Public Relations Job: How To Manage The Bad News?

Public Relations Job: How To Manage The Bad News?

If all you had to do was talk about good news, public relations job would be simple. But public figures — politicians and professional athletes, actors, and authors — inevitably must address with the bad news, controversy, and scandals.

Tips to Respond to Bad News 

This series of posts can assists you respond to bad news in whatever form it may take. Why do certain negative stories disappear after a few days while others linger for weeks or months?

What primary mistakes did public figures recently make when faced by bad news and scandals, and how could they have avoided it?

  • Managing Bad News & Scandals

Bad news is inevitable. It happens to everybody and every organization. But what turns bad news into a scandal? The old saying in journalism is, “It is not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” Reporters hate mysteries. If they consider somebody is stonewalling them or lying, they’ll dig and dig forever. It’ll become a crusade to them, a point of principle.

  • Top Four Ways to Respond to Bad Press  by Public Relations Job

There are different kinds of bad stories. Each needs a different type of response. What you do will be different when a bad story is factually wrong versus a matter of opinion. And you should respond differently when condemned by the public compared to a professional pundit or critic.

  • Defending Against Rumors, Lies, and Propaganda

Bad news is not the worst thing you can face. Disasters happen. But rumors, lies, and propaganda are not the normal kind of bad news. They are much worse. You’ve to respond differently.

  • Three Key Lessons from the Charlie Sheen PR Debacle 

We are naturally attracted to mayhem. Humans are also hardwired to care about celebrities and public figures. So when expert athletes, politicians or rock stars self-destruct, people naturally pay attention to the celebrity train wreck. Charlie Sheen’s fiery wreckage certainly caught our attention.

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminates His Good Public Image 

He had it all: governor of the greatest state in the union, a movie star known worldwide by his first name — or late name — and family man who’d married a Kennedy. But the higher they soar, the tougher they crash and burn. Arnold Schwarzenegger bypassed PR Purgatory and went straight to Celebrity Hell after it came out that he fathered a child with one of his staff and kept it secret for more than a decade.  

  • China’s Public Relations Job blunder With the Nobel Peace Prize   

If you do not need reporters covering a story, the worst thing in the world you could do is try to kill it. Nothing drives journalists crazier than being told they can’t cover a story, or that whatever you write will never be observed by readers because state censors won’t permit it. Censorship and secrecy are the twin pillars of evil in every newsroom. But that is what China did when dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in the year of 2010.

  • Weinergate: The Fall of a Promising Politician 

How does a random photo on Twitter become fodder for the scandal that might bring down a member of Congress — a man who many expected to be the next mayor of New York City? Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) had it all: a gorgeous wife who works for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a promising career in Congress, a passionate way with sound bites and a growing presence on television. A single tweet started to unravel it all.

  • Jorge Posada: Why Pro Athletes Cannot Be Seen as Quitters 

Why was it such a great deal when Yankees veteran Jorge Posada took himself out of a baseball game and talked to the press about it? Posada broke a few rules of sports, and of public relations. Big rules. Sports Public Relations job is all about what you do, not what you say. Actors, authors, and politicians, they get to use words. They can use all three parts of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. Professional athletes have to rely on ethos, on communicating with the public by their actions first. The words come second, if at all.

  • Case Study: The LeBron James PR Disaster 

In the summer of 2010, LeBron James had the world by the tail. He was believed to be the best NBA player to never win a title, if not the best outright. And then he blew it. In an epic public relations disaster, his free agency and switch to the Miami Heat was mishandled spectacularly. He went from spotless hero to villain in the eyes of several, and there was no reason why this had to happen.

  • Case Study: Lessons Learned from LeBron James and the Miami Heat 

LeBron James and the Miami Heat could have ignored the publicity disaster that happened when he switched from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat. Here’s how to deal bad news by the Public Relations Job: (1) Staying humble. (2) Delaying and neglecting the media spotlight. (3) Concentrating on the team.  

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