Media Disasters

This week I came across this article posted on PR Daily, The top 5 media disasters in April - Caught on tape. These incidents involved CEOs and vice presidents of companies. This article has video to go with it. Reading this article made me laugh and love public relations at the same time.

The first incident focused on Joe Biden, a very sleepy Joe Biden. When President Obama was giving a very important speech on the entitlement reform, Biden took an accidental snooze. Due to this nice little nap, the media went crazy. Newspaper articles focused on Biden, instead of the new bill. The biggest challenge for the PR professionals who had to deal with this issue was that this was not the first time Biden has fallen asleep and inappropriate times. It also happened during the signing of the health care reform. Handling this situation had to be a challenge.

This next occurence was not as hot of a topic in the press. The next incident mentioned was
about Senator Jon Kyl. During an interview, Senator Jon Kyl stated that 90 percent of Planned Parenthood's work was abortions. The problem with this statement is that is completely incorrect. The actual percentage is only three percent. This issue became a disaster when Kyl's office claimed that the statement "was not meant as a factual statement." Public relations disaster.

The third incident that was written about Mike Lazaridis. Lazaridis is the founder and CEO of Research in Motion or (RIM) which is the maker of BlackBerry. During an interview, Lazaridis fumbled through questions and went off on a tangent when he was asked a question he did not like. He became angry and the media used this as a story for weeks later.

The next happening looked at Dick Fleming, the president and CEO of the St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association. Fleming was asked by a reporter about his salary and instead of answering the question, this CEO actually tried to hide in a hotel. This had to be quite the mess for the public relations professionals who had to work on this.

The last featured incident was about Bob Parsons, the CEO of GoDaddy.com. Parsons posted a video online of him brutally killing an elephant while on a trip in Africa. Whether people are an animal lover or not, they were mad. After this occured, Parsons then threatened to sue any bloggers that posted the video. Parsons never once apologized, he blamed wildlife organizations for the bad press, and boldly stated he was going to kill another elephant. Needless to say, GoDaddy.com lost thousands of customers.

All in all, this article was interesting and made me stop and think. Why do people do stupid things? Especially people who are in the spotlight often. Then again, I do stupid things pretty frequently, never on purpose, like most of these CEO's did not mean to as well.