Subject: About IETF communication skills

From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:52:17 +0100

I understand that IETF has not done a good job in communicating about our
work and I appreciate that this is being improved, however I think we need
to be very careful.

Yesterday, during dinner, one of the discussions with my colleagues, was
about this topic.

Some considered that part of the delay of the IPv6 deployment was due to the
lack of communication effort from IETF. I'm not really sure about that,
however I agree that everything helps, of course.

My consideration is on the other way around about the latest press about
IPv6 and NAT. Obviously the press is not presenting the info in the right
way, but this is our fault.

I don't think anybody from the community, or the IETF organization has the
right to do and interview, and speak on behalf of the community and NOT make
sure to review the interview BEFORE it is published. In my opinion is a big
mistake and a lesson to learn, because in this case the damage to IPv6
deployment is possibly much higher than what we as engineers could foresee.

In my opinion it is necessary a public correction from the IETF, as a
community, clarifying that NAT is not needed for IPv6 and what we are
working on is not the same as the "IPv4 NAT".

Regards,
Jordi

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From: Lixia Zhang <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:48:58 -0700

> deployment is possibly much higher than what we as engineers could  

I'd like to share my own experience here: I was interviewed by exactly  
the same reporter some time ago, and I requested to review the article  
before publication. But the very next thing I learned was that the  
article had been published, and the interview misquoted.

I questioned the reporter why she ignored my request, the reply was  
that it was the magazine's policy not allowing preview --- something  
they never told me beforehand.

One lesson learned.

Lixia

---

From: "Daniel Brown" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:58:29 -0400

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 1:48 PM, Lixia Zhang <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> I questioned the reporter why she ignored my request, the reply was that it
> was the magazine's policy not allowing preview --- something they never told
> me beforehand.
>
> One lesson learned.

    Indeed.  It may be worth making a point in the future to ask if
previews and pre-publishing amendments are allowed before consenting
to an interview.

-- 
</Daniel P. Brown>
Better prices on dedicated servers:
Intel 2.4GHz/60GB/512MB/2TB $49.99/mo.
Intel 3.06GHz/80GB/1GB/2TB $59.99/mo.
Dedicated servers, VPS, and hosting from $2.50/mo.
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From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:08:38 -0700

> previews and pre-publishing amendments are allowed before consenting

Or  you know not consenting to interviews with someone who's 
professionalism you don't respect. Why you would expect someone engaged 
in serious journalism or otherwise to offer you the opportunity to 
modulate your own statements post facto is beyond me.

---

From: "Daniel Brown" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:11:48 -0400

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Or  you know not consenting to interviews with someone who's professionalism
> you don't respect. Why you would expect someone engaged in serious
> journalism or otherwise to offer you the opportunity to modulate your own
> statements post facto is beyond me.

    To change what was said, no.  To ensure that it's taken in the
proper context, yes.  It's done in the media every day.

---

From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:12:46 +0100

I learn the lesson long time ago and since them, every time I do anything
for media, I only accept if I'm able to review before the final publication.

We don't have any need to risk with media that is not willing to accept this
condition.

Regards,
Jordi

> From: Lixia Zhang <[email-masked]>
> Reply-To: <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:48:58 -0700
> To: Jordi Palet Martínez <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Re: About IETF communication skills
> 

Bye 6Bone. Hi, IPv6 !
http://www.ipv6day.org

---

From: Ted Faber <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:24:07 -0700

> proper context, yes.  It's done in the media every day.

I think it is unwise to assume that you will get an opportunity to
review a story before publication - let alone offer comments or
corrections - unless you have specifically negotiated that right with the
reporter and perhaps their superiors.  YMMV.  IANAL.

-- 
Ted Faber
http://www.isi.edu/~faber           PGP: http://www.isi.edu/~faber/pubkeys.asc
Unexpected attachment on this mail? See http://www.isi.edu/~faber/FAQ.html#SIG
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From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:37:35 -0400

I think that at our level in the news food chain, it is wise to assume  
that any
words said to journalists may be published regardless of our wishes or  
promises received.

Regards
Marshall

On Jul 31, 2008, at 2:24 PM, Ted Faber wrote:

>>> professionalism

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:46:10 -0400

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:24:07 -0700
Ted Faber <[email-masked]> wrote:

> > > professionalism you don't respect. Why you would expect someone
> > > engaged in serious journalism or otherwise to offer you the
> > > opportunity to modulate your own statements post facto is beyond
> > > me.
> > 
> corrections - unless you have specifically negotiated that right with
> the reporter and perhaps their superiors.  YMMV.  IANAL.
> 
Right.  Years ago, the Bell Labs guide to dealing with the press
specifically warned against even asking if you could review the story
-- reporters often fear you'll try to delete embarrassing things you
said, or even bring pressure to get the story changed.  (A few years
ago, I was explaining some arcane technical details to a reporter for a
very reputable mainstream publication.  He asked me to review his text
for correctness -- but told me that that was something he wasn't
supposed to do.  He made an exception because the text under discussion
was supposed to be factual, not commentary, and I wasn't the focus of
the article.  But he was quite clear that his publication *prohibited*
reporters from showing articles to their subjects.)

The only thing you can do is make sure you only talk to reporters you
think will capture your statements correctly.  (Btw, don't assume that
reporters make up headlines -- often, they don't, any more than authors
have sole control over book titles or covers.)

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:32:55 -0700 (PDT)

> said, or even bring pressure to get the story changed.

Exactly. Back when MIME first came out (1993 or so) I spent quite a lot of time
going around promoting it, in the process giving dozens of interviews about it.
Lots of articles resulted in a bunch of different publications.

I didn't have the benefit of such a guide, but I quickly learned that "can I
review it" is a question you don't ask. At most you say that you're available
for consultation if additional information or clarifications are needed. And in
any case, the ability to review the content prior to publication was
nonexistant. I cannot recall a single case where it happened.

Maybe this has changed since then, but I somehow doubt it.

> have sole control over book titles or covers.)

Right again. It is very common for article titles, like article placement, to
be chosen at the sole discretion of the editorial staff. The author, even if
it's a senior reporter, often has zero say in the matter. (And if memory serves
people were a lot more upset about the misleading title than they were about
the article content in the case leading up to this discussion.)

For that matter, authors don't have final say over article content either. The
usual thing that's done is to cut stuff so it fits in whatever space was
allotted, but it isn't exactly unheard for editors to change stuff for whatever
reason.

				Ned

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:08:49 -0400

> article had been published, and the interview misquoted.

My experience with that reporter is similar.  I came to believe that she 
saw it as her job to misrepresent whatever information was given to her.

I hope she's not getting to attend IETF for free.

Keith

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:22:56 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Lixia Zhang" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 1:08 PM
...
> saw it as her job to misrepresent whatever information was given to her.
...

Let's not be too harsh.  Do we have any reason to believe that media
coverage in this case is less accurate than media coverage in general?
The sense I get from this thread (and from my own experience) is that
expectations of media accuracy are fairly low.  If the only complaint is a
misleading headline, we're doing relatively well.

Randy

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:10:43 -0700 (PDT)

> My experience with that reporter is similar.

Mine, OTOH, has been the exact opposite. I've been interviewed by her several
times and I have always been happy with the results. (The same cannot be said
for several others.)

> I came to believe that she

> I hope she's not getting to attend IETF for free.

I don't know what the IETF's policy regarding attendance fees for journalists
is (a quick search of the IETF web site didn't turn up anything), but the
notion that people who write stuff we don't like should have to pay more is
truly asinine - think of the message THAT sends loud and clear.

				Ned

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:29:34 -0400

Ned Freed wrote:
>> Lixia Zhang wrote:
>>> 
>>> I'd like to share my own experience here: I was interviewed by
>>> exactly the same reporter some time ago, and I requested to
>>> review the article before publication. But the very next thing I
>>> learned was that the article had been published, and the
>>> interview misquoted.
> 

Glad to hear it.

> Mine, OTOH, has been the exact opposite. I've been interviewed by her
> several times and I have always been happy with the results. (The
> same cannot be said for several others.)
> 
>> I came to believe that she saw it as her job to misrepresent
>> whatever information was given to her.
> 
> I don't know what the IETF's policy regarding attendance fees for 
> journalists is (a quick search of the IETF web site didn't turn up
> anything), but the notion that people who write stuff we don't like
> should have to pay more is truly asinine - think of the message THAT
> sends loud and clear.

I don't really think we should require some journalists to pay more than 
others.  But somehow it still irks to see a reporter (who, in my 
experience, has consistently misrepresented things) get a free ride. 
And I believe her reporting has done a lot of undue harm to both IETF's 
work and its reputation.

Maybe IETF should be thinking about what actions and policies, uniformly 
applied, will result in the most accurate representation of its work to 
the community.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:32:47 -0400

> misleading headline, we're doing relatively well.

I suppose the headline might have been chosen by an editor.

Keith

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:08:57 +0100

> Maybe IETF should be thinking about what actions and 
> policies, uniformly applied, will result in the most accurate 
> representation of its work to the community.

In my experience, the best action to take would be to advise,
or teach, people how to handle media interviews. Back when I 
used to regularly talk to journalists I had no problem with
their articles because I planned the interviews in advance. 
I made sure that I had no more than two or three key points
to make, I prepared a sound bite or two, and I repeated myself.

There is an art in taking complex technical material and
explaining it in layman's terms, but that is exactly what
you must do with journalists if you want them to accurately
represent your message. Even journalists who cover technology
are not technologists themselves. Their specialty is writing
and they can only write what you CLEARLY and consistently
explain to them.

It can be especially hard for people with a deep technical
understanding of something, complete with a multitude of 
corner cases, to summarize in laymans' terms and gloss
over the details. That's why I agree with Keith that some
IETF action would be beneficial here.

Note that one way to approach the issue is to hold official
press conferences at which only accredited members of the
press can ask questions. By doing this you focus attention
on a few people who would, hopefully, prepare for the event
and understand how to explain the work to ordinary people
like journalists and their readers. This doesn't prevent the
press from attending other meetings and it doesn't prevent 
IETF members from talking to the press. What it does do is
hold out the carrot of quality communication, and one hopes
that the press will appreciate the effort and make full use
of it. Indeed, the invitations should explicitly solicit
clarifying questions about anything that the journalist
has already begun working on.

--Michael Dillon

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:37:53 -0400

> IETF action would be beneficial here.

I agree that learning how to talk to reporters is important.  You won't
always get what you want, but it will help.  However, I don't agree
that "official" IETF action is a good idea.
> has already begun working on.

I don't know what "accredited" means anymore.  Too often, it turns into
ways to exclude unfriendly or non-mainstream reporters, or to plant
favorable ones.  See
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/09/white.house.reporter/ for one
example, but the opposite effect -- excluding unfriendly reporters --
has also happened.  Back when I was an editor of one of my university's
student papers, New York City press passes were issued by the police
department to "members of the working press".  This, of course,
excluded student reporters, and since police brutality towards student
demonstrators was an issue then this was a non-trivial handicap.  These
days, the analogous issue is whether or not bloggers are "real"
journalists.  I would hope that most IETFers would object to that
distinction.

To put it bluntly, I'm not at all in favor of trying to manage news
coverage, especially by organizational mechanisms.  Say what you mean,
say it clearly, and publish your own blog/newsletter/whatever if you
need to.  Complaints about misconstrued quotes are also appropriate,
because any system needs a feedback channel.  But trying to control the
press is not only worse than the disease, it's counter-productive.
(I'd be astonished if the reporter in question were not reading this
thread -- what will the next story be?)

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:57:52 +0100

> I don't know what "accredited" means anymore. 

IMHO it should mean "real journalists" in this context.
That excludes technical experts who play at journalism
on their blog. Since the intent of the press conference
is to help non-technical writers understand both the
IETF technology and the IETF ways of working, it would
be bad to let in bloggers who might use more than their
fair share of the question time. After all, there are 
no restrictions on non-journalists writing anything that
they want so the IETF doesn't lose anything by restricting
a press conference to people whose dayjob is journalism.

> Too often, it 
> turns into ways to exclude unfriendly or non-mainstream 
> reporters, or to plant favorable ones.

That would be a silly thing to do now that the Internet
gives everyone an opportunity to have their say.

> These days, the analogous issue is whether or not 
> bloggers are "real"
> journalists.  I would hope that most IETFers would object to 
> that distinction.

You can't object to a technical fact. Of course then there is
the clarity of terminology, so lets define journalist as someone
who is paid to write articles for a publication and who is
at IETF to do their dayjob. Whether or not the journalist
also has a blog is irrelevant. This definition does exclude
people like me who are not currently paid to write and who
only write on things like blogs and mailing lists.

> To put it bluntly, I'm not at all in favor of trying to 
> manage news coverage, especially by organizational 
> mechanisms. 

My suggestion was not about managing new coverage at all, 
but about providing a venue for a specific section of the 
attendees that have special needs. Like the Newcomer's training.
In this case, journalists know and understand the "press conference"
format so this is just part and parcel of speaking to them in 
language that they understand. Why not let anyone ask questions?
Because the time of the people doing the answering is too valuable
to waste. They are there to talk with the press to help the 
journalists understand what is going on.

> Say what you mean, say it clearly, and publish 
> your own blog/newsletter/whatever if you need to.  Complaints 
> about misconstrued quotes are also appropriate, because any 
> system needs a feedback channel.  But trying to control the 
> (I'd be astonished if the reporter in question were not 
> reading this thread -- what will the next story be?)

That way lies madness. This is not about keeping things secret, 
but about making things more open by making a concerted effort
to speak through journalists to the general public who are coming
to rely on IETF technology as part of the core infrastructure of
society. The IETF doesn't HAVE to do this. But then we will continue
to suffer from the very common problem of having complex technical
matters completely misconstrued in the press. It happens in every 
technical field, sciences, engineering, medicine.

--Michael Dillon

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:36:46 +0100

+1 & well said

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 06:20:12 +0100

> thread -- what will the next story be?)

Actually, let's hope so, and that a copy of the thread will make it back to
the editorial staff. They need to understand that sensationalizing the story
just to move copies takes them out of the realm of a respected technical
outlet into the world of newsstand rags. Eventually this will lead the
people their advertisers are trying to target to move on to sources with
substance rather than splash. The business model will decay and we can get
back to focusing on technology...

Tony

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 07:38:27 +0100

>I suppose the headline might have been chosen by an editor.

If you understand the press so little as to start that sentence with 
"I suppose", you might reconsider the validity of the rest of your 
attack.

The article in question, 
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/072108-ipv6nat.html>, directly 
quotes Fred Baker, Russ Housley, Alain Durand, and Geoff Huston. How 
many IETF-related articles in other magazines bother quoting more 
than one person, normally someone who is trying to promote an 
Internet Draft? How many discuss competing proposals, including 
giving the history of the topic?

Folks: please review all of the IETF-related articles in the IT trade 
press from the past five years. Discard the articles that say "the 
IETF is considering Foo" when in fact someone had submitted a -00 
draft. The very small pile that remains, including interviews with 
our leadership about where they think the IETF is going and in-depth 
articles comparing multiple contenders being considered in IETF 
areas, are mostly written by Carolyn Duffy Marsan.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 00:53:58 -0700 (PDT)

I agree with Paul.

Having now quickly read the article in question I don't even see what 
the "problem" is, including the somewhat provocative headline.

But if you (collecively) would like a more technical and less 
"sensational" (if that is your perception of the article in question) 
approach, we do have at least two journals that can be found at every 
IETF meeting and two tall editors that go along with them ;-)

We're happy to talk to you and we might even let you review the text 
before it is published ;-)

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Paul Hoffman wrote:

<snip>

> 
> 
> The article in question,
> <http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/072108-ipv6nat.html>, directly quotes
> Fred Baker, Russ Housley, Alain Durand, and Geoff Huston. How many
> IETF-related articles in other magazines bother quoting more than one person,
> normally someone who is trying to promote an Internet Draft? How many discuss
> competing proposals, including giving the history of the topic?
> 
> Folks: please review all of the IETF-related articles in the IT trade press
> from the past five years. Discard the articles that say "the IETF is
> considering Foo" when in fact someone had submitted a -00 draft. The very
> small pile that remains, including interviews with our leadership about where
> they think the IETF is going and in-depth articles comparing multiple
> contenders being considered in IETF areas, are mostly written by Carolyn Duffy
> Marsan.
> 
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --VPN Consortium

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 09:28:52 +0100

On Aug 01 2008, at 08:53, Ole Jacobsen wrote:

> problem

The problem is that the spin of the article is that NATs are being  
added to IPv6 itself (which is a misleading statement when taken at  
face value, actually surprising, hence perceived as sensational), when  
in reality they are being added (put back, really) as a deployment  
strategy for interconnecting IPvNAT and IPv6.  In hindsight, this  
approach should have been visible from the questions e.g. in

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/072109-nat-housley-qna.html

Having said that, what I've seen of the articles is quite solid  
journalism, and I've seen far worse.

Gruesse, Carsten