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Former ‘GMA’ Producer Shelley RossResurfaces, Reminds Us of HerEmbarrassments

April 4, 2011 | 12:50 p.m.By Kat Stoeffel

We hadn't heard of former Good Morning America executive producerShelley Ross until yesterday, and she would probably prefer we neverdid.As one of only a handful of women executive producers innetwork news, (there were only 2 of us to exec produce any of the daily network morning shows in the last 25 years) most media reportersknow who I am.Ms. Ross was featured in

a Sunday

Times

round-up

of ICorrect.com, which Ms. Ross pays $1,000 a year for the space to postrebuttals to what she sees as inaccuracies in blog and newspaperitems

lingering around the infinitely archiving web

. Ms. Ross ismostly worried about coverage of her dismissal from CBS, which wasdocumented with audible snickering by the Post, New York Magazine,and even the Times.Since no one ever spoke to me from the NY Observer, how would you know what items I am most worried about."Documented with audible snickering?" Well that's just too hard toanswer."I was recently shown proof that two stories in particular, from 2007and 2008, have been manipulated to reappear on the first page of my

Google Search," Ms. Ross wrote on her personal blog. Invoking SarahPalin, Ms. Ross refers to the anonymous detractors as "bloodbloggers," calls ICorrect her "BFF," and hopes it becomes as popular asthe yellow pages.We hope she's not holding her breath.Just curious, are you speakingfor the entire paper?There’s just one name on the byline.So far it'sunclear what ICorrect offers celebrities beyond what they couldaccomplish on Facebook or personal websites.ICorrect offers asuccinct and organized reference site for those of us who have sufferedthe impact of lies, sexist characterizations and twisted truths to postcorrections so we don't have to waste time or energy repeatedly addressing the offending material.ICorrect doesn't require citations,which would at least give the rebuttals some legitimacy,ICorrectrequires its members to have a legal representative or a professionalagent for verification. In my corrections I have included citations andNielsen research which verify my rebuttals. It is impossible, however,to provide eyewitnesses, for instance, to a tantrum or meltdown thatnever occurredand it's algorithmically weak.Again, the purpose wasnot to crack the first page of my Google search, but to place the truthon the record for interested parties to find.ICorrect has yet to crack Ms. Ross's first page of Google results. To rig that requires a littlemore web savvy which is something you must know of since this nasty little article in the NYO, which says in the headline that I've"resurfaced," cracked page one of my Google search in just hours.(Hey, I've never been away, but someone who never heard of me

wouldn't know that.) Now cracking page one of my Google search isquite a feat since you must know your newspaper is pretty low on theGoogle algorithm scale. Maybe someone you know has been “gaming”Google to put it there. Compare it to two Newsweek articles I wrotelast November. They just recently moved to my front page on Google.One, “Sarah Palin: the 7 Hidden Messages in her New Reality Show”got over 100,000 hits the first week it was online and took this long toget to my front page. Also on my front page you’ll find a news releasethat the latest (third) edition of a medical book I wrote with a retiredprofessor of clinical neurology was selected for the launch of Dr.Mehmet Oz’s new online website,

Sharecare.

Yes, it is a shame thisNYOstory moves real my accomplishments down.or a custom consulting service, which costs more like $10,000 a month, as Ms.Ross knows if she flipped to the Style section of the same

NewYork

Times

.Thanks for the tutorial from the Times, but as you know,I addressed it in my blog."Once something is online, it can be very difficult, if not impossible, todelete.Why don’t you do the right thing and delete your post?So tweaking one's online reputation usually boils down to gaming thesearch engines. Image-conscious people with an understanding of theWeb's architecture can try doing it themselves, by populating the Webwith favorable content. That might involve setting up their own Website or blog, or signing up for popular social networks like Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn," the

Times

wrote.