Posted: 2010 June 23, Wednesday 20:35
By George Merlis
We have teachable moments from two current news stories: Gen. McChrystal’s Foot-in-Mouth moments and the unending oil spill in the Gulf Coast.
THE GENERAL SPEAKS -- TOO MUCH
In media training we teach the following: Always treat a microphone as if it is a gun. You treat a gun as if it is always loaded. Similarly, treat a microphone as if it is always on. Never say anything in proximity to a microphone that you don’t want the whole world to hear. And treat a reporter as if he is a microphone. Reporters are always working, always mentally recording, always looking for a story.
Additionally, we teach that there is no such thing as off the record anymore. And there certainly is no such thing as “not-for-attribution,” because it does not take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out the source of most quotes.
So here we had the aesthetic General Stanley A. McChrystal and his staff hanging out with a reporter for, of all publications, “Rolling Stone,” and dissing the President, Vice President and everybody else who wasn’t in their immediate circle.
General McChrystal is proud of the fact that he sleeps only four out of every 24 hours and eats only one meal a day. Too bad he didn’t use some of the time he saved not eating and not sleeping to study up on how to behave around the media. But he didn’t, and now he’s been fired.
The take-away from all this: don’t say anything controversial or provocative in front of a reporter -- even in a saloon -- unless you want the whole world to hear or read it.
By the way, Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice reads, “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation... shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.” (Why the Secretary of Transportation and not the other cabinet posts? The Coast Guard, one of the military services and thus subject to the UCMJ, originally was part of the Department of Transportation. After 9/11, the Coast Guard was assigned to the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security. Article 88 apparently has not yet caught up with the change.)
In addition to being totally (or was it willfully?) ignorant of how to behave around a reporter, the general and his staff appear to have violated military law. One can understand how career military officers might not know how to deal with the media, but it’s beyond understanding how they could not be familiar with the UCMJ.
BP AND THE GULF OIL SPILL:
HOW CAN YOU STAND UP WHEN YOU’VE GOT BOTH FEET IN YOUR MOUTH?
BP and its executives -- to paraphrase friend and colleague Kerry Millerick -- is the gift that keeps on giving. At least for a media trainer and crisis communications consultant looking for egregious examples of what not to say and do. BP’s gift is so (tragically) generous that there is too much for one essay, so today I’ll address only the lessons we can learn from BP executives’ uncanny gift for unfailingly saying the wrong thing.
BP is supplying us a torrent of teachable moments, a veritable gusher of simply dumb soundbites and inept media relations actions. Makes you wonder whether the company’s top brass had media training, didn’t pay attention during media training, or was trained by the world’s worst media trainer. Whatever the cause, BP’s response over the two months of historic oil spill is a textbook case on how not to deal with the media.
Those who have taken an Experience Media workshop may remember the fifth of our Five Commandments: “Thou shalt not lie, evade, speculate nor cop an attitude.” BP egregiously broke all parts of that one.
Thou Shalt Not Lie....
Begin at the beginning: BP severely underestimated (and the government uncritically accepted) the amount of leaking oil. We now know the oil leak was well over ten times BP’s original figure, but early on in the spill, independent scientists and engineers looked at live video images of the gushing oil, did the calculations and gave the lie to BP’s initial estimates. The images these experts were studying were supplied by BP which owns the cameras trained on the gusher. If the experts hired by BP, the world’s fourth largest corporation, had even a modicum of competence, they had to know the company’s early figures were untrue.
When scientists discovered that oil had formed underwater plumes that were spreading widely, BP denied their existence. The company stubbornly held to its cover story: a substantial -- but severely underestimated -- leak with all the oil floating to the surface.
As ex-President Nixon -- who knew about these things better than anyone -- said on any number of occasions, the cover up is always more damaging than the offense. The result of this cover-up was destruction of any corporate credibility. So now nothing the company says is taken at face value.
...Nor Cop an Attitude
CEO Tony Hayward, caused considerable consternation when, standing on an oil-soaked beach, he told the Today Show, “I’d just like my life back.” (See it here.)
That came across as the height of unfeeling arrogance since 11 of his oil workers had been killed in the initial explosion and tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents lost livelihoods to the spill while Hayward continued to collect his $ 5 million annual paycheck. (Update: two cleanup workers have been killed as well, bringing the death toll to 13.)
But Hayward was outdone by his boss, Board Chairman Carl-Henric Svansberg who stood outside the White House after President Obama woodshedded the BP top brass and announced: “People say that large oil companies don’t care about the small people. We care. We care about the small people.”
Big man: BP's board chairman Carl-Henric Svansberg
Apologists for Svansberg pointed out that English is his second language and that he may have been translating the supposedly less loaded Swedish word “smafolket” or the phrase “sma manniskor.” But those translate as “little people,” and it’s hard to see how “little people” is less condescending than “small people.” Might Svansberg have picked up the “small” from President Obama, who earlier had referred to small businesses destroyed by the oil spill? Perhaps, but the Swedish phrase for small business is either “smafolket foretag” or “litet foretag” both two-word phrases. Svansberg used only the single word, “small.” I read one account that asserted that in Sweden “smafolket” was not condescending because the country has such a pervasive egalitarian streak. Read any (or all three) of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy novels and you’ll learn Sweden’s industrialists look at the “smafolket” the way the 18th Century British peers looked at chimney sweeps.
With the Chairman of the Board in the lead, there was no way Tony Hayward could not compete in the arrogance derby so the weekend following the meeting with President Obama the BP CEO flew off to attend a yacht race off the Isle of Wight. It was not just any race, but one in which his own 52-foot yacht competed. (For those seeking a hint of poetic justice, Hayward’s yacht lost.)
Hayward’s outing gave the company’s critics a chance to show they, unlike BP toppers, know how to seize a media opportunity. Senator Richard Shelby (R. -Alabama) said, “I can tell you that yacht ought to be here skimming and cleaning up a lot of the oil.” And White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel unleashed this soundbite: “To quote Tony Hayward, he’s got his life back.”
As long as we’re quoting Tony Hayward, NPR dug up a 2009 speech he gave shortly after taking over the helm at BP from his predecessor whose reign was ended after a prostitution scandal: “We had too many people that were working to save the world,” Hayward said in the address. “We sort of lost track of the fact that that our primary purpose in life is to create value for our shareholders.”
To cite an unfortunate banner hanging from the superstructure of an aircraft carrier: “Mission Accomplished.” At least the first part was accomplished; no one can accuse Tony Hayward’s BP of trying to save the world.
Even their posture is wrong. BP Execs outside the White House adopt the highly defensive CUPP posture -- a no-no when on camera. (CUPP = Cover Up Private Parts)
In addition to speaking outrageously, BP has acted outrageously, excluding the media from beaches and waters befouled by oil -- beaches and waters they do not even own. In one instance, BP personnel on a launch manned by Coast Guardsmen got the Guardsmen to threaten a CBS News crew with arrest if they didn’t leave the oily waters. Right after that both the Coast Guard and BP said that had been a mistake.
But BP kept repeating that mistake, denying reporters access to public beaches where cleanup crews were working. Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, released this statement: "Recent media reports have suggested that individuals involved in the cleanup operation have been prohibited from speaking to the media, and this is simply untrue." The untruth came from Suttles, as WDSU reporter Scott Walker learned two days later when BP’s private security guards tried to deny him access to a public beach. You can see Walker’s attempt here:
BP’s gaffes just keep coming. It seems no one in this huge, multinational corporation has the capacity to learn anything from previous media mistakes.
If BP had a crisis communications plan it was either highly flawed or got thrown out the window as soon as the crisis hit. Next time, another BP teachable moment: how to prepare for a crisis communications plan.
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