The mainstream news media has a serious African American problem. Lots of blacks in this country are furious at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, Greta Van Susteren, Anderson Cooper, etc.

There’s no polling or focus groups behind my conclusion. Just listening to my wife, her siblings, and her friends, and hearing a healthy dose of The Michael Baisden Show on WHUR playing on my kitchen radio.

They’re furious about the Jena Six – with good reason. And they’re disgusted that, except on September 20 when tens of thousands marched in Jena, Louisiana, the mainstream media spent no time talking about what clearly appears to be vile prosecutorial racism. From the perspective of many, Greta, Anderson, etc. pull out all the stops when it comes to reporting on a young white girl gone missing or – talk about manna from heaven for the media – OJ getting arrested. But when it comes to reporting on nooses hung from a playground tree, racial fights, and African American youth being charged with attempted murder after a schoolyard brawl, the television news coverage might as well fade to black. Well, actually, I guess not

Have you ever been to a homecoming, a coming-home-from-Iraq homecoming? I have. Two. Sort of. I can’t remember in what airports, as I’ve been on the road more than my dog wants me to be. But I was there.

At one, wife and new baby, and little toddler girl wait just outside the security gate, along with numerous relatives waving small flags and holding hand colored signs of welcome and thanks. Dad arrives in civilian clothes, only his haircut military issue. The first kiss is for his wife, the second for the newborn – and I wonder if it’s the first time they have met – and then he turns to his daughter, looking about somewhere between two- and three-years old.

“Doy you remember me?” he asks his oldest child, arms outstretched in waiting hug.

His daughter moves slowly towards him, very slowly, anxiously sucking on her forefinger. She gets to Dad after what seems like eternal seconds, never pulling her finger from her mouth, never giving the hug back to her father, just kind of sidling up to him. She’s smiling, but it’s not beaming. It’s shy and nervous.

I watch from the sidelines. (more…)

Over the last year I have conducted media training with approximately 75 people. I think it’s fair to say that every one of these individuals benefited. And I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority, if not all, would hire me again. Certainly the parent organization that’s paid the bill has received very positive feedback.

But ultimately what I do is pretty simple, which is probably what makes my brand of media training better, frankly, than most. I have one basic goal for every media training session: give the “subject” one or two suggestions that will make them more comfortable and confident in dealing with the media and communicating, whether that communicating is on television or in a conversation in the grocery store line. That may be giving the person a specific interview skill, giving them permission to be themselves on the air, or offering a “mental paradigm” they can use to approach an interview (for example, viewing the interview as a conversation in which they are delivering their messages). (more…)

Last Friday The Washington Post ran a front-page article slamming the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for toning down a television campaign promoting breastfeeding following lobbying from the baby formula industry. The ads changed from scare tactic – one ad showed an insulin bottle topped by a nipple (highlighting a correlation between not breastfeeding and future diabetes) – to softer advertising that tried to highlight the positives of breastfeeding. Here’s my reaction, based on nearly a quarter-century doing public relations in Washington, DC: so what?

Let me be perfectly clear: I am an advocate for breastfeeding. My wife breastfed all of our children. It is clearly the healthiest choice, and I’m very thankful my wife did so. But, depending on what year you look at the data, only about 60 to 70 percent of new mothers attempt to breastfeed and, by the time their babies are six months old, the figure drops to 40 percent – at that age, less than 15 percent of mothers are only giving their babies breast milk. That means there are a whole lot of parents relying on baby formula. What ex-government official called what current government official aside, did we really need the federal government scaring the heck out of millions of mothers who do not breastfeed? (more…)