Skirts and Speeches

(Thanks to TODAY)

Speech should be like a skirt
The delicate art of managing the media
05:55 AM Sep 10, 2009
by Quak Hiang Whai

THE first Chief Executive of post-handover Hong Kong, Tung Chee Hwa,
will always remember what media professor Tom Plate, a close watcher of
Asian leaders, once told him: "You have to bother with the media if you
want to succeed". He was right.

Tung had foolishly thought he could just let his results do the talking.
Unfortunately, he allowed the liberal Hong Kong media to run amok and
have a free go at him, taking endless jibes at his public policies and
programmes which ironically gave him little chance of producing those
results to speak for him.

He spent much of his last few years in office staggering from one media
crisis to another. In the end, the widespread public discontent
developed an irreversible momentum, which at one stage saw half a
million Hongkongers taking to the streets, discontent which eventually
toppled him.

I will always remember interviewing Tung before he visited Singapore in
1997, when he declared somewhat prophetically that he could only hope to
be half as successful as his old shipping line friend Goh Chok Tong.

Tung lasted all of seven years as Hong Kong's leader, half of Goh's
14-year stint as Prime Minister of Singapore.

But Goh, like his predecessor Lee Kuan Yew, knew a thing or two about
media control and the effective use of power.

Unlike Tung, who continued to ignore the media and failed to exercise
his privileged power when needed, Goh and Lee would not allow the
domestic media to devalue and mock them in public.

For one, you do not see regular political caricatures in the local media
taking potshots at the Singapore leadership.

But it was not just conservatives like Tung who faced immense difficulty
in media management. Even popular leaders like newly-elected United
States President Barack Obama face challenges.

Someone once said a speech should be like a woman's skirt, long enough
to cover the essential parts and short enough to be interesting.
Likewise, media management requires a delicate balancing act where
excessive control and management could drive the media to the hostile,
defensive and uncooperative corner.

On the other hand, the archaic non-engagement approach adopted by some
of our leaders in this region could effectively alienate your
constituents and all your good public policies do not get communicated
and implemented well.

How do you sieve through all that thick noise and effectively engage and
communicate with your multiple stakeholders? American politicians
including Ronald Reagan have used polls and focus groups to suss out
what is hot on the ground and what are the messages and even key words
that would hit home.

Others simply flood the media with information overload.

There is no single winning formula. But from the Obama and Tung
experiences, I also believe there is some merit to the latter's argument
about delivering the results that "do the talking".

Eventually, leaders must produce real results and progress for their
stakeholders. Being popular with the media can only get you so far for
so long.

This is an edited excerpt from No Comments and Don't Quote Me! a book on
media management by former journalist Quak Hiang Whai. The book is
published by Write Editions and distributed by Select Books. It will be
available at major book stores next week.