HOST: As you've heard, police in Washington confirm they are responding to an anonymous tip that the body of Chandra Levy is buried under a parking lot in Fort Lee, Virginia. Facts are hard to find right now, and perhaps that is a lesson of this story.
It's the topic of our conversation tonight: public relations, spokespeople and how they influence the news, and even the truth, in cases like the disappearance of Ms. Levy -- tonight on GREENFIELD AT LARGE.
I'm Keith Olbermann, in this week for Jeff Greenfield. If there are any further developments in the story first reported by CNN this afternoon that police had confirmed they had received an anonymous tip that Chandra Levy's body had been buried under a parking lot under construction at Fort Lee, Virginia, we will break out of this program to bring those developments to you.
But perhaps especially at this moment, there is a question of how we all got here. There is an association called the Public Relations Society of America, and its president told us today that since 1989, its membership has grown from 11,000 to 20,000. In a moment we'll talk about what they and the others in their field have done, and are doing, to the coverage of news and the dissemination of truth.
But first, the stark truth, that Dr. Robert Levy and his wife Susan hired a public relations firm and California Congressman Gary Condit did, too, and that these people took us to the point where an anonymous tip about just one of the thousands of people missing in this country at this moment has been the leading news story since midafternoon.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OLBERMANN (voice-over): The Levys talked and hired to get others to talk about them. Condit tried not to talk and hesitated to hire others to talk for him. His silence may have leant a quality of indelibility to the idea that he had, or has something to do with Ms. Levy's disappearance, even if police were to announce every hour on the hour that they think he does not. Condit may have already lost the PR game. The punch line is that for 10 years, Gary Condit worked for a health care company as its public relations man.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm really sorry about all the people that were hurt.
OLBERMANN: Lizzie Grubman, one of New York's foremost practitioners of the PR craft, certainly knows that a publicist who represents herself, to paraphrase Lincoln, has a fool for a client. After she drove her ultratrendy car into some folks in the ultratrendy Hamptons, she immediately hired -- no, not a body and fender man, but rather New York's single foremost practitioner of the PR craft, Howard Rubenstein.
This PR agent has her own PR agent, one who's also represented everybody from Leona Helmsley...
LEONA HELMSLEY, CONVICTED OF TAX EVASION: I'm innocent.
OLBERMANN: ... to the National Hockey League to the State of Israel. These two stories are the extreme examples, the most comic- book-like examples of the across-the-board expansion of publicity, public relations, media relations, news management and spin.
But what happens when such news management is applied to a presidential administration? Ultimately, that's what a press secretary is for. The saints among them do not lie, they simply avert their eyes from the unpleasant truths and hope that that will force us to avert ours.
Governmental news is almost entirely managed, to some degree or another, from photo-ops to last month's missile defense test, when the Pentagon neglected to point out that the missile they shot down carried what you or I would call a homing beacon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eager to have her day in court.
OLBERMANN: Manage the news well, and nobody notices. Or at least, they have nothing with which to hit you over the head. Manage it poorly, and you get the 1998 town meeting at Ohio State, conceived with the PR purpose of showing public support for possible aggressive action against Iraq. How'd that go?
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: There are various examples of things that are not right in this world, and the United States is trying...
(BOOING)
OLBERMANN: No comment.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OLBERMANN: Here to comment, my guests. They are Mitchell Fink, who does gossip and entertainment reporting for "The New York Daily News," Michael Wolff, who writes the "Media Life" column for "New York Magazine" and wrote the best-selling book "Burn Rate," and in Los Angeles, professional spokeswoman Susan Carpenter McMillan, whose clients have included Paula Jones, among others.
Let's start with the inevitable, acknowledging that this parking lot story still hangs there in the balance. Michael, if the Levys never hired a PR firm, would this story be already over?
MICHAEL WOLFF, "NEW YORK MAGAZINE": I think so. I mean, I think that the main motor of this story has been the fact that the Levys hired a PR firm. And not only that, they hired one of the largest PR firms in the country. This is real muscle that they brought to this.
OLBERMANN: Mitchell, do you think so?
MITCHELL FINK, GOSSIP COLUMNIST, "THE DAILY NEWS": No, I disagree, because the story had all the elements from the very beginning. You had a congressman and an intern. All it would have taken was, really, one reporter to kind of ferret that out, and I think this story would have grown.
WOLFF: And I absolutely disagree with that. I mean, I think -- you have a congressman. One of the interesting things is that you have a protagonist in the story who's not well-known, who's not a celebrity. Somehow, the PR muscle here has elevated him to the point of celebrity. He's a -- it's his downfall.
OLBERMANN: Let me get Susan in on this from the angle of someone who has been involved in the handling of a story. What do you think? Would it have gone away with if there had not been professional assistance on this?
SUSAN CARPENTER MCMILLAN, PROFESSIONAL SPOKESWOMAN: No, absolutely not. I agree 100 percent with Mr. Fink. This had all of the elements that we want. It had power, it had sex. It had possibly murder. It had adultery. It had all the stuff that Americans really like. I mean, it was its own little political dynasty.
And whether they hired a PR firm or not, the story was ready to take off on its own. The PR firm may have just added -- sped the story up some.
OLBERMANN: Mitchell, Mr. Condit spent 10 years working for a company called National Medical Enterprises, where he was the PR and marketing guy, and he follows none of the quote/unquote rules of this process. Here's the Levy family, within a week of their daughter not turning up, coming home from Washington, they go out and hire a firm and play the media like a violin. are They to be applaud or are they to be reproached for doing that?
FINK: I don't think they're to be either. I think that it seems like the sensible thing to do. If you're in a situation and you need someone to either act as a buffer between yourself and the media, because you know how things get around here. The media just goes for it if they think that there's a big story.
So you need someone, in effect, to kind of stand between you and the cameras that -- where you won't look like an idiot.
MCMILLAN: And also, Keith, I think that that's -- it was very needed on their behalf. When you are dealing with your own child's life, you don't want this story to die. You want the pressure to continue, and I think it was absolutely a necessity and a very smart move on their part.
WOLFF: At the same time, what you have here -- and I have no idea what happened in this story, what happened to Chandra Levy or who did what to her -- but what you have done here in the whole thrust of this PR strategy has been to create a lynch mob.
MCMILLAN: Oh...
OLBERMANN: We're going to have to take a break, Susan. When we continue, we are going to get away from the Levy story in particular and go a little bit larger. Are we, the media, looking out for you, or are we in fact colluding with PR people? How the PR selling of a football player turned into a ban on all interviews with him or his teammates, and other items, as I continue with my guests after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OLBERMANN: We rejoin you.
We are talking while Washington police respond to another tip about the possible whereabouts of the body of Chandra Levy. If there are new developments in the case, we'll bring them to you immediately.
In the interim, let's continue on the subject of public relations, PR, its impact on news and truth. My guests include, former Paula Jones spokesperson Susan Carpenter McMillan; "New York Daily News" gossip reporter Mitchell Fink; and "New York Magazine" media critic Michael Wolff.
Mitchell, we have an idea of the process. What is most important of the rules in the process, for you as a reporter/columnist in dealing with a PR person or a publicist or a spokesperson?
FINK: Keith, if I get a story on X-Y-Z celebrity, I have to try to reach that celebrity. Odds are, I won't talk to the person directly, there will be a person that I talk to. So that representative -- that PR person, in many cases, although it could be the agent or the manager or the lawyer, is going to now have relationship and a dialogue with me about one particular issue. After dozens of issues you build up a relationship with that person.
OLBERMANN: Michael, what should the first rule be in the dealings between PR people and the media?
WOLFF: The first rule should to be tell the truth. Is it, no, never is. My first rule in dealing with PR people is not to deal with them, to try in every way possible to avoid them, to get around them. To, in fact, from my point of view, stonewall them.
OLBERMANN: Do you succeed?
WOLFF: Yes, actually. They are kind of stumped when you say, no, it's my -- I'm sorry, it's my policy, I don't speak to PR people. Then they have to begin to manage me, instead of managing their client. FINK: If that were my policy, I would be in big trouble. I think that they are in many cases a necessary evil. You have to strike up a relationship with these people if you want the best information, because you have to be able to get that information, and then go somewhere with them because you can't print this stuff willy- nilly. You have to at least get a confirmation...
WOLFF: From my point of view, you are getting their information, it's not the best information, and that's the issue. How to get the information that you want, rather than the information they want you to have.
FINK: You get the information first, and then go somewhere to confirm it.
OLBERMANN: Let me bring Susan in to flip it upside-down. What is the most important rule for someone who's a spokesperson in dealing with the media? Is it tell the truth at all times?
MCMILLAN: Absolutely. I have to agree with a very cynical, almost arrogant Michael out there, when it says to tell the truth, and just to kind of touche you, Michael, if you called me up with that attitude with any of my clients, and you said it's my policy, I would say fine, and hang you up on you. I would much rather deal with a Mr. Fink.
WOLFF: You see, that's what is going on all the time, to set up that tradeoff.
MCMILLAN: Can I finish please? I think the most important thing is that you tell the truth, but more than that, Keith, you have to represent a client that is telling the truth. I turn down probably nine out of ten cases because if my client isn't telling me the truth, I can't go out there and sell a lie. I have to believe in my client, and in my clients' cases.
Unfortunately, too many PR -- there's really two categories of spokespeople: one is educators, those of us that work on behalf of causes or clients, who are defending them, and the others are the spinmeisters, who are out there defending those that are lying, and they have to lie for them. So there are actually categories within my own field.
OLBERMANN: You were jumping in on this, Michael. Obviously, on a question of a standard.
WOLFF: I absolutely don't think that's true at all. I think -- and a matter of fact, I think what we just heard was an example of stonewalling of someone trying to control the information, control the story effectively, and one of the things that happens -- that's kind of thing, unless you talk to me, you don't get any information. Unless you talk to me, spokesperson, my client is -- silent.
(CROSSTALK)
FINK: Wait a minute, the whole idea is to get -- as a journalist, to get the information, get whatever information you can, if you believe you have an accurate story, now at least you have somewhere to go with that story. If that person is then stonewalling you, it won't take you too long to know. If they say, no comment, you'll know a lot more than what you knew five minutes ago..
MCMILLAN: And I think, Mitchell, we also have different roles here. Mitchell, you are reporting, I'm the spokesperson, and Michael is the critic. So I think what you see here, Keith, is three people interacting with each other. It's Michael's job to be a critic. It's my job to stop Michael from criticizing my client, and it's Mitchell's job to report on the story.
OLBERMANN: The host's job is to perhaps trip up all three guests at the same time, if he can, or at least point out that there might be an inconsistency in the whole thing.
Mitchell, you pointed out previously that perhaps the most impressive and successful example of spokesmanship or taking PR advice involved a very big lie, and that would have been in President Clinton's case. Does that not turn this whole process somewhat on its head?
FINK: No, it doesn't. It is part of the process. In Clinton's case, the first thing he said in January of 1998 was that I did not have sexual relations or whatever he said, with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. Now, because he said that, nobody knew it at the time, maybe a smart PR guy. Maybe Dick Morris knew...
MCMILLAN: Jim Carville knew it.
FINK: But at the end of that story, he got off at the impeachment trial. If he had told the truth right then and there, and said you know what? I had sex with her, I cheated on my wife, I did all that. Because there was a lynch mob mentality at that particular time, he could have been out immediately.
OLBERMANN: Michael, you said, back at the Condit situation, that there's a lynch mob in progress in that story. Was there one in the Clinton story? And do you think that Mitchell's explanation of what happened there is correct and valid?
WOLFF: I think it is valid. I think if he fessed up from that first day, he would have been cooked. And yes, I think a lynch mob did develop there. Did it develop as a result of PR? I don't know, maybe it developed as a result of bad PR.
FINK: Somebody gave him advice. Somebody in 1998 said, look, I don't know what happened or didn't happen, but you better not say it happened and he took that course.
(CROSSTALK)
OLBERMANN: Susan, we defer to you briefly here, as a veteran of part of that directly.
MCMILLAN: OK, well, you know what? I think sometimes clients will just lie to their spokespeople, and that individual then has to go out and defend what their client says. Maybe nobody advised him, maybe Clinton just lied on his own.
FINK: But if he did that on his own, then maybe he saw the end of the tunnel before anybody else did.
WOLFF: It was also a Bill Clinton thing. It was both catastrophic and brilliant at the same time. It veered back and forth.
OLBERMANN: And we may have selected his next profession for him. He might prefer to go into public relations.
When we come back, if you should be wary of PR, shouldn't you be wary of the journalism that feeds on it? And the PR team that put a football team under the cone of silence. Stand by.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OLBERMANN: We rejoin you. Nothing new at this hour on the tip Washington police say they are investigating, that the body of Chandra Levy is buried under a Virginia parking lot.
In the absence of further developments, let's continue on the subject of the means by which this story, at least in part, attained such prominence, public relations. Still with us, Mitchell Fink of "The New York Daily News," Michael Wolff of "New York Magazine," and professional spokesperson Susan Carpenter McMillan, who's joining us from Los Angeles.
Potential conflicts of interest. Michael's magazine has a story running on me that's sitting there waiting to run, if I and when I get a full-time job. Mitchell is still waiting for me to call him back a story from three years and three jobs ago. He's written about me, and we used to be on competing television stations in Los Angeles.
Mitchell, probably everybody in the media and everybody in PR could list triangles and potential conflicts of interest. When do they become real conflicts? When do they actually hurt the truth?
FINK: I think you have to go on a story-by-story basis. You have to examine each situation. I'm reporting on something now, I know these people. Either I'm coming clean about it up front or I'm talking to them, I'm dealing with it. I'm telling my employers, look, I know these people, they're friends of mine. Whatever it is, I think you have to make that call on a story-by-story basis.
Look what you have going on in media today, the cross ownerships and the word synergy that gets thrown around. So what's good for one company may be good for another company, that they stonewall something on this end, it's going to hurt people on this end, but they've got to do it anyway because of the big buck.
OLBERMANN: Let me give Michael a hypothetical on a story-by- story basis. Gary Condit calls you tomorrow morning, says, "I want to talk. Here are my terms. Here are the people you have to talk to, here are the restrictions you have to accept." Would you accept any of them? How many would you accept the interview to get that truth that has not been heard?
WOLFF: I would probably accept none of them. There's probably circumstances in which I would change that policy, but in general I would say, no, you either talk to me or not, and I don't make deals when it comes to information or truth.
OLBERMANN: Susan, the reality version of that. What was the most outrageous offer from mainstream media while you were representing Paula Jones, to try to get you to get her to go on their show or in front of an interview with their print reporter?
MCMILLAN: Oh, they'll offer many things. Legitimate media doesn't do that, I have to say that. Most of my clients have gag orders, court gag orders. The media understands that and they do want the story out there, so no one really did outrageous things. Mainstream media is pretty good. It's the tabloids that do the things that are so outrageous. I mean, they go to levels of even threatening you. They try candy first and then threatening second.
WOLFF: A lot of candy.
MCMILLAN: You are absolutely right. And I do have to say that I at least respect Michael for standing up and saying, look, I'm going to talk to this source or I'm not going to talk to the source. But I really want to make it clear, a spokesperson is a little bit like the public lawyer. It depends who you're representing.
In my case, I'm usually representing the defense side against the prosecution side -- excuse me, opposite -- I'm the one that's out there trying to prosecute and the people that we would go against would be the ones that are stonewalling.
WOLFF: There's another distinction here which I think is an important one, that in most instances we are not dealing with a spokesperson for a individual. We are dealing with a PR department or a communications department for a corporation.
MCMILLAN: Right.
FINK: Well, I deal with both all the time, and it's pretty much the same rule: again, you can't stop us from tying to get the story, we are going to go out there and do the best we can, we have to deal with these people, so many publicists, so little time.
But they're a necessary evil in the business. A lot of them are my friends and I respect what they do. Tell me the truth, get me the story, if I need your help, fine. If you can't help me, I will go around you and do whatever I can.
WOLFF: In terms -- especially with a corporation, interest is not truth at all. Its interest usually is in selling something. I spent a lot of time with the technology business, and that business is iron-fisted. You do it our way or we give you nothing. You are closed out. OLBERMANN: And media is thus, too, which is why I never called you back.
(LAUGHTER)
Let me say we are out of time, I want to thank my guests, Mitchell Fink of "The New York Daily News", Michael Wolff, author of "Burn Rate" and professional spokesperson Susan Carpenter McMillan. Thank you all.
When we come back, first the football team wanted publicity that was literally a hundred feet tall. Then, it didn't want any publicity. Not having your cake and, not, eating it too, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OLBERMANN: And another thing: trying to buy a story, and quash a story, in the same story. The University of Oregon Athletic Department spent tens of thousands of dollars to stick this 100-foot- high picture of its quarterback across the street from Madison Square Garden in New York, in hopes of making him a candidate for football's Heisman Trophy.
Most sportswriters, most college football experts, consider this candidacy a fantasy. And they have written pages of articles and radio and TV copy, to that effect. Oregon has been widely mocked.
Two weeks ago, in what was at best extremely bad timing, the university decreed that it would henceforth limit use of its game highlights by TV stations and networks, and prohibit all interviews with the school's players and coaches. However, it could choose to lift this prohibition when it so desired, for whichever reporters it chose, and for whatever reasons it determined.
And by the way, when it chooses to lift the prohibition for a particular reporter, and is asked by news organizations to explain? The University of Oregon Athletic Public Relations Department has said they will have, no comment.
I'm Keith Olbermann sitting in for Jeff Greenfield.
Tomorrow, police cameras on the streets, cloning around the corner. Is technology the toothpaste that has already gotten out of the tube? Reports on police response to the tip about the whereabouts of Chandra Levy's body, coming up as warranted.
In the interim, "SPORTS TONIGHT" is next.
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