Laura Collins of the New Yorker dropped a bomb in the magazine's recent issue, with her feature of famous photo re-toucher Pascal Dangin.

It all revolves around Dove's "Campaign For Real Beauty" advertising campaign, which featured "real" women (i.e. not models).

However, this week, in the New Yorker story, and then in AdAge, accusations of photo retouching started flying, because of this quote from Dangin: 'Do you know how much retouching was on that? ...it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone's skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.'"

Dangin then issued a statement saying, "My quotes have been taken out of context and my role with Dove misconstrued."

Photo retouching is the norm in the magazine industry, however a lot of hype was granted to this campaign for presenting the images of "real" women, hence all of the current fuss.

Other mediabistro bloggers have also chimed in. Writes AgencySpy, "Call me a cynic, but I'm yawning my way through this 'crisis.'" Design blog UnBeige never really liked the campaign to begin with. "Like most media or ad people, this writer has disliked Unilever's entire deceptive 'Campaign for Real Beauty' from the start, from their billion-YouTube-views 'Evolution' video to the massive push two years ago with the 'regular women in underwear' ads," they wrote.

To their credit, Dove resonded rather quickly, issing a statement within twenty four hours of when the accusations started flying, and in time for the "second news cycle." The full statement, issued by Dove PR agency Edelman, after the jump.

continued...

Right after we posted the video of Fleishman Hillard being mocked on air during the Fox & Friends morning show, Gawker writer (and former PRWeek media reporter) Hamilton Nolan picked up on the news.

Today, Hamilton received a letter from Fleishman CMO Rich Jernstedt addressing the issue:

Hamilton, It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sometimes the commitment to generate publicity can get an agency in trouble. As you noted in your post, one of our more aggressive marcom specialists at Fleishman-Hillard developed a news release for a client that made light of the FOX News green room. Understandably, the folks at FOX didn't appreciate it. One of our strengths is maintaining good relationships with major media like FOX. We talked with our friends at FOX, and also made a note to our file on how to avoid these situations in the future.

Rich Jernstedt
CMO
Fleishman-Hillard

Sensible and well written, this just may get FH out of the Fox News dog house.

We've been waiting for something else to go down in the wake of Fleishman Hillard's ill fated dust-up with Fox News a month ago. See our previous coverage for background.

Well, today it did. FH executives were front and center on Fox & Friends this morning complete with pictures of FH President & CEO Dave Senay and talk about FH client, AT&T.

Fox & Friends were gracious toward AT&T but let loose on FH. Yikes. As we all know, having a big client associated with a scandal is never a good thing.

Will either party attempt to make amends? Or, would you like to see things continue?

(image cred)

Tainted meat. Killer pharmaceuticals. All in a days work for a crisis PR professional.

Maureen Farrell at Forbes looks into this most challenging of PR assignments, in a story featuring Rubenstein Public Relations founder Howard Rubenstein and Bill Keegan, director of crisis management at Edelman.

Some tips offered from the pros:

Be prepared: Monitor the conversation about your company or client in the media and online. Know where an issue is likely to come up.

Never use no comment: "There are a hundred ways to say 'No Comment' without saying that specifically," says Rubenstein.

Act fast: News spreads fast. The longer you wait, the longer the story is framed and debated without your input.

Keep the big wigs front and center: This is not the time to delegate to underlings.

Stick to one or two spokespeople: Any more than that is confusing.

The good news? People will likely forget. Says Rubenstein, "The public's institutional memory is very short, absent criminal or moral transgressions. [They] are ready to forgive."

(AP via CNN.com)

When I wrote my original post, a case study of sorts, "Mitt Romney, De-facto Spokesman for Mormonism; Or, How the LDS Manages PR Like a Corporation," I listed the positives elements of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) communicates, as well as the things that threaten its perception from outsiders.

South Park and Big Love episodes are gnats compared to the ongoing polygamy scandal in Texas.

To their chagrin, the polygamous sect calls itself "FLDS," (fundamentalist) merely one letter away from the LDS. While the FLDS is spinning like mad to refute the findings (teen pregnancy, evidence of broken bones in the children), it appears the LDS has mostly steered clear of the news cycle.

However, the LDS church did issue a list of inaccuracies in some of the news reports connecting it with the FLDS

Polygamy was suspended and disavowed by the Church in the 1890s, essentially in exchange for statehood.

Expect the LDS, like the Vatican to look at their damage control problem in a much longer time frame than most corporations.

In the meantime, an informal analysis of the news cycle looks pretty bad: 12,300 articles on Google News with the word "FLDS" and almost 30,000 blog posts.

(Dr. Michael Kussman)

The tamping down of data regarding suicide attempts by Iraq war veterans is playing out this week in California Federal court.

According to a new CBS.com story, Dr. Michael Kussman, the VA's Under Secretary for Health, said, "I disagree with the premise that there was some effort to cover up something."

To recap the news cycle, Everett Chasen the chief communications officer for VA’s Veterans Health Administration (VHA) sent an email to top VHA officials including Kussman about the real suicide attempt rate and how to handle it in the midst of pending CBS story.

The VHA's top mental health official Dr. Ira Katz responded to Chasen's email with, "Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilitates. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?"

Look for this to spin out possibly as much the scandal about the poor conditions at Walter Reed. Rightfully so.

[Rob Parker addresses the media (image cred)]

A group known to have little, if any contact with the media, is now speaking.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known to many for their practice of polygamy, has turned to PR in the wake of 416 children being removed by state officials from a church retreat in Texas.

Rod Parker, an attorney who as worked with the church since 1990, has emerged as a spokesman and PR counsel of sorts. He told the Associated Press, "What we were trying to do was inject a human element into what was happening here. Put names to faces and not just think of these people as being so different."

Regardless of the tactics, the church members are speaking everywhere, from newspapers to "Larry King Live." Anything to get their kids back, it seems.

We've received a few responses to our earlier post about China's PR agency search to help with the ongoing crisis that is the 2008 Summer Games.

Over at the Strategic Public Relations blog, Kevin Dugan "invokes the tenets" of two other PR bloggers and asks, "Short of ending the human rights abuse, what could a PR firm possibly do to solve this problem for China?"

Kevin McCauley of O'Dwyers thinks with former notorious "bad boy" publicist Eddie von Kloberg dead, no one will take on the work.

Rose Gordon at PRWeek has been calling around trying to see who's ptiching the work, but so far hasn't gotten anything.

Will anyone take the job? Our guess is as good as yours.

According to a UPI report:

A number of U.S. and British agencies have been asked to meet with Chinese officials to talk about the job, including public relations strategies to be used before the games, media background and market analysis on how China is perceived in the West, the report said. China has yet to announce its agency choice.

We can only imagine the competing agencies will be kept under extremely tight wraps. PRNewser will be watching closely for further announcements.

(image cred)

File this in the "oopsies" category. From Romenesko (via Washington Post):

PR exec and lawyer Peter Segall admits he "engaged in a very stupid and ultimately cruel April Fool's joke against a man that has been my best friend for 30 years" by placing a notice of the pal's death in the Washington Post. Edward M. Gabriel fielded calls all day from friends who thought he had died. One woman said she cried for two hours after seeing the ad. Segall has a paid retraction in today's Post.