Chapter 3: Why Media Training My friend Steve Housser, a former CBC Bureau Chief, likes to say that reading a book on how to be a credible spokesperson is like watching a video on playing golf. You can study how to improve your swing all you like, but it really only happens when you get … Read More
The Credible Spokesperson’s Handbook – Ch.2: Fake News
Chapter 2: Fake News At a time when social media dominates the news landscape a torrent of ‘fake news’ is playing on the human desire for bias confirmation and accelerates it with click bait. Trust becomes an increasingly difficult commodity to build and to maintain when the information highway has its own vandals. In the … Read More
The Credible Spokesperson’s Handbook – Ch.1: Guardians of Democracy
Chapter 1: Guardians Of Democracy The search for truth, as it can most accurately be told, is the essential role of the news media. Within this, credible spokespeople are more important than ever. They are a central part of the bulwark the news media plays in our collective fight for individual rights and freedoms and … Read More
Navigating Life When Things Get Hard
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Virtutibus igitur rectissime mihi videris et ad consuetudinem nostrae orationis vitia posuisse contraria. Te enim iudicem aequum puto, modo quae dicat ille bene noris. Sint modo partes vitae beatae. Cum praesertim illa perdiscere ludus esset. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quarum ambarum rerum cum medicinam pollicetur, luxuriae licentiam … Read More
The Alberta Election – A Time To Rebuild Trust?
This week in Ottawa Elizabeth’s May, in a moment of inappropriate behavior, set her Green Party gains back years. Last week in Edmonton a ‘cabal’ of oil industry businessmen held a news conference to wag their fingers at voters admonishing them not to vote the way they were going to may undermine their personal authenticity for … Read More
Credible Spokespeople Build Credible Reputations
In the housing development industry there’s something called the broken window theory that’s proven to be critical to the improvement of neighborhoods and cities across North America. A Harvard criminologist had noted that if a broken window in a building went unrepaired all other windows would soon be broken. Apparently, the unfixed window sends a … Read More
It’s Not a Conversation
I loved what American comedian and TV host Jon Stewart said about the news media a few years ago. At the ‘rally for sanity’ held in Washington just before the 2010 US congressional elections when the Tea Party was about to make big inroads. Stewart compared the News Media to a bright sun focusing its … Read More
WhatsCred
WhatsCred, the name of this blog, is about thinking and behaving in a way that builds trust and maintains credibility. Everyone spins. Every time we put our sunny side up we’re spinning. All of us want the world to see our shiny side, our best profile and our most credible self. In today’s 24/7 social media … Read More
Truth telling
Today we have so little darkness: our world is lit up 24 hours a day. Its transparent with blogs and social networks broadcasting the buzz of a whole new generation of people who have made a choice to live their life in a much more public world in a much more noisy world. So one … Read More