Nothing But the Truth

I spent two years covering the historic Prettyman courthouse where Donald Trump was arraigned Thursday, and my experience there offered a case study in media relations. 

My assignments there came when I took a break from the hectic pace of reporting on presidential politics to start a family. And the two beats could not have been more different. 

While covering politics, I felt like I was constantly being spun with shaded facts and in a constant struggle for access. At the courthouse, my sources were most interested in making sure I was getting the story right and had an open door policy. 

It’s a rule of thumb for dealing with reporters: Make yourself a resource of reliable, accurate information. Not only will you be helping the cause of journalism, but it will ultimately pay off by making you an influential and trusted resource to the media. 

Most of the people who were influencing what I wrote were never quoted in my stories – or if they were, it was from the official court proceedings and not often the much more helpful background conversations we were having. 

It was judges who would make sure I understood their ruling’s legal context. It was Justice Department officials who would point me to interesting cases on the docket. It was defense attorneys who would help me find the most important filings in a voluminous case record. It was court staffers who tipped me off to an upcoming hearing where news would be made. 

Be that kind of source if you want to shape the news. 

And finally, if your organization is ever in litigation, ensure you have someone on the team who knows how to whisper in a reporter’s ear. Your opponents likely do.

AI is making trades while listening to earnings calls, scouring regulatory filings and occasionally sending short-lived volatility into stocks.

As you prepare for earnings, see our four tips for speaking the language of the AI platforms already listening in.

1. Avoid mixing good and bad news in one sentence. Keep them far apart. Practice disambiguation by not discussing challenges the business overcame in the same sentence as positive results. Cluster negative news together, if possible, in a discrete section or paragraph. Deliver bad news once, rather than repeating, and make messages from the CEO unambiguously positive if he or she is discussing strong results or performance.

2. When discussing bad news, be clinical and avoid conventional jargon – including overused euphemisms. Don’t give a litany of the macroeconomic troubles impacting a company – investors are very aware of all of that. Avoid excessive use of the word "challenge,” which is generally viewed by AI as negative. Ditto constraint, inflation, disruption and uncertainty.

3. Repeat the good news and boast (a little). AI responds so well to the repetition of positive news that it’s worth writing in a way that might sound boastful to a human audience (but don’t overdo it). The machines are triggered by certain topics, like EBITDA and Share Buybacks. 

• They "like" certain words and phrases and score them as positive: Growth, increase, value, improve, impact, strengthen and new (paired with revenue, customers, etc.).

• Similarly, there are words they don’t "like" and they will ding your script for them: Challenge (in all forms), constraint, inflation, headwinds, disruption, increase (paired with "costs") and uncertainty.

4. Review available sentiment scores of past earnings transcripts on platforms like FactSet and learn more about how to adapt earnings communications to AI driven tools.

Find more detail and examples here.

More than half of Americans are alarmed or concerned about climate change—but fewer and fewer think addressing it should be a priority. 

Here’s what else our Research and Insights team found in recent polls about climate change. 

• More American adult citizens (43%) say their area is hotter this summer than say it is cooler (22%) or the same as usual (32%). Americans in the South are most likely to say it is hotter (58%).

  • 19% say they have experienced a power grid related power outage this summer. This is most common in the South (26%) and least common in the Northeast (11%).

• 59% of Americans, polled on Facebook, are alarmed (confident that climate change is real, human-caused, an urgent threat and support climate policies) or concerned (confident that climate change is real, human-caused and support climate change policies but see it as less urgent) about climate change.

  • Of the top 15 global emitters, America has the third lowest number of alarmed and concerned users, after Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.  

• A thinning majority (53%) of American adults say addressing climate change should be a priority, even at the risk of slowing economic growth. This is down 5 points from 2018 (58%).

  • The parties are split on the issue, with 80% of Democrats favoring addressing climate change over economic growth and 72% of Republicans favoring economic growth over climate action.