Unspun

Months or years from now, when an academic is doing some research on how organizations shoot manage or fail to manage issues started by blogs, they might consider the Malaysian Tourism Board (MTB) fit for closer study.

The story so far is this: MTB recently invited 190 journalists from Indonesia as part of its Visit Malaysia Program. MTB’s arrangements for at least one TV crew (of a major Indonesian TV station) were appalling. The presenter in the crew, who’s a freelancer (disclosure: she is a colleague of Unspun) blogged about her frustrations in her personal blog, which was pointed to by her corporate blog, which was then picked up by Unspun and at least Madge P’s Lab.

That was enough to, as the Indonesians say, set the MTB’s beard on fire. Nobody is sure what the reaction is at MTB HQ in KL but, locally the MTB guys are putting pressure on the TV station saying that incidents like this are very bad for the relationship. This is all politespeak for: “We’re pissed off with you for this reporter telling the world we didn’t do our job. If this continues we’ll not be giving you any more junkets to Malaysia and any advertisement money we may spend here.”

So far the MTB, apart from twisting the arm of the TV station, hasn’t responded to any blogs. But Unspun knows that they are pissed off. But over what? That a reporter laid bare their foibles, or by the fact that they did a very bad job and someone has blown their cover? We’ll never know until MTB Headquarters responds to the blogs. Unspun is reminded of the lines of the March of the Light Brigade here: …someone had blundered/ours not to reason why/ours but to do and die…” only that there is no valiant spirit of sacrifice here.

So far they haven’t shown an inclination to do so. But as an issues management exercise it may not be wise to keep quiet. Why?

Because the nature of blogs is that this issue will slowly fester and grow in the blogosphere until it spills into the mainstream media. By then the MTB may find itself at a great disadvantage.

To illustrate what Unspun means: The behavior of MTB and the TV station has now been picked up by Tempo’s blog, Blog Tempo Interaktif. Tempo is the nation’s most influential general affairs and politics magazine. More importantly, the Tempo blogger has also highlighted this story in his own blog Ndoro Kakung. The last time Unspun checked, it ha generated at least 40 comments, including one from the TV station’s programme producer who agreed that the MTB’s arrangements for journalist was sorely wanting.

So it is now out there for the world to see. And because the information is in blogs it will stay there forever.  it will be a matter time before some Malaysian blogs pick this item up (in fact, malaysia.net has done so) and, if the MTB’s luck is out, it will be picked up by one of Malaysia’s Uber Bloggers like Rocky’s Bru , Screenshots, or be made into a poster by Kickdefella.

If that happens then the mainstream media may pick up this story. By which time  the MTB HQ may be forced to explain why it hasn’t done anything about this complaint and by not doing so, are they wasting the taxpayer’s money? Unspun hopes this doesn’t happen because Malaysia, politics aside, is a beautiful country with lots to offer. And if the MTB is smart it would harness the power of blogs – the power of peer recommendations – to do its marketing for it, rather than to be seen as part of the Borg and reap the illwill of bloggers (see the comments in Ndoro Kakung  for an idea of  how bloggers rally to one of their kind if they think they are being unfaily treated).