Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Today the New York Times rolled out the big guns in the battle for truth. There, in Jim Rutenberg’s latest Mediator column, were two digits the likes of which I have never seen in the Grey Lady.

Footnotes, people. Honest-to-God footnotes.

The footnotes were there to annotate a story about the Trump administration’s disregard for the truth: ‘Alternative Facts’ and the Costs of Trump-Branded Reality.

By necessity, that story referenced two of the administration’s newly minuted “alternative facts”, a.k.a. lies. The first of these was the claim by Sean Spicer, the new press secretary, that more people had used DC’s Metro system the morning of Trump’s inauguration than had used it the morning of Obama’s 2013 inauguration.

The second was the President’s accusation that tensions between Trump and the intelligence community were caused by the meddling media....

It's unclear if the Brexit will have any specific effects on the digital media industry in the short or long term, but there are numerous potential consequences already on the table.

Earlier this month, Group M, the global media arm of WPP, tweaked its TV and newspaper ad spend forecast to compensate for a potential Brexit, according to The Guardian. Previous forecasts said U.K. TV ad spend would grow 7.1% in 2016, but that number drastically reduced to 2.6%. Furthermore, Group M lowered its total U.K. ad spend growth estimates from 7.2% to 6.3%.

This decrease stemmed from ad buyers' hesitation to spend money in the weeks before the referendum. Had the U.K. voted to remain in the EU, the ad market likely would have stabilized. But a vote to leave would have placed more downward pressure on U.K. ad spend, according to Sir Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP.

But even with these adjustments, the estimates still place the U.K. as one of the fastest-growing ad markets.

The news story should have been about the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare.

Instead, it became a story about media screw ups and trying to get the story first instead of getting the story right.

Boy, did they ever blow it and there’s a cautionary tale for PR and crisis managers....

[The real story is the difference between a correction and an apology - JD]

For all the chaos and unpredictability and the sometimes appalling spectacle of this election season, the question of which candidate actually deserves to be president has never been a difficult one.

Vogue has no history of political endorsements. Editors in chief have made their opinions known from time to time, but the magazine has never spoken in an election with a single voice. Given the profound stakes of this one, and the history that stands to be made, we feel that should change.

Vogue endorses Hillary Clinton for president of the United States....