I have resisted writing about BP and the oil spill disaster, but after talking to a member of its pr firm’s team yesterday, I think it’s time.  This London-based person (we share another client) seemed exhausted, frustrated, and frazzled.  His agency, Brunswick,  is mostly knows for investor relations.  It has been BP’s agency-of-record and inherited the spill, but I’m not sure high-profile crisis is its strength– it’s DC operations are relatively non-existent.  But it may not make any difference.  From a public relations perspective, I don’t think a company can do much in this type of situation.  Not to denigrate the seriousness of the situation, but it reminds me of working in the Clinton White House when the Monica Lewinsky issue broke into the news– those of us on the damage control team, at least for the first several weeks, didn’t have much of a role to play in the scandal.  Like the BP spill, that scandal dominated the news, and yet as the story took off without us, we didn’t have access to the facts of what really had happened.  It wasn’t until several months into the affair that the Republicans handed us a competing narrative for us to push forward... 

There’s a robbery-gone-wrong article on the front-page of today’s Washington Post that is so juicy you have to check it out.  First, it has incompetent criminals, all with prison records, conspiring to rob someone who couldn’t have had more than a few thousand dollars as the pay-off.  Second, one of the recruited crooks was a professional snitch.  Third, it had an on-duty DC cop as the look-out– once again reinforcing my view that there is often little difference between the cops and the crooks around here.  Fourth, and my favorite part– it had the mastermind’s own son accidentally shooting the father in the middle of the robbery (which isn’t so funny after all because he died).   If this were a Hollywood movie script it would be thrown out for being too absurd. What may be more interesting to us Post-watchers is how the story is written– more as a Paul Harvey broadcast piece than the standard-issue Post article.  It is light and breezy, making fun of the would-be robbers, sarcastic and ridiculing all at the same time,  very un-like the Post’s typical writing style.  It also doesn’t really have a larger point.  There isn’t much about the robbery– which... 

You would have been hard pressed to have missed former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff over the past week, appearing on about every news talk show in America about the need for full body scanners in the wake of the Christmas airplane bombing attempt.  What he had repeatedly failed to disclose, of course, was that he had a financial interest in a company that manufactures the devices (the company being a client of the Chertoff Group, his consulting firm). This lack of full disclosure by Chertoff was dutifully reported by what’s left of the what used to be called the Washington Post, in a prominent article on New year’s day in the front section of the paper.   I assume that Mr. Chertoff is a sincere supporter of this full-body scanning equipment, but some sort of disclaimer when touting the machines would have been the professional way to handle such a conflict. What I find just as interesting is how the Post handled the issue.  The article, on page A7, is headlined, “Chertoff accused of abusing public trust by touting body scanners.”  It goes on to report on the dozens of media interviews in which Chertoff neglected to tell any of the reporters about his financial interests. Now jump ahead... 

I know,  I thought I had written my last post on tiger’s difficulties, but an article in today’s Washington Post has prompted one more shot.  The article quotes my good friend, former White House co-damage control team member, and public affairs specialist Adam Goldberg, who runs the Orrick law firm’s crisis management team, criticizing Tiger’s strategy to not come clean at the beginning, allowing public opinion to mount against him. I has a spirited discussion with Adam this morning about his advice.  I don’t disagree with the concept in general that Adam outlines in the Post, that “You shouldn’t have to go out there one, two or three times and get killed in dribs and drabs. You should make sure the story got out there, and not let it play out over time.” Adam’s larger argument, which didn’t make the Post, is that by coming clean himself early one, admitting publicly to the details of his infidelities and transgressions, would have generated more public sympathy for Tiger.  That’s where I disagree.  For me, if Tiger had issued a full, forthright statement early on, it would have been just as much of a mess.  He would have had to disclose that he had had multiple... 

I’ve always loved the Wall Street journal, and going back to the days of Jonathan Kwittny and, in more recent years, Glenn Simpson, have thought it has had the best investigative reporters in the business.  I still get the paper delivered to my door at home in print form every day, and read it religiously.   And I have always defended the separation of church and state there between the news reporters and the right of wing-nut editorial side, which I have always enjoyed reading just to see how that perspective views the evolving political world down here in Washington. Alas, those days may be over.  Yesterday’s New York Times carried a lengthy and persuasive analysis of the Journal’s Washington bureau and makes the case that it has taken a hard turn to the right.  Like quoting from Rush Limbaugh high up in Ted Kennedy’s obituary criticizing the Senator; referring to estate taxes as death taxes without quotes around the term; having articles always questioning the costs of health care reform but never citing the benefits; and taking shots at Obama whenever they can.  In the news section, not just the editorial pages. As a former reporter, I am of course disappointed to see this major change at the Journal....