Principal @commsleadership • Public relations for newsmakers • PR career @ 🇺🇸🇨🇳🇯🇵🇨🇦🇰🇷🇸🇬 Battle-hardened communicator • On the record • Asia hand 🌏
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Joined December 2008
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Bob Pickard retweeted
Fox News Ratings Sink a Staggering 27% in October, but It Still Has Much a Larger Audience Than CNN or MS NOW variety.com/2026/tv/news/fox…
Bob Pickard retweeted
The millennial candidates are communicating on a different level.
Abdul El-Sayed: “We are being actively bullied by the dumbest people in the room. Donald Trump is an idiot. He has one genius which is getting attention. Because his dad never gave him enough, because he was a nepo baby, he craved attention and used the bullying tactics to get it. But the man is an idiot. Just a fool”
"When communications professionals are brought in only after a problem becomes public, they are left to manage the response. When they are involved earlier, they can help leaders understand the people affected, anticipate questions and make better-informed decisions. That is why PR must be treated as part of the decision-making process, not merely the voice that explains the decision afterwards."
marketingedge.com.ng/the-hig…
"Public relations has evolved beyond media relations and messaging into a high-value, C-suite leadership function grounded in relationship capital, strategic foresight and trusted counsel."
Bob Pickard retweeted
Trump has spent two years making China look better by comparison. Then the Mbappé saga came along and instantly reminded the world just how nationalistic, insecure, and closed-off China remains.
Bob Pickard retweeted
LIFE returns to print 11.23.26.
Read our Editors’ Letter and learn more about the new LIFE here: new.life.com
Bob Pickard retweeted
Leaders used to accept responsibility. Eisenhower and JFK admitted fault when things went wrong. Who does that today? asks William A. Galston
on.wsj.com/4sv2GHQ
Bob Pickard retweeted
Meta had an internal PR plan to try and discredit Jon Haidt because he was a critic of social media.
Meta was going to recruit academics, like Andrew Gelman, to write take down pieces. They were trying to turn academics against one another through a "whisper strategy".
This is a very serious problem for open academic debate. If academics who share negative evidence about a platform are targeted by campaigns to smear our credibility, we are in deep, deep trouble.
This creates a very serious conflict of interest for anyone who is paid to do this.
law360.com/articles/2542517/…
Bob Pickard retweeted
📺 “We reported events one-sidedly for years”: Serbian TV apologizes to viewers after Vučić's party loses the election
Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV) opened its news broadcast with footage of celebrations following the Student List's election victory — scenes it had failed to show the previous evening.
“For years, we failed to fulfill our duty. We kept silent, turned a blind eye, reported events one-sidedly, and failed to ask the necessary questions. For that, we owe our viewers an apology,” news anchor Goran Eror said.
Following the controversy, RTV's acting editor-in-chief Nenad Čačić resigned.
A similar incident occurred in Hungary, where state television also apologized to viewers after Viktor Orbán's election defeat.
🎉🎉 Serbia celebrates Vučić's defeat all night — now he's warning the country about sanctions against Russia
After 14 years of Aleksandar Vučić's political dominance, his bloc has lost the snap parliamentary elections. The opposition Student List, which emerged from mass anti-government protests, has claimed victory.
According to preliminary figures from Ipsos and CeSID, the students secured around 53% of the vote, while Vučić's coalition received approximately 39%.
The former president acknowledged defeat. He estimated that the winners could secure 135–140 seats in Serbia's 250-member parliament.
But he couldn't resist issuing a warning about Russia. Vučić claimed the new government could impose sanctions on Moscow as early as March or April.
Meanwhile, Belgrade and other Serbian cities celebrated the student movement's victory throughout the night, with car horns, singing, and crowds cheering in the streets.
Final election results are still pending.
PR pro-tip: Don’t blame your earpiece or the connection to dodge journalist questions during a live media interview. As this exchange shows, such an evasion speaks volumes and can do more damage to your credibility than a straightforward answer would have.
This is the most egregious and infamous example of lamely blaming the connection to avoid a sensitive question during a media interview: youtu.be/UlCYFh8U2xM?si=CQDA…
Bob Pickard retweeted
Americans' media consumption has topped out at ~25 hours a week
Annual growth since 2018:
- YouTube: +7.8%
- Social media: +6.6%
- Gaming: +2.1%
- Video (non-YouTube): -0.7%
- Print: -10.5%
Every hour social and YouTube gain is an hour something else loses
Charts of the Week: a16z.news/p/charts-of-the-we…
Bob Pickard retweeted
"We have essentially doubled back to the computer architecture of the 1960s through the 1980s, a period dominated by the mainframe and the so-called 'dumb terminal'. In a bizarrely ironic twist, generative AI has reverted us back to a computing system from 50 years ago." pcmag.com/opinions/welcome-b…
"Because communication runs through nearly every leadership task, it overlaps heavily with broader advice on how to develop leadership skills."
"Executive presence is the combination of composure and clear communication that leads others to trust you with high-stakes situations and greater responsibility. People with it stay steady when a meeting turns tense, and they explain their thinking clearly enough that others act on it."
scu.edu/business/blog/leader…
AI is more persuasive than humans, says new study
"Findings suggest that we’re less likely to stand our ground with AI agents, giving it an edge in debates."
bps.org.uk/research-digest/a…
"When participants thought they were talking to another person, they were more likely to argue against the opposing viewpoint.
However, when they thought they were talking to an AI, they argued less, and ultimately became more persuaded by the AI’s position.
We found evidence that this happened because people tend to see AI as less persuadable and thus argue less with it. Because they become less argumentative, they do less to defend or bolster their own initial position.
These results highlight a unique persuasive advantage for conversational AI: an opposing viewpoint may encounter less resistance when it is thought to come from an AI versus another person."
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d…
