The Pinelands Commission met today (more to follow on that) and at the conclusion of the meeting, Chairman Lohbauer took strong personal exception to “words being placed in my mouth – with my picture!” and condemned the fake press release I posted as part of a clearly labelled Yes Men stunt.
I hate fake outrage. Especially when it is designed to divert attention from bad decisions, like this.
If Lohbauer wants to condemn anything, he should condemn the manipulative, corrupt, and deceptive practices of his Executive Director for her handling of the South Jersey Gas and NJ Natural Gas pipeline applications.
Had I written this:
The Onion Visits the Pinelands
The Onion is one of my favorite outfits – their stunts are almost always perfectly conceived and executed.
So, with the above headline and lead, I’m really blowing a real Onion-like stunt.
What the hell, here goes:
then everyone would have known that the allusion and link to the Onion and the word “stunt” meant the the press release was fake news. (ditto if I alluded to Steve Colbert).
The fact that people are not familiar with the work of The Yes Men is their problem, not mine.
(Watch: “The Yes Men Fix The World”)
Even if a reader never heard of the Yes Men, there is no excuse for not hitting the link I provided. The fact that people lack curiosity and don’t hit links and analyze the substance from the page linked to is their problem, not mine.
After the hearing, I had to explain the stunt – as a tactic – to a reporter from the Press of Atlantic City (had she too never heard of the Yes Men? Or the Onion? Or Steve Colbert’s form of fake news?)
The stunt’s benefits are very simple and obvious: it draws attention to what government should be doing and what they are not doing.
The content of the fake release was technically sound public policy – that’s what makes it powerful – it could and should be the real McCoy, but it’s not.
The AC Press reporter assured me that while she was initially fooled, she checked the release out before writing a a story. But she chastised me for possibly duping young inexperienced reporters into writing what would have been a very embarrassing career damaging story based on a fake press release.
Again, the fact that journalists are so used to writing stories based exclusively on press releases is a big part of the problem. That is not my problem.
I went out of my way to label the blog post a Yes Man stunt.
Had I done a real Yes Man stunt, I would have sent reporters the press release directly as an authentic Pinelands Commission document sent by the Pinelands Commission, not posted it on my blog with a reader warning about it being a “stunt”.
Sorry, but I offer no apologies.
Besides, the stunt was effective in at least 2 ways:
1) it got the Commission and the media talking about climate change; and
2) it laid out the message and framework for how to engage the climate and energy issues under the CMP.
I suspect that Lohbauer’s over the top emotional response stems from a sense of guilt and shame: that he really can’t issue that kind of press release I faked and guilt that he has allowed the Executive Director to usurp his powers and approve gas pipelines.