Online Public Relations Thoughts

This story points to another crisis concern for prominent organizations and individuals. A tendency for news organizations to run with unconfirmed online rumors and to treat those rumors as real news. There is little one can do to combat such misbehavior on the part of news organizations other than to catch errors immediately and correct them. If the governor of New York can be faulted for anything, it is that his staff did not react quickly enough to squelch the viral rumors. One wonders if they monitor Twitter and blogs closely. If they do, they did not treat the rumor with sufficient concern. No matter, it is certain now they will monitor to make sure it doesn't happen again.