We don’t care what anyone says–for charities, all publicity is definitely not good publicity.

We have no idea why a Canadian cancer charity organization called the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation decided to hire former actress/semi-nude model/Jim Carrey flame Jenny McCarthy as a featured speaker at a breast cancer fundraising event scheduled for March 2. McCarthy is currently best known for speaking out against childhood vaccines, claiming that they gave her son autism and that they contain potentially lethal toxins (while proudly speaking about her own experiences with Botox). We would get into the science behind this insanity, but the point is: Jenny McCarthy is a controversial figure.

Our feelings regarding the anti-vaccine crowd are similar to our feelings about those opposed to circumcision: we understand where they’re coming from, but we don’t quite get it. Everyone’s entitled to his or her own opinion, of course, but these positions seem less than rational.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Foundation received a lot of backlash when the news of McCarthy’s appearance went public, but the group’s president says that she “didn’t expect” such a response and was surprised to find that the buzz surrounding the event was “about anything but cancer.”

We wonder why…

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Today in Tragic PR Stunt News: radio prank calls are as old as radio itself. Sometimes they can be amusing—who can forget the time an excited Sarah Palin answered a call from Canadian radio host “Nicolas Sarkozy” or the time Miami pranksters insulted Hugo Chavez?

Unfortunately, shock jock antics sometimes go too far. This week two Australian DJ’s followed up on the “Kate Middleton Is Pregnant” story by prank-calling the hospital that housed the Duchess after she suffered from a spell of nausea. They convinced a nurse/receptionist to put them through to the Duchess’s private nurse, thereby gaining undisclosed personal details about her case. The prank got them plenty of attention.

Today brings news of that first nurse/receptionist’s death by apparent suicide. While media outlets rightly hesitate to draw a direct line between the prank call and the tragic passing of Jacintha Saldanha, longtime hospital employee and mother of two, we think it’s quite fair to say that the DJs made a very bad decision by continuing to hype their #RoyalPrank story after Saldanha died and the radio station issued a public apology.

And now we’re very slightly satisfied to report that the hosts in question appear to have been fired for their bad behavior. Their Twitter accounts are no longer active.

We guess the station made the right move in the end, but the whole incident rightly leaves them looking very bad indeed.

The halcyon days of 2008 seem like a distant memory to most of us, but the predictable lamestream media has yet to recover from its fascination with former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

When Sarah went shopping in LA’s Studio City this week, the trusty paparazzi were there to capture all the action—and the resulting photos led gossip blogs to speculate about her apparent weight loss.

Never one to let the story get away from her, Palin (sort of) responded in an email to People magazine, stating that her family “…is writing a book on fitness and self-discipline focusing on where we get our energy and balance as we still eat our beloved homemade comfort foods!”

Palin and husband Todd have always identified as proud hunters–and Sarah has commented on her “high protein”, Atkins-style diet in the past. In her first post-election interview way back in ’08, she spoke with Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren while preparing a moose chili that sounded quite delicious. We think she may be onto something here!

As of this morning, no publisher or date for the book has been announced.

Will Sarah hire Nancy French, ghostwriter of daughter Bristol’s memoir, to pen this meaty tome? Will this new project help revive the Palin brand? More importantly, why didn’t Kris Jenner think of this first? “Kooking with the Kardashians” practically writes itself!

In the high-risk, high-reward world of media training, major stumbles during television interviews are seared indefinitely in the public’s memory. Nailing an interview is not so easy, even for well-known public figures and corporate executives.

Media relies on basic principles and varied techniques. Today we’re focusing on seven tips–and what can happen when interviewees ignore them. As noted below, not everyone is as well-versed in handling the media as Joe Torre, (left) a former Major League Baseball manager.

Preparation is key since winging it is never a good idea. Interviewees need to wrap their heads around not only the core topics, but also the show, the interviewer and his or her questioning style. An example of what not to do? Herman Cain appeared completely clueless when asked about Libya during a video interview in Milwaukee last November, leaving several seconds of awkward, empty air time.

Keep answers brief, limited to quick sound bites. While Vice President Joe Biden is well known for his rambling remarks, the communicator in chief may need to heed this tip as well: During NYU’s Hospitality Investment Conference in June, NBC’s Chuck Todd predicted that President Obama may not win the first debate this fall, because [almost] no one has cut his remarks short during his term in office–and debates have strict time limits.

Beware softball questions. “What newspapers and magazines do you read?” is not a technically difficult question. Still, it was enough to trip up Sarah Palin during her now-infamous interview with Katie Couric during the 2008 Presidential election that was later parodied on SNL.

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In politics — even more than most industries — PR reps strive to maintain control over the media narrative and save the most sensitive stories for release at the best possible times. On that note, the biggest news from Mitt Romney’s campaign in the coming weeks will be its official announcement of the former governor’s running mate.

Third parties and a certain former VP have advised the Romney camp to avoid the media explosion prompted by Sarah Palin’s appearance on the national stage four years ago, and the team has followed suit, aiming to divert the attention of the press by dropping big, unlikely names into the pool and encouraging friendly media outlets to run with the fake stories as they “break.”

NBC’s First Read reports that three candidates remain in the running, yet NPR and TechPresident believe that Romney’s PR camp may have revealed their hand by way of editorial activity on Wikipedia. Given the fact that traffic on any candidate’s page will shoot up in the wake of such an announcement, we find their theory credible: Last-minute edits are needed to make the potential Veep look as good as possible. So which of the frequently-named VP candidates’ pages have seen the most changes of late?

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Fox News photo

In case you missed it amid all the Weiner talk, Mitt Romney is running for president. Aren’t we excited?

Actually, it turns out that Public Policy Polling puts Sarah Palin and Romney in a tie for first place among the GOP contenders. Politico also reports that Romney leads in some of the “early battleground states” like New Hampshire.

Still, Palin seems to find a way to steal his thunder.

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Palin in Gettysburg. Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times

Sarah Palin is taking  a really boring family trip to various East Coast U.S. landmarks. Or maybe her “One Nation” tour is part of her 2012 Presidential run, creating opportunities for her to say things in locations that make her look really patriotic. She won’t say which it is, but she just keeps turning up in places and people keep asking questions and her tour bus keeps rolling on.

Much like Donald Trump, Sarah Palin is great at generating press attention. The ongoing “will she or won’t she run” question is sure to lure the media until a decision is finally announced. But ultimately will this be a successful tour? Or just another thing Palin did that got a lot of attention during a slow news period?

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Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty is in. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is out. The latest Pawlenty video is a lot less ominous than his previous one, but a better video won’t win him the White House. Another announcement, yet the race for President on the GOP side is still a muddled.

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WH Press Secretary Jay Carney

During a briefing today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated and reiterated the President’s decision not to release postmortem photos of Osama bin Laden or his burial at sea.

Carney read the quotes today, taken from President Obama’s upcoming interview with 60 Minutes.

“It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. I think that, given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk,” Carney said. Mediaite has the full video with Carney’s statement. Talking Points Memo notes that Carney is working to tone down and correct some of the conflicting details that have been disclosed.

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We continue to find Donald Trump repellent, yet he manages to keep our attention with his nonsense.

The latest from his absurd campaign to tell us whether he’ll be campaigning for President: He may make an announcement during the season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice on May 15. So he’s set up a win-win here for ratings (in theory) — people will watch to find out who wins the show and/or they’ll tune in to see if this joke on our electoral system will come to an end sooner rather than later. And if he doesn’t make the announcement, he’s set himself up for more media attention; Yahoo News says he might have a press conference instead.

Even more ridiculous than this situation (and his hair, and his recent statements about President Obama and “the blacks”) is the fact that polls show him leading the Republican pack.

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