Bad Public Relations cases

If all you had to do was talk about good news, public relations would be easy. But public figures - politicians and professional athletes, actors and authors - inevitably must deal with bad news, controversy, and scandals.
This series of posts can help you respond to bad news in whatever form it may take. Why do certain negative stories disappear after a few days while others linger for weeks or months?

What key mistakes did public figures recently make when confronted by bad news and scandals, and how could they have avoided it?

• Bad news is inevitable. It happens to everybody and every organization. But what turns bad news into a scandal? The old saying in journalism is, "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up." Reporters hate mysteries. If they think somebody is stonewalling them or lying, they'll dig and dig forever. It'll become a crusade to them, a point of principle.
  
• There are different types of bad stories. Each requires a different type of response. What you do will be different when a bad story is factually wrong versus a matter of opinion. And you should react differently when criticized by the public compared to a professional pundit or critic.
  
• Bad news isn't the worst thing you can face. Disasters happen. But rumors, lies, and propaganda aren't the normal kind of bad news. They're much worse. You have to respond differently.
  

• We are naturally attracted to mayhem. Humans are also hardwired to care about celebrities and public figures. So when professional athletes, politicians or rock stars self-destruct, people naturally pay attention to the celebrity train wreck. Charlie Sheen's fiery wreckage certainly caught our attention.
  

• He had it all: governor of the biggest state in the union, a movie star known worldwide by his first name - or late name - and family man who'd married a Kennedy. But the higher they soar, the harder they crash and burn. Arnold Schwarzenegger bypassed PR Purgatory and went straight to Celebrity Hell after it came out that he fathered a child with one of his staff and kept it secret for more than a decade.
  
• If you don't want reporters covering a story, the worst thing in the world you could do is try to kill it. Nothing drives journalists crazier than being told they can't cover a story, or that whatever you write will never be seen by readers because state censors won't allow it. Censorship and secrecy are the twin pillars of evil in every newsroom. But that's what China did when dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.
  
• How does a random photo on Twitter become fodder for the scandal that might bring down a member of Congress - a man who many expected to be the next mayor of New York City? Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) had it all: a beautiful wife who works for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a promising career in Congress, a great way with sound bites and a growing presence on television. A single tweet started to unravel it all.
  

• Why was it such a big deal when Yankees veteran Jorge Posada took himself out of a baseball game and talked to the press about it? Posada broke a few rules of sports, and of public relations. Big rules. Sports PR is all about what you do, not what you say. Actors, authors, and politicians, they get to use words. They can use all three parts of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. Professional athletes have to rely on ethos, on communicating with the public by their actions first. The words come second, if at all.
  
• In the summer of 2010, LeBron James had the world by the tail. He was considered the best NBA player to never win a title, if not the best outright. And then he blew it. In an epic public relations disaster, his free agency and switch to the Miami Heat was mishandled in a spectacular way. He went from spotless hero to villain in the eyes of many, and there was no reason why this had to happen.
  
• LeBron James and the Miami Heat could have avoided the publicity disaster that happened when he switched from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat. Here's how: (1) Staying humble. (2) Delaying and avoiding the media spotlight. (3) Focusing on the team.