<$BlogRSDURL$>

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Cooling Off 

The crisis on which we have been working is cooling. There is no new information out that harms or helps the client. That doesn't mean stories have stopped coming. They haven't stopped, although there are not as many of them.

My "favorites" are conspiracy theorists who see subtle connections between the client and all sorts of nefarious things. These people come out of the woodwork in every crisis. The most annoying are self-styled experts who purport to know the events and what has transpired then proceed to make factual errors throughout their articles.

The client is apoplectic about the errors that continue to appear in print despite the company's best efforts to correct them. A prestigious newspaper made a whopping error the other day that even amazed me (I'm used to seeing this sort of thing.)

During the cooling off period we will try to correct most of the errors but we know that once in the media, errors tend to take a life of their own. "If X said it, then I can say it." The failure of the media to check basic facts is disturbing. There is a lot of shoddy journalism in the world. But, if there weren't, what need would there be for public relations practitioners?

Comments:

Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?