Silence cannot be the solution to scandal

The origin of a word, "scandal" comes from 'trap' or 'stumbling block.' According to Wikipedia, scandal is a widely publicized allegation that damages the reputation of a institution or individual, and it may be based on true or false allegations.

Last year the emperor of golf faced the biggest stumbling block in his entire life. If you type "Tiger Woods Scandal" on Google, you are able to see over twenty six million postings and articles. Like this, scandal of a celebrity has a great impact on a society. Due to watergate, Nixon had to resign himself from the U.S. president position. A sexual relationship with Rewinski had U.S. people think Bill Clinton of an immoral husband, father, and leader. Scandal could be serious risk to celebrities. How can they cope with scandal to avoid the worst situation?

First, never lie. In a risky situation lying means adding fuel to the fire. On the internet, all of the information are shared, so there is no way to avoid investigation of people on the Internet.
Second, you would not better be silent. Then, you might miss the good timing to solve the problem.
Third, show your leadership. People might ask you how you could be like that when you are confident after you do something unforgivable, but it is always good to do with active and sincere mind. If you show your honest feeling and apologize about something wrong of your attitude, audience might feel sympathy and try to understand instead of scorning you.

Original Audio Content by June-Young Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Is news a fact or a story?

There have been a conflict between Fox news and White house last year. Rahm Emmanuel, White House Chief of Staff claimed that Fox news is an institute which has their own perspective. Many people agree that news should be fact-based, but it does not qualify as a news cause news is a story which has several characters, issues, conflict, and development of story.

This does not mean that news manipulates the truth. Even though news is based on facts, but views of media are reflected on the news. This is why media has different angles of opinions on the same event. Nobody can say which view is right or wrong. The judgement depends on each audience. in the past, media could hide bad news or focus on a specific event to control viewer or readers' thought. But, most people have the knowledge to verify whether or not the news is fairly reported since they can easily access to information on the Internet.

The Power of Social Media

This video was produced by Green Peace. What happened to Greean Peace and Nestle? Nestle had used palm oil from Sinar Mas, a large producer of pulp, paper, and palm oil in Indonesia. This company has destroyed rainforest, the habitat of orangutans to make their benefits. So, Green Peace tried to inform consumers that this kind of huge companies such as Nestle, Unilever, and Kraft have had harmful effect on environment.

Once a lot of people watched this video, they started leaving their response on Nestle's Facebook and Website, and tried to make others know this fact through other social media like Twitter. Finally, Nestle could not help announced that they will not buy any kind of products from Sinar Mas.

In conclusion, consumers pressured a company to change their business while participating in an issue and showing their request via various kinds of social media channel. Social media is no longer a trend in this world, but is the new paradigm which enables the world to be changed.

The things a cosmetic company does not tell you

Most people think an expensive cosmetic product might be better than cheaper one. Do you agree with this? Well, that could be, but when it comes to the quantity of toxics in cosmetic items, that idea is totally wrong. Environmental working group has been researching all kinds of goods in cosmetic market and posting the hazard score according to its substances included in items. When you type the brand and product model name on a search bar, it shows you how risky it is on your face or body through the score from 0 to 10. You might be surprised at how much money you spend every month for damaging your skin.

What is PR?

Many people do not know what PR means, and they are confused with the difference between PR and advertising. According to Bob Pickard, PR is telling your story to all the people who need to hear that story. Also, he mentioned the difference between PR and Advertising.

There is distinctive points between two of them even though those are parts of marketing mix.

Advertising has controlled time and space, and people know where advertisement comes out and how they appear on newspaper. Also, they have skepticism about Advertising cause they know that they pay for it. But, PR is an editorial media coverage based on journalistic sources.

What I think about the definition of PR is building a relationship between an organization and audience through interactive communication. It includes advertising and even all kinds of marketing.

California law against using cell phone while driving

The best communication skill

Alex and I had a late dinner together at Pinecrest yesterday. He has been trying to get a job since he got a master's degree in Taxation at Golden Gate University this year, but has spent hard time as U.S. economy fell down. He started talking to me about the interview, and he said that all of the partners at accounting firms have great communication skills. He told me that they looked very confident and strong when they talked him about their firms.

Is it true that people who always speak confidently have good communication skills?

When I majored in Interpretation and Translation in undergrad, I learned SMCRE communication model. It consists of the sender, the message, the channel, and the receiver. To begin, a sender gives a receiver a message through a channel. Next, the receiver interprets the message, and then shows effect to the sender.

For effective communication result, the message should be perfectly delivered to a receiver. That means a sender always think of receiver's understanding while sending the message.

For instance, people mostly believe a politician has a good communication skill cause the profession is familiar with debate. If the politician stays his/her own communication style and talks to a child who attend a kindergarten, there is no doubt that the child understand nothing. What if the politician talks to a farmer or a doctor?

We always need to concern about the audience. A person with good communication skill knows how to be flexible in a different situation with different audience.

What is a blog?

According to Wikipedia, a blog is a type of website or a part of website which is usually maintained by individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of event, or other material such as graphics or video.

In terms of this definiton, let me compare The Huffington Post and The New York Times. I believe The Huffington Post is an aggregated blog. It consists of a lot of posts uploaded by people with various professions such as filmmakers, professors, news coordinators, etc. They post stories in their interest fields and share their opinions with readers.

However, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are the websites of those two newspaper companies. These two "websites" were not established for internet users, but for their online readers. They offer their readers another distribution platform. The main content on these two websites is mostly same as the one in print version. They are also managed by the companies, and most of the posts are news articles of fact-based reporting written by a reporters or editors. So, I would like to conclude that two websites are just web-pages of a newspaper company rather than blogs.

Opening this blog

I recognize that we all have a story to tell. I would love to share a story about media and communication. My object is to learn how to achieve a goal through effective communication strategy while having interactive conversation with you.