Bad PR

Last week we blogged about Scientology Spokesman Tommy Davis's combative interview with Nightline's Martin Bashir which ended in a walk off. According to Page 6 today, Davis returned to ABC shortly before airtime, and tried to get package pulled. The walk-off could have been planned, but storming ABC News studios shows the Church's inability to understand the basics of broadcast. And it looks like someone at ABC dropped a dime on Davis and called in the tip.

[hat tip TVNewser]

Perhaps Nightline is honing a new style by airing tussles with PR people. Three days after airing footage of Ronn Torossian attempting to steer an interview with his client Benny Hinn, Nightline ran in its entirety a contentious interview last night ending with Scientology Spokesman Tommy Davis tearing off his mic and walking off the set.

If this is PR's best two out of three, Scientology loses. Footage of Tom Cruise helping and high-fiving 9/11 firemen cleanse their bodies using Church methods? Yayyyy. Interview with a former Church member who says the same regimen is also used to punish its members? Boooo. Church Spokesman not understanding the concept of spokesmanship by not gracefully handling questions about ancient humans buried in volcanoes and instead taking it as a personal attack, sorry, game over.

The interview with Davis begins at 3:40. Hat tip to TVNewser:

Market Street Partners, a small investor relations firm in San Francisco is caught up in an FBI investigation of insider trading of at the Galleon Group hedge fund. The Reuters story cites SEC documents that tell of an unnamed agency staffer selling insider information about its client Google to Galleon for between $100-$150k per quarter. Galleon shorted the stock (NASDAQ: GOOG) to the tune of $9 million in profits. Remarkably, this is the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history.

Unlike the "Golden Goose" scandal involving Brunswick Group partner Nina Devlin's husband Matthew, this one should result in the arrest of PR firm employee. According to all media reports, Matthew Devlin stole the secrets from his wife.

No one at Market Street has responded to media inquiries, except when visited at their offices:

"As we've said publicly we were not given any advance notice," said one Market Street employee who declined to give her name when a reporter visited on Monday. "We have not been contacted by any law enforcement agencies. We are very willing and open to cooperating with any investigation but that's really all we can say at this point."

David Bass, founder of D.C. firm Raptor Strategies faces up to 20 years in jail for disrupting a flight in progress, and intimidating a crew member and attendant. Under the Patriot Act, Bass's drunken behavior is a felony.

The Washington Examiner reports that Bass became belligerent and aggressive during the flight from Houston to Washington, crawling over another passenger to stand in the aisle despite an attendant's order not to. He was still drunk and aggressive when authorities questioned him at Regan airport, according to the FBI's affidavit.

Bass launched Raptor less than three months ago, after holding big titles at Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, and Qorvis Communications before that. Prior to working at agencies, Bass held jobs at The Weekly Standard, National Journal, Campaigns & Elections, The Hill and the Washington Times.

The St. Petersburg Times PolitiFact site figured out that the photo of the 9/12 anti-reform FreedomWorks taxpayer rally today (above), circulated by conservative bloggers and memed on Twitter, is in fact, a fake. They used a source who should know, Pete Piringer, a public affairs officer with the Washington, D.C. Fire and Emergency Department who estimated that 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up. Estimates online varied wildly from thousands to 2 million.

Politifact sealed the deal with this:

It doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth Street and Independence Avenue that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Based on reader response to the St. Pete piece, it appears the photo is actually from a 1997 Promise Keepers event. Piringer noted that local government no longer issues official estimates of crowds on the Mall for good reason.

[via HuffPo]

First on PRNewser:: According to HelpaReporter.com (HARO) founder Peter Shankman, 25 journalists have reported that a competitor ExpertClick.com pitched them their source-to-journalist matching service right after their queries went live on HARO. I saw a number of the emails myself.

ExpertClick founder Mitchell P. Davis admitted via email (the same gmail address used in the 25 emails reference above) to PRNewser that his company is making a big push to increase journalist subscribership, but didn't completely deny scraping from HARO either, characterized by Shankman as a "massive bush league move".

Davis's email chalked it up to their recent purchase of 400,000 names from MediaContactPro and that he "can only assume that e-mails once published are in the public domain". Except, unlike what Bulldog is doing with Broadlook, journalists on HARO are on an email listserv only, and the people who use them are subject to Shankman's strict Karma-based terms of service. He bans people swiftly when caught abusing the system.

After thanking Davis for the information I asked him again to address the specific issue with HARO. He hasn't responded at the time of this post, and his company has been banned from HARO (presumably the same Gmail address).

I thought the coincidence feasible since the database ExpertClick is using is so huge (are there really 400,000 working journalists out there?), until I saw an email to Shankman from Irene Diamond from DiamondWellness.com explaining she only uses an unpublished, personal email address when posting on HARO.

More after the jump:

continued...

Barack Obama made history last night as the first sitting President to appear on a late night talk show. Jay Leno and he covered a lot of ground including the AIG bonuses, the defense of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the coolness of Air Force One, and the his dismal bowling skills.

Obama made an uncharacteristic gaffe, likening his bowling score to something from the Special Olympics.

Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton has already responded: "The president made an off-hand remark making fun of his own bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics. He thinks the Special Olympics is a wonderful program that gives an opportunity for people with disabilities from around the world."

There are a few options for the Special Olympics to get a publicity kick out of this one. The first and most likely is to respond with some outrage, and use the platform to discuss the organization, solicit support, and ask the government to reaffirm its commitment to disability issues. The second--and more endearing and powerful--can be combined with the first: respond with humor.

In my email to Ryan Eades, Global Branding and Marketing Coordinator for the Special Olympics, I asked him to see if one of their athletes has topped Obama's score of 129 in competition.

Eades didn't respond to that question, though he said SE Chairman Tim Shriver responded this morning on Good Morning America
at the top of the show. A statement and transcript of the appearance will be on SpecialOlympics.org within the hour.

Related: Special Olympics and 130 Organizations Band Together to Promote Tropic Thunder

Twitter, the omnipotent panacea for the PR industry does have one important thing going for it: it's a steam valve for frustrated journalists. Yes, you should listen and learn their tastes and preferences.

Prompted by this tweet from syndicated columnist Anita Bruzzese (via Valleywag) I felt it high time to tell you what might be going through the mind of a journalist on the other end of your pitch:

"If you r a PR person & promote someone as a source to me, the person needs to be ready to talk ASAP. Waiting days to hear back is no good."

I will predicate this post by saying: I get it. I understand how busy PR people are, and I understand that the sometimes ego-killing task of pitching the media is often pushed down to the lowest rungs of the team. And, it is ok to say: "I don't know. I'll have to call you back". I also understand that a happy-happy-fun pitch can sometimes land in the inbox of a journalist on the hook already with something negative connected to your client, that you may or may not know is brewing.

There is a difference between proactive pitches, and unsolicited queries from the media. The latter affords the PR person more power to opt out or deflect as needed. The spectrum or response is something like this:

15-30 minutes: I am connected to the info you need.

1-2 hours: There was slight fuss here over how to bend the answer in to something positive, but I got it. Or, this had to go up the foodchain.

4 hours with a mild fumfer: I'm game but please don't flame us. I wrestled to get something for you.

4 hours with a nervous stymie: You're on to something.

4 hours with an arrogant stymie: If you run this, I may deny access to said company in the future. Or, "After all I've done for you!"

Next morning with no stories published: I don't care or am too disorganized.

Next morning with many stories already published: Sorry, we went with better ink.

Multiple days or weeks: Pathological ineptitude.

The good news is there are ways to quicken response time:

Continued after the jump:

continued...

Remember Glenn Selig, the former TV journalist who launched a Twitter account to let you know about his marquee client, accused wife disappearer Drew Peterson?

He's handling the media tour for accused Senate seat seller Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. And wow, is it going well. Instead of participating in the impeachment hearings, the Governor--and his hair--are on tour in New York. It began with a bit of fuss between the networks over who got him first over the weekend, evidence the publicist didn't get the agreements straight, or was intentionally creating controversy (note: there's enough controversy already).

Next stop: The View. Barbara Walters gave him the business via satellite. Joy Behar tried to get Blago to do a Tricky Dick "I'm not a crook" impersonation and ruffled his hair.

In fairness to Selig, he has a difficult crisis task here, and presumably a client who insists at writing his own talking points.

If the goal in the end is to avoid jail, invoking the names Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and saying Oprah was on the shortlist for Senate is not helping.

Blago will grace Larry King's set tonight. His highness of long format damage control will let the Governor to spin his best yarn as he does with all guests, or in this case give him plenty of rope to complete the hanging.

It's fitting that Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer chose Under the Volcano as the site to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of their Bad Pitch Blog. Unsuspecting PR pros drinking too much could blab right their way to fiery sacrifice.

Bad Pitch is the scheidenfreude staple for PR pros. The duo, Director of Marketing Communications at FRCH Design Worldwide, and CEO of RLM PR respectively, sometimes redact bad pitches, and sometimes not. It's all in good fun with an educational mission. Less bad pitches, happier journalists.

Amazingly, some of the pitches they blog come directly to them, as sincere efforts to get attention.

The party is on Monday, January 12th. You can find the details on Bad Pitch, and RSVP on Facebook. Don't say we didn't warn you--see you there!