What do you do? You convince law enforcement to threaten the journalists trying to cover your story with arrest and push your top lobbyist to call them liars!

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Of course Sandberg’s been making the media rounds to promote the book. This week Kate Losse, an early Facebook employee who once wrote speeches for Mark Zuckerberg and published a memoir about her experience there, posted a critical review of the book in Dissent magazine.

Here’s how current Sandberg rep and former Facebook PR chief/Losse coworker Brandee Barker responded:

Wow. twitter.com/fake_train/sta…

— kate losse (@fake_train) March 27, 2013

Alright then!

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Stewart compared the glib Gibbs with the seemingly emotionally damaged Scott McClellan, George W. Bush’s second spokesman, concluding that neither are any good at protecting the POTUS in their respective retirements. “Either way, secrets spilled,” Stewart finds. “What you need is a jaded believer. Boom.”

When McClellan came out with his admissions of lying, guess which Bush surrogate went after him? Boom, Ari Fleischer.

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Yet, despite all this immeasurably positive publicity, Bey’s PR team didn’t feel like the next-day coverage was quite as “flattering” as it could/should have been. You’d think anyone would love a post like BuzzFeed‘s “33 Fiercest Moments from Beyoncé’s Halftime Show“–the page has 33 thousand likes, for God’s sake. But the singer’s rep wasn’t happy, and she quickly responded by calling and emailing the site to “respectfully” request that its editors remove or replace seven of the post’s 30 still shots.

BuzzFeed’s editors, clearly annoyed at this nitpickery, decided to highlight the anal retentive PR request by re-posting the email along with the very pictures singled out as “unflattering”. While the site “redacted” the publicist’s specific email address, the post includes her full name and company–so any haters with time on their hands can easily email her.

Our question for readers: Who’s in the wrong here?

Did BuzzFeed overreact by brazenly “shooting the messenger”, or should the PR team have expected this kind of response to a completely unreasonable request?

Whatever your opinion, we think it’s safe to say the move backfired.

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A veteran of the Clinton administration and former adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Siewert signed with Sachs earlier this year to help the firm’s principals “put the mistakes of the financial crisis behind them” and improve their company’s public image.

Mere days after Siewert’s hiring announcement, The New York Times published Greg Smith’s defamatory op-ed decrying the Goldman Sachs culture of greed as “toxic and destructive”—so you might say he hit the ground running.

Most of Siewert’s damage control efforts over the past six months have amounted to “off the record” conversations defending the firm’s reputation, but yesterday he sat down with New York Magazine’s Kevin Roose to discuss the politics and challenges of reputation management.

We won’t reprint the entire interview, but here’s an interesting tidbit on why Goldman chose to shoot the messenger:

“Why not just issue a generic statement saying, ‘Goldman Sachs is committed to serving its clients’ needs’ and leave it at that?

That hasn’t worked out so well in the past. And frankly, we didn’t know what was in the book.”

Siewert is predictably guarded, but it’s still worth a read.

PR pros: How big is the challenge facing Siewert? Was Goldman right to attack Smith?

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Bill Nye

Last month, however, he decided to get political by taking a public stand on the “issue” of evolution in a short video produced by Big Think and encouraging parents not to teach creationism to their children or bring it into the classroom. The spot has gone viral with over 4 million views to date, inspiring a series of responses and online debates that continue to make headlines today as he travels the country lecturing university students on the value of scientific study and personal ambition.

Nye was quite blunt in an Associated Press interview, saying “The Earth is not 6,000 or 10,000 years old. It’s not. And if that conflicts with your beliefs, I strongly feel you should question your beliefs.”

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Well, they’re not going to like this latest news. Mike Anderson, who served as Lance’s personal assistant and technician for two years while he dominated the sport of cycling, just published an extensive “My Life with Lance Armstrong” article in Outside Online magazine—and he’s not doing the champ any favors.

Anderson’s main point: Yes, Lance probably cheated. But, more importantly, he’s always been kind of a jerk. He didn’t just aggressively deny doping charges throughout his career, he repeatedly shot the messengers. These people weren’t just mistaken; according to Armstrong, they were “troll[s]” filled with “bitterness, jealousy and hatred.” Hmm…doesn’t respond well to criticism? Do go on…

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Press Secretary to the President (or PS2POTUS) Robert Gibbs took a bath last night due to the ace throwing arm of Bill Plante of CBS News.

The dunking tank at the White House luau is just another way the Obama administration is bringing humor and humility to its relationship with the 4th Estate.

[via Fishbowl DC, photo from Mark Knoller's Twitter feed]

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PR and lobby shop Quinn & Gillespie is hosting their annual Flak Bash tonight to “honor D.C.’s most daring and verbally agile communicators.” The awards–flak jackets–are handed out to flaks (or flacks) to the Best Spokesperson in the following categories: Presidential Campaign (Republican and Democrat); Capitol Hill Press Secretary (Republican and Democrat); and Industry (business and association).

According to Quinn & Gillespie’s Ashley Prime:

Nominees come from the general public, and are judged by a top journalists including Jeff Birnbaum, The Washington Times; Eleanor Clift, Newsweek; Bob Cusack, The Hill; Eve Fairbanks, The New Republic; Arianna Huffington; Kathryn Jean Lopez; National Review Online; Charlie Mitchell, Roll Call; Brody Mullins, The Wall Street Journal; Bara Vaida, National Journal; and Jim VandeHei, The Politico.

According to Politico’s Shenanigans blog:

This is always a pretty popular affair, of course, honoring the best flaks in each political party in campaigns, on the Hill and in industry.

We hear there were two full pages of names that were culled, topped by all the usual suspects: the Tucker Boundses, the Danny Diazes, the Bill Burtons, blah, blah.

But there are some names that pop out. Sarah Palin, for one. Joe Biden. Tim Kaine. T. Boone Pickens. Tom Tancredo?

And other, more reasonable and actual communications people: Ryan Loskarn, Pepper Pennington, Brad Dayspring and David DiMartino.

Where’s Obama’s smooth talking southerner Robert Gibbs, and McCain’s Nicole Wallace? Surely they deserve respective kudos for being keeper of the message, and nearly-shot messenger/Needless Markups shopper?

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[Colbert's angel of death, via 2040worldview]

In what could prove to be the ultimate messenger-shoots-back moment, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino joins Rahm Emanuel, Orrin Hatch, Eleanor Holmes Norton tonight to roast Stephen Colbert for the annual Spina Bifida fundraiser.

Colbert hasn’t been too rough on Perino, only referring to her “rockin’ bod” on the Report. Emanuel suffered the threat of a second severed finger for telling freshmen Dems not to appear on “Better Know a District”.

[Analysis of Colbert's insults via The Examiner's Yeahs and Nays]

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Perino passed off a drastically edited CDC report on the health threat of global warming claiming the evidence didn’t jibe with the IPCC’s conclusions. It was because Dick Cheney’s office wanted to soften the message and not hasten any anti-corporate action by the Government.

In a press conference yesterday when the story unfolded, Senator Barbara Boxer called Perino’s explanation a lie. Perino’s #2 Tony Fratto backed her up: “We stand 100 percent behind what Dana said…Senator Boxer should not throw around charges like lying in cases where there might be a difference of opinion.”

Grist has the best round-up available of the chain of events leading up to this bit of gun play between Boxer and Perino.

If you don’t buy the bit about Perino saying there might be health BENEFITS to global warming, check the official transcript.

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This edition of Shoot the Messenger is fueled by the Scott McClellan gun fight of last week, with CBS Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen taking time out of the staid and steady Sunday Morning program to lambaste the PR industry as inherently built on a foundation of lying. Cohen used the McClellan tell-all as a launching pad for poking fun at the notion of the PRSA’s Code of Ethics for PR, likening it to the Burglars Association (complete with fake logo) espousing Thou Shall Not Steal.

PRSA Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Julin was quick to issue a response.

While the PRSA rebuttal, and even Cohen’s attack have merit, it’s too easy to use one big brush over the whole industry. What Cohen is talking about the ends of the spectrum of solo flacks on one end, and multi-million dollar corporate suppression efforts on the other. There is a big, bell-curve middle of PR people doing good honest work. Those endpoints though, make for the most salacious PR blogging.

See Shel Holtz’s post on the subject of shining a light on the good work for more.

In the meantime, watch the clip above while we look to see which messenger gets shot next.

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In this very special edition of Shoot the Messenger, the “fury” over former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan‘s “revelations” have created an all-out old-tymey Texas gun fight, with wartime Bushies all following the talking points (see CBS Evening News clip above) saying this is not the Scott they knew.

Well yeah. The communications strategy of the time was to take the #1 most credible person in the administration (Colin Powell) and put him in front of the U.N. to talk WMD. Are people really surprised the person 100% responsible delivering whatever he was told had misgivings about the decision to go to war?

McClellan’s predecessor Ari Fleisher claimed to be “stumped and stunned” on CBS, and “heartbroken” on NPR by these revelations.

McClellan’s Texas toast was buttered by Bush for many years, so we assume his advance was pretty hefty on this book to start doing his own shooting. According to sibling blog Galleycat, his What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception popped to #1 on the Amazon list, probably because no one can get their hands on it in traditional bookstores.

Apparently even fake journalists/prostitutes can Shoot the Messenger too. Jeff Gannon, a.k.a. “Bulldog” also “questions” McClellan’s credibility.

As they say in publishing, we’ll see if this book has any sell-through. We suspect its just a brief drive-by.

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If you haven’t heard yet, or felt the wrath of having your firm’s domain name outed as a PR spammer, Gina Trapani the editor of Gawker Media’s LifeHacker blog has created a wiki to show other bloggers how to block pitches. Trapani is tired of PR people pitching her at her personal address.

It turns out she mentioned her blocking methods before in a comment on Valleywag during the kerfuffle over the Chris Anderson/LongTail spammers list, but didn’t draw as much response from the PR world.

On the front lines of this debate over How to Pitch a Blogger, and How to Block PR Firms is Todd Defren of Shift Communications, a shop with considerable tech and social media chops, and one of the domains on the list.

Defren figured out over the weekend that Trapini’s personal email is listed on Cision, one of the major PR databases. He also posted a screengrab of the Cision page on Flickr to make that point, and graciously took it down at her request, then protested on Twitter: “@ginatrapani‘s request, removed pic of her Cision entry from Flickr. Wish she’d been as nice about messing with others’ reputations.”

As I was on phone talking with researcher at Cision to verify how exactly they collect contact info, the wiki was updated explaining the same thing: people at Cision add information to journalist profiles based on what they find on web searches, as well as opt-in methods.

We’ll stay on this story as it develops, and stay neutral. Blocking is a little harsh but there are some terrible mail-merge style pitches getting spewed out there. For now ironically, one of the best place to go for web2.0 How-To remains Defren’s PR-Squared blog.

If you’re a blogger and you want to see if Cision has your information, call 312-922-2400 and ask for research. I just did, and added my phone number. Bring on the pitches, but read PR-Squared first.

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(William J. Holstein does not like PR’s “little Jennifers”)

Prolific business writer and former Editor-in-Chief of Chief Executive and Directorship magazines William J. Holstein has expanded and edited his original rant against “Jasons and Jennifers” in public relations to include just “26 and 27-year-old ‘Little Jennifers,’” according to his retread in a recent issue of the Bulldog Reporter.

We thought this warranted a “Shoot the Messenger” post to see if PRNewser readers agree this piece required ageism and sexism to make a point. He published it to promote his book “Manage the Media”.

You can find the link, and full text to his original Chief Exec column on The Flack.

Is your name Jennifer? We’d love to hear what you think. Email us.

You can also send well-wishes to Holstein directly via his Yahoo! email.

Yours Truly,
Jason

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