By Don Goldberg | No Comments
Last updated: Friday, October 2, 2009

There were a lot of scratching heads last night when David Letterman announced that he was being subjected to attempted blackmail because he had had sexual affairs with more than one member of his CBS staff. The question, of course, was why announce it to the whole world on his nightly show.

Well, there’s nothing magic about. I assumed that some sort of lawsuit or criminal case was about to be announced, so Letterman needed to get out in front of the story. And judging by this afternoon’s news, that’s exactly what happened. The New York Times is reporting that the District Attorney has announced charges of blackmail in the case.

As any regular reader of this blog surely knows by now, I always advise clients to get out in front of bad news, so they themselves are telling the story in their context, and not allowing the story to be owned by adversaries, prosecutors, or outside observers who may not have their same interests in mind. There are some exceptions, of course. The last thing you want to do is create a news story when otherwise no one would pay attention. That clearly would never be the case for a celebrity like Letterman, but for lesser know executives that is always the balance that must be struck.

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