Crisis Blogger Gerald Baron

The power of the Internet, obviously, cannot be denied, and Baron’s point should be considered. If we are to use the Internet in our favor in times of crisis, we also should be prepared that it will hit us against our will in times of crisis.

In other words, there’s no free lunch, and we cannot pick and choose when the power of the Internet as both a communications vehicle and agenda driver gets to favor us.

While I agree with most critics of how Koman handled its relationship with Planned Parenthood, there are times when it is important to distinguish between publics that are important to our organization(s), and those that are most visible (e.g., activists are frequently driving criticisms, and their support, or lack thereof, is often fleeting). Choosing the latter is not always the wisest course of action for long term survival.

Similarly, Ellen went to the airwaves recently to tackle Internet critics. It’s her medium of choice, where she excels, and it is where she initially would see results. The later Youtube video, at nearly 1.5 million views, reinforces her point.

She also tackled critics with humor and with a smile on her face. Watch the video. What do you think? Post comments below.

A map of the Washoe Fire created by Bryce Leinan.

Society is increasingly entangled online, which means we are frequently connecting with one another in ways we would not have done in person prior to the Internet.

It’s clear that online social media have transformed societies in recent years; anyone who’s been paying attention to news coverage has noticed how online media is frequently driven by citizens.

The recent Washoe Drive Fire in Reno drove this point home for Washoe County residents. Arguably, the most popular sources of information were TV news and social networks. (A serious nod goes to KOLO/Channel 8 for its ongoing coverage running live for hours and responding directly to citizens on air from their social networks.) Courtesy of the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, the #washoefire hashtag on Twitter exploded much like the fire did in real life.

While RGJ.com had coverage with quality multimedia, it was frequently late to the game in getting out information. At any given moment during the fire RGJ.com showed “Updates” and “Breaking News” that were often a half hour old or more – even though news was literally breaking by the minute. In addition, we at ThisisReno were linking to their website content before they were posting to their own social networks.

The point is that news agencies treat news and information as one and the same: proprietary. They frequently pretend as if other news outlets don’t exist. It’s a necessary part of being a competitive business enterprise.

Read the rest of this post at This Is Reno.

Crises, by definition

Nevertheless, businesses and organizations can be prepared for unfortunate events, including attacks from consumers, product defects, and other crises that can damage a bottom line and personal reputations.

Crisis planning is one way to mitigate damage during controversy and heavy media scrutiny. Embedded practices, however, are also crucial. This means regular behaviors within organizations that can help mitigate damage and aid the flow of information during a controversy or crisis. Absent regular communications practices, crisis damage may be deepened by poor communication.

Here are seven tips that can benefit any organization when controversy or crisis erupts.

Have an established chain of command, and follow it. 

Police, fire, and other emergency responders know the chain-of-command concept well—or they should. It tends to be less-familiar territory for communicators and CEOs. Read the rest of this post at Ragan’s PR Daily.

I will be discussing crisis communications in general as well as some examples of how the new media enable crises and misinform the public; Toyota, for example. In addition, I may cover some of what’s coming up in my new book. I hope you can tune in.

Here’s the link.

The power of perception should never be underestimated

Of particular importance is what Shermer calls patternicity, “or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.”

Shermer cites at the Scientific American researchers Kevin Foster (Harvard) and Hanna Kokko (University of Helsinki), who wrote in 2008 about patternicity: “The inability of individuals – human or otherwise – to assign causal probabilities to all sets of events that occur around them will often force them to lump causal associations with non-causal ones.”

It’s why in part, Shermer says, humans believe weird things. By extension, I add that it’s also why we are prone to believe media hype, particularly about alleged scandalous behavior.

Lanny Davis noticed a trend in news reporting while working as a special advisor to then President Bill Clinton. It was what he called “connect-the-dots” reporting. Journalists would dig for events, anecdotes and occurrences, piece them together and would then create a pattern of (mis)behavior by politicians; in this case, Clinton.

It’s evident, however, that this kind of journalism ultimately demonstrates one or more cognitive fallacies, such as confirmation bias, the misinterpretation of regression (if an extreme has been observed in a population, journalists may falsely predict another extreme), eyewitness testimony and illusory correlation, which is the overestimation of the relationship between events.

In theory, peer review guards against these fallacies prior to being published as research. Not so in the newsroom. These fallacies frequently guide news coverage, and no newsroom is immune.

In the past week there have been charged allegations against presidential hopeful Herman Cain and Penn State coaches and officials. Many have rushed to judgment in both cases. The latter was more believable because of a grand-jury indictment.

This is despite proclamations of innocence. Cain claimed he never acted inappropriately; Sandusky from Penn State claimed innocence and said he never raped children. Penn State’s former President Spanier also said he acted appropriately, and two others at Penn vowed to fight charges against them.

It needs to be stressed that in PR shitstorms, we never really know what’s going on behind the scenes. Even the key players may not know what’s going on, and people are fired not for what they did but simply because of outside pressure. Perception guides beliefs, actions and consequences. We may never know the full truth behind the Penn State scandal; if Sandusky is found guilty in the legal arena, justice should be served.

But recent and not-so-recent scandals should serve as cautionary tells about deducing guilt based on what’s being reported in the press.

It’s as if we didn’t learn from Audi, which was cleared of charges of faulty accelerators in the late 1980s.

It’s as if we didn’t learn from Toyota, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed was not at fault for unintended accelerations; instead, driver error played a noted role in publicized crashes and deaths. (The Associated Press remained uncharitable toward Toyota after the NHTSA’s findings were released. Rather than focus on the issue of human error, the AP simply explained: “Toyota acceleration problem not caused by electronic flaw.”)

It’s as if we didn’t learn from the Satanic-ritual and day-care sex abuse scandals of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

It’s as we didn’t learn from the Duke University lacrosse team scandal in 2006.

In each case, the “evidence” was portrayed as convincing in news reporting. “Alleged victims” quickly became “victims. ” PR experts knowingly commented on each scenario while their subtexts assumed guilt based not on first-hand information, but on news reporting. People’s reputations were damaged, fines were paid and some even served jail time.

We now know, of course, that in each of these cases, actual wrongdoing was minimal or absent. Yet many at the time assumed guilt of the parties being charged. For Toyota, a “crisis guru” demanded that Toyota set up a restitution fund for victims. At Duke, 88 professors published a statement in the Duke student newspaper that assumed guilt of the lacrosse team players accused of raping and beating stripper, allegations that were ultimately found to be false.

What is certain is that the news media need a scandal, a hot topic. Allegations are powerful and can easily guide perceptions. Patternicity explains why people, even those who should know better, tend to believe allegations portrayed in the press.

History should also teach us, however, that truth is muddied in news coverage, and that the place to determine actual guilt is in the courts, often long after hype has dissipated.

In the meantime, assuming guilt based on allegations – even grand-jury indictments are faulty – means only that we’ve succumbed to faulty reasoning influenced by topical media coverage.

I was a budding journalist in the early 1990s. I had been assigned to cover the university’s faculty senate meeting, what I assumed would be a snooze-fest. It mostly was.

But toward the end, something curious occurred. A faculty member made a surprise announcement, a major grant received or some such. He didn’t want it publicized, he said, looking directly at me, the only journalist in the room.

“This is not yet public information,” he warned.

With publication of the next issue of the student newspaper, it was. I was encouraged by my faculty advisor to make his announcement the news story. The rest of the senate meeting was a footnote to the professor’s announcement.

I giggled then, and I still chuckle at the ignorance of journalistic norms by many in the public. More alarmingly, many in the PR profession think they have any chance of micromanaging what journalists report and how.

That’s exactly what GE did this week after a damning story in the New York Times about the company not paying taxes.

Not so, the company protested. The PR onslaught in response to the Times has been nothing short of fascinating. It was documented by Business Insider.

On one hand, to respond was appropriate. How they did it was poorly executed and sure to incite rather than calm the issue.

GE erred in at least six ways.

1. It first came across as angry and defensive. Such a posture encourages more ink.
2. It told news media what to do. That is never okay.
3. It failed to back up salient points after being grilled online.
4. It responded slowly after further questioning, which invited more skepticism.
5. It responded to things (people, the Times, etc.) not just the issues.
6. It abandoned its own turf by responding on blogs and directly on news articles.

Each of the above encouraged rather than diminished criticism. In and of themselves, these response strategies are not poor — I’ve done each and more — but combined, each approach can back fire. That’s exactly what happened.

By being so eager to defend the assertion that GE does in fact pay taxes, and a lot of taxes, GE went overboard. The fallout is outlined by Ryan Chittum at the Columbia Journalism Review, who originally played cheerleader for the Times. Chittum should have known better with his first piece – it’s not the first time the Times has spun news, and it won’t be the last – but his second analysis is on the money. Read it here.

Ironically, the end result may have been worth it for GE. Ultimately the company cast doubt on the Times story. That, in a crisis situation, can be viewed on a victory. GE also got to amplify the issue in order to get more airtime for its perspective – again, another success.

In the end, I believe GE would have been better off by being less antagonistic in its response.

What do you think?

October 21, Thursday, 7 p.m., Carson City, Nevada, Comma Coffee.

Non-partisan panel discussion (me and Ryan Jerz) on political advertising and how to avoid the pitfalls of misinformation during political elections.

October 27, Wednesday, 11:30 a.m., Reno, Nevada, Atlantis Casino Resort

This Is Reno panel discussion. Information here: http://thisisreno.com/2010/10/this-is-reno-panel-discussion-and-luncheon-oct-27/

November 18, Thursday, Orange County, Calif. PRSA

Presentation on Crisis Communications: Myths, Exceptions and Realities: How the ‘rules’ of PR don’t always apply when crisis and controversy erupt.

December 8, Wednesday, 11:30 a.m., Las Vegas, Flamingo Las Vegas

Presentation on gaining buy-in from senior leaders for social media efforts in complex organizations. This is for the Social Media for Government Conference. Information here.

January 27, Thursday, 7:30 a.m., San Francisco, at Business Wire, 44 Montgomery St.

Panel discussion (with Bethany Drysdale and Jim Scripps) on ThisIsReno.com. Information and registration here: www.prsasf.org.

The crisis management arena is fraught with uncertainty

More and more PR bloggers, myself included, are quick to weigh in—whether it’s on Toyota, BP or HP’s firing of its CEO. Many advocate remedies such as increasing transparency, getting ahead of issues, communicating more and better and even setting up funds for perceived victims of the crisis being discussed.

Too often, we offer suggestions in a vacuum. Our commentary relies on news reports, which, as anyone involved in the PR game for any amount of time knows, are easily error ridden, loaded with innuendo or outright false. More than ever, it seems, actually digging for facts takes a backseat to speculation.

Read the complete post at Bulldog Reporter.