After stepping over the line with some of her comments during an episode of Fashion Police—a show that makes snark part of its mission statement—Giuliana Rancic has come forward with an apology. And it is an excellent example of how to apologize through the media. It is sincere and authentic, while demonstrating understanding of where she misstepped and how her statement may have offended audiences. She directly addressed the target of her comments, Zedaya, with humility and grace.
We can expect to see Ms. Rancic recover, likely stronger than ever.
Note: Zedaya’s response to that apology is no less impressive. Celebrities can learn from her intuitive grasp of how to negotiate the new media climate. We all can.
The BBC documentary Reinventing the Royals was finally broadcast last night, after an earlier air date was cancelled. The controversy surrounding the documentary is not surprising, considering some of the unpleasant public relations approaches it describes. But that is one side of the PR industry that is deeply entrenched. The consultant described as Prince Charles’ consigliere is far from the first to use such tactics.
The iconic American news host, Brian Williams, has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks. We have followed the conversations online and off. The late David Carr’s New York Times article on February 8, 2015 resonated with us the most.
We want our anchors to be everywhere, to be impossibly famous, globe-trotting, hilarious, down-to-earth, and above all, trustworthy. It’s a job description that no one can match.”
Additional viewpoints from crisis and reputation experts – including our own CEO — are featured in this week’s “Crisis of the Week” column, at The Wall Street Journal.
Fortune magazine recently published this article on the newfound popularity of Confide. This app allows users to send emails that disappear after being read, and targets professionals as its user base.
The hack of Sony Pictures’ emails—and the tremendous publicity that surrounded it—has drawn new attention to the inherent insecurity of most online communications. The Fortune article quotes Confide’s President, Jon Brod, as stating, ““It is becoming more and more accepted that anything we communicate digitally—via email, IM, text, et cetera—will be exposed at some point in the future.” The significance of that is becoming clear to the business community—he says there is great interest in an upcoming enterprise version of the app.
No company wants to be put in the position of Sony: hacked, with thousands of valuable internal documents published widely online. But the proliferation of hacking and the ease with which even government databases can be accessed makes it clear that there is very little security on the Internet.
This crisis presents one more important lesson. While we have little control over our Internet security, we can control what we say online, including in emails. We can:
– Be brief.
– Stick to the facts.
– Avoid acknowledging, participating in or responding to conversations that would be embarrassing or harmful to us or others if made public.
– Pick up the phone when you want to keep a conversation private.
The immediacy and convenience of email communication can make it difficult to adopt those guidelines. But they represent a large step for safer online discussions, something we should all strive for.
The Korean Air “nut crisis”—which we have written about here and for the Wall Street Journal’s “Crisis of the Week” column—continues to develop, and escalate.
Cho Hyun-ah, the daughter of the airline’s chairman and herself a former executive, has been charged with violating aviation security law and hindering a government investigation. She faces up to 15 years in prison. This follows her much-publicized arrest last week.
Several other employees of Korean Air and public officials also face prosecution.
This rapidly expanding crisis began on December 5, when Ms. Cho humiliated crew members and forced a plane to return to its gate. Public reaction was immediate and heated. The company attempted to respond, but failed to enact measures that matched the severity of public sentiment. As with all executive missteps that escalate into crises, this illustrates the importance of crisis planning. Have a response plan ready. Don’t get caught playing catch-up with incremental measures. Respond early, and conclusively.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the largest organization dedicated to Internet privacy and related issues. Its resources are considered the gold standard by many experts.
That’s why their Secure Messaging Scorecard caught our attention. It examines dozens of messaging technologies and rates each of them using a range of security metrics. If you already use messaging you think is secure, you may be in for a surprise. (Hint: low ratings are given to Google Hangouts/Chat “Off the Record,” Hushmail, Skype and Yahoo Messenger, among others.)
The scorecard is part of a campaign the EFF has undertaken in collaboration with Julia Angwin at ProPublica and Joseph Bonneau at the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy to help consumers access tools to encrypt their communications. They are championing technologies that are strongly secure and also simple to use.
If you are interested in using the safest encryption tools in your communications, their report is essential reading.
When we wrote about Amherst College’s efforts in 2012 to deal more effectively with on-campus sexual assault, we noted that “colleges and universities have often been silent, even secretive” when it comes to addressing the issue. There’s still room for improvement, but higher education institutions have taken large steps forward.
To a large degree, these changes have been driven by social media and a new transparency fostered by students and some institutions. While President Obama’s White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault proposed a number of measures this past April, it was the Department of Education’s release of a list of 55 institutions currently facing “sexual violence investigations” a few days later that made waves.
An online community
Students themselves have stepped up, using social media to share their experiences and best practices to avoid assault. This transparency has eroded the ability of colleges and universities to keep the issue behind closed doors. “More college women have become willing to speak publicly about their ordeals thanks to social media,” Nina Burleigh observes in her June 2014 Rolling Stone piece “Confronting Campus Rape.” Research by Chris Linder, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, has taken a closer look at social media’s role in sexual assault activism. And this NPR report describes how it has empowered more students to step up to the plate and take matters into their own hands.
The U.S. Senate introduced a bill over the summer to create a public campus assault database. For colleges and universities that have been less than transparent in their handling of the issue, the database will “amount to a public shaming,” according to NYTimes.com blog The Upshot. In September the White House launched “It’s on Us,” which WIRED’s Margaret Rhodes describes as a “smart branding campaign against sexual assault.” The campaign’s website allows users to integrate their own photo into a logo. Rhodes explains, “The tactic is similar to when the Human Rights Campaign logo went viral over social media in 2013, but with some more customization.”
These positive trends seem to be gaining momentum. Students and government have taken the first step of introducing transparency to the issue. In doing so they have changed the reputation management equation. Now, the best way for a school to protect its reputation is to preserve the safety and welfare of its students.
