Accentuate the Positive

This month I attended several conferences, first, the Windstorm Insurance Network Conference in Tampa, at which several well-known and interesting experts were speaking, including Max Mayfield, the veteran director of the Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center in Miami, and Rep. Jim Davis, (R-Tampa). Both discussed their experiences in the 2004 hurricane season.

I presumed that friends in news departments at several leading Tampa television stations would be interested in shooting stories about the conference. When I called to tip them off they were interested–until I told them it was an insurance conference.

“Oh no, not another insurance story,” said one friend who has to produce several television stories each day. “That means nothing but people complaining they need rate increases!” He said he tried to stay away from insurance stories because they resulted in negative reactions from his viewers.

A friend at a second Tampa TV station finally said he would cover Mayfield, on the proviso that he would only attend long enough to take a few minutes of video.

My second conference was with the Investigative Editors and Reporters in Orlando attended by close to 100 working journalists representing newspapers, magazines and television news organizations. I have been a member of this organization for years and when I mentioned that I left the “legitimate press” to work for Insurance Journal, I was treated like a traitor.

I’ll be the first to admit newspaper, radio and television media thrives on negative stories and paints entire industries with a broad brush. The media was portraying the insurance industry negatively long before the Spitzer investigations and stories now appearing about hurricane damage. The media operates on pack instinct, when it smells blood it runs in for the story–no blood, no story.

I talked to insurance industry spokesmen and public relations reps who all said the insurance industry is conservative and prefers to totally avoid publicity– supposedly on the basis that any “news” has to be bad for its image.

The insurance industry does a LOT of good things! Everyone I talk to, even insurance commissioners, mention the good things the insurance industry accomplishes–yet you never see that mentioned on television or in print.

As a beat reporter writing for several major South Florida daily and weekly newspapers I learned in a hurry if I wrote a story about a trailer fire, I would be lucky if it appeared at the back of the newspaper. If, however, I wrote a story about how the community rescued a teenage mother and her two young children from the fire, it would be used prominently on the front page.

There’s a time to sit back and be complacent and a time to stand up and point out good things–large and small participants in the insurance industry need to watch for positive angles and spin them into positive stories the media will want to use and which will improve the industry’s overall image.

Topics Market