Online Public Relations Thoughts

The convictions of the Oath Keepers yesterday in Washington DC demonstrates the limits of free speech. Violence is out of bounds and a direct attack on government is illegal.  The prosecutors were careful to delineate the line between protected utterances and those that transgress, and the jury agreed with them.  Most, if not all, PR practitioners will never confront the extremes of speech demonstrated on Jan. 6.  That's good, but the convictions are a reminder that there is not a time when anything goes.  

Iranian officials are calling for the US to be booted out of the World Cup because the US Soccer Federation displayed an Iranian flag without the symbols on it.  The Federation said it took the action to show support for the women of Iran.  It would be like showing the US flag without stars.  The action was dumb.  There was no need to anger Iran and the communications of support for women could have been done another way.  Flags hold meaning for nations and dissing them is an insult. The US Soccer Federation certainly understood that but went ahead anyway.  The result?  An international controversy that the US team doesn't need and didn't ask for.  It would be far better if US sports officials stayed out of diplomacy.   

Apple is suffering from labor riots at its Chinese supplier, Foxconn. Workers at a large factory with tens of thousands of employees erupted in protest over pay and being forced to live with those who have caught COVID.  Foxconn apologized for causing a pay mistake, but it was too late to reach production goals for the month. Meanwhile, Apple has a PR problem with critics of its Chinese presence gaining attention.  There isn't much Apple can do.  The Foxconn operation is much too large to move somewhere else quickly outside of China.  Apple over a period of years will need to reduce gradually its exposure to the country and supplier while navigating tensions between the US and the country.  It is and will be a hard job with multiple threats to the company's reputation.

The Associated Press fired the reporter who got the story wrong about the errant missile that landed in Poland. The journalist violated AP's anonymous sourcing standards in his article that blamed Russia for the missile strike that most likely came from Ukraine.  The AP places an iron value on accuracy as well it should.  Would that all media follow the same rules of getting stories right.  But, they don't have to do so, and many misinform the public regularly.  In the internet age, lack of accuracy is an international problem and not just a correction in a local newspaper.  Stories fly around the earth in minutes.  Errors compound public confusion over issues and can prompt unwanted action.  The AP rightly understands the need to get the facts right each and every time.  

I had written previously about the importance of concession when losing a political race.  Here is an Arizona candidate who is refusing to concede.  We expected it, and it has come to pass.  The state's governorship will be in turmoil for a while, but there is little likelihood that Kari Lake will overturn the results.  She is a divisive figure and it was smart for Arizona voters to turn her down.  Lake is destroying her reputation daily and insuring that she doesn't have a political future.

This video sequence of the Artemis 1 Orion capsule with earth in the background is yet another PR triumph for NASA.  It almost makes one forget the over-budget, troubled rocket program that was years overdue.  NASA is trying hard to focus the public on the near future when astronauts will return to the moon and set up a base there.  It will be a return after more than 50 years but with technologies unheard of at the time of the first moon landings.  NASA is counting on the public -- and Congress -- forgetting the cost, and chances are, both will in a spirit of high adventure and science.  There is competition as well.  The Chinese have successfully sent a spacecraft to the dark side of the moon and have geared up a significant space program.  The Russians can never be counted out.  Other nations as well are eagerly entering space exploration.  NASA, of course, wants to remain a leader.

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”  This famous quote, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, might serve as a summary of the 2022 elections.  A majority of voters in state after state rejected Trump's lies repeated by slavish adherents.  They were not fooled although millions were.  The elections were "thisclose" in many of the races and some have yet to be called with a runoff due in Georgia.  The Republican party tried to fool all of the voters all of the time.  One wonders why other than a sizeable group took over the party in the primaries and tried to force the issue.  Republicans have a choice -- reject Trump or face another defeat in 2024. It is a reminder that the most effective messages are founded on facts and truth.

Ukraine is treating Moscow's announcement of pulling back from Kherson as a potential trap. Well it should.  Russia has used disinformation as a major weapon in this war.  Telling the world that it is withdrawing is uncharacteristic of the country and its leaders.  Interestingly, Putin was not present in the room.  He let his military commanders make the statement.  It was odd because in war, one doesn't telegraph to the enemy what one is going to do.  As the news report says, "'President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was moving "very carefully" after the announcement.  "The enemy does not give us gifts, does not make 'goodwill gestures', we win it all," he told Ukrainians in his nightly address.'"  There are times when transparency is a lie.  This might be one.  

The Powerball lottery is a record $1.9 billion.  No one has won it after 40 consecutive drawings.  Maybe someone will hit the six numbers this time but that is not guaranteed.  The whole affair is one of mass delusion.  The chance of getting the right numbers are miniscule, but lottery officials bank on the dreams of the masses to propel the game forward.  And, they do, buying billions in tickets then watching the drawings with anticipation that is rarely rewarded.  Even if one should win, the IRS and state taxes take a chunk of winnings right off the top. One wonders how anyone can fall for a lottery, but they do regularly.

Elon Musk is flailing and slashing at Twitter in his efforts to cut costs.  In doing so, he is destroying his reputation as an astute businessman.  His downfall began with wildly overpaying for the service after trying to back out of the deal.  Now, he is trying to stop the bleeding -- $4 million a day.  He cut too deeply in employee ranks and had to rescind some layoffs.  He is trying to roll out a subscription service but that is not going well.  Advertisers are leaving and key influencers have abandoned him.  One wonders if Musk has finally met his match and he will go down as one more overly ambitious entrepreneur who fatally believed he could do anything successfully.  It's a sad come-down for a Silicon Valley genius but, perhaps, inevitable.  

What are journalists supposed to do when a political candidate gets away with calling them "fake media," even though the candidate was caught on tape? This is the situation with Kari Lake, the Republican Arizonan gubernatorial nominee.  She says she never made light of the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband and the tape of her remarks was the result of "creative editing."  That is effrontery of the highest order, but it is not unusual.  Politicians on both sides do it all of the time.  They bend facts until they break then they recast them into favorable light on themselves.  That is why political PR is a fraught field.  There is little respect for truth in the effort to get elected and the media are caught regularly in a web of lies, which they cannot rebut in time or effectively.  

CVS Health has agreed to pay $5 billion over 10 years to settle claims against it for opioid abuse.  "The company did not admit liability or wrongdoing."  This curious legal fiction flies in the face of reality.  If a company has done nothing wrong, why wouldn't it fight it out in court?  Certainly, lawyers' costs won't add up to $5 billion.  What is being said here is that chances are good that CVS would lose in court cases and pay far more than $5 billion.  It is an admission of legal weakness, which in turn is an admission of some kind of guilt.  For reasons of liability, CVS can't admit it was in the wrong, so as is typical in these cases, it takes cover.  From a PR perspective, it doesn't work.  People still think the company is guilty and its reputation is harmed.

How is it that an open-and-shut case of political violence can spawn lies and misinformation almost immediately?   That is the case of the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband by a hammer-wielding assailant.   It is a warning to communicators everywhere that no one is safe any longer even by appealing to facts.  With conspiracy theories prevailing, facts are mutable, evidence discounted and eyewitness testimony disparaged.  There is no good solution to the situation other than to repeat the truth and hope a majority of citizens accept it.  Journalists have a particularly rough time.  They hew to standards that have been thrown aside by large numbers of people who pursue theories down rabbit holes of lies and echo themselves on the internet.  Perhaps as discourse matures, prevarication will moderate but until it does, it is not a good time to be a communicator.