Tune In: CPAs in the Media

By Jeffrey R. Hoops

Rebuilding confidence in the CPA profession comes one step at a time. It comes through consistent high-quality work for our clients, and through making sure the audiences beyond our own clients understand the value we provide.

While most of us have been hard at work these last few weeks of tax season, we should be proud to know that a corps of our own members made the time to represent the profession and the Society on the airwaves and in print, touting the virtues and value of CPAs as tax preparers and trusted financial advisers.

The lines of communication with the media are wide open at the NYSSCPA. We respond to hundreds of media calls annually that connect reporters with CPAs who can help them on specific technical topics, ranging from audits, taxes and personal financial planning to regulation and legislation. We connect with local media all across the state, and we show how multifaceted a CPA can be.

Tax season is a prime time to work with the media, a time when we can provide real value to the public. This year we have had some very exciting interviews. Two areas of special interest have been the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and the New York state sales and use tax.

NBC-TV’s consumer reporter Roseanne Colletti covered the AMT, as did journalists from Good Day New York, ABC Eyewitness News, Newsday, SmartMoney and The Wall Street Journal Online. We participated in interviews about the sales and use tax with NBC, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. We also worked with the New York Daily News on a two-day call-in tax panel and a weekly tax column that featured our members. Our Westchester and Syracuse chapters were part of tax hotlines with The Journal News and The Post-Standard, respectively.

We have worked with other state and national media outlets, including Barron’s, the New York Post, Accounting Today, Money, Dow Jones, the Associated Press, Newsweek, the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin, NY1, WOR Radio and ABC Radio. We’ve also worked with local television broadcasters such as WXIT-Channel 9 in Syracuse, Fox News 40 in the Southern Tier and WKTV-Utica.

The Society has distributed public service announcements to state radio stations featuring valuable information on filing, the capital gains tax and the need for year-round tax planning.

More Than Just Taxes

Although reporters love to hear from CPAs during tax season, our media relations programs are multifaceted, keeping us busy year round. Developing a relationship with local media is a great long-term benefit to our profession. We serve as a resource for journalists for news stories, commenting on issues or suggesting trends they may want to follow.

Since the beginning of 2004, we have had media interviews on hot button topics that affect the profession, such as outsourcing, investing, auditing, credit card debt and accounting as a profession. We also handled many interviews on the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, while our year-end economic survey provided an opportunity for media to tap CPAs on regional economic issues.

If you were up early on a recent Saturday morning you would have caught our CPAs on ABC Eyewitness News participating in a six-part series called “Love and Money,” which included discussions on taxes, retirement, financial planning and credit debt issues.

To make sure our members are media savvy, the Society has offered chapter and committee chairs special media training sessions at the last two annual leadership conferences. Media training enhances communication skills and builds confidence, to make our members good interviews and desirable sources.

The Society helps train the media, too. For more than 20 years, we have offered a program to teach journalists how to read and analyze annual reports. These sessions, led by our members, cover the basics, including how to read a balance sheet, income statements and a financial analysis. The program helps reporters to present information to their readers. The more we work together with journalists, the more they will come to us on their own for background, education and quotes. Some reporters who attended these sessions many years ago are now seasoned financial journalists from major financial publications who contact us regularly.

This seminar series is starting to make its way to other chapters across the state. Buffalo and Rochester recently held similar sessions with much success. The involvement of our chapters in this endeavor is critical to our continuing success in working with the press. By holding these sessions, chapter members can develop rapport with local press.

Having CPAs front and center shows clients the value and importance of working with respected professionals. Seeing a CPA on my local television news show or reading a CPA’s commentary in a newspaper or financial magazine makes me take note that we are getting the message across: CPAs are trusted financial professionals. You just have to get to know us.