By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications Use gruesome video on the air or not? Name a suicide victim? Grant a silhouette interview and anonymity to a nervous informant? I found myself smack in the middle of innumerable heated ethical discussions – and sometimes knock-down-drag-out fights — over ethical issues throughout my 20-plus years managing TV newsrooms. […]
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications Why Did the Biden Team Fail to Use the Tenets of Basic Crisis Communications? When the news broke that classified documents were found in President Joe Biden’s Delaware home, the PR pundits immediately criticized his handling of the situation. They pointed out that Biden and his staff waited too long […]
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications In the aftermath of the death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of five police officers, the Memphis Police Chief chose not to stand behind the usual “This is a matter under investigation.” Instead, she made remarks that were honest and, in my opinion, stunningly blunt. Her outrage was evident […]
By Richard Levick Speaking with journalists, shareholders, customers and stakeholders is easy when the going is good. As the old saying goes, “We are all capitalists on the way up but socialists on the way down.” But when things turn bad? Communication suddenly becomes much more challenging. As another old saying goes, “The gods of […]
By Edward Segal for Forbes It’s not often that business leaders have an opportunity to learn from a crisis that plays out in front of their eyes. Company executives had that chance Sunday night if they were watching the NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. Buffalo Bills’s Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest […]
By Mark Athitakis for Associations Now These are high times for high anxiety among leaders. Last week, many of them convened in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the new PwC Global CEO Survey released there revealed a lot of pessimism in the C-suite. For instance, nearly three-fourths of the CEOs surveyed […]
By Nicole Schuman for PRNEWS As summer winds down, college students return to school and so begins the rally cries and pep band revelry for collegiate athletics. And this year student-athletes have more on the line. As always, there are scholarships and professional league recruiting. In addition, it’s the first full academic year that student-athletes […]
By Thom Weidlich for PRCG | Haggerty LLC The tragic film-set shooting involving Alec Baldwin is back in the news because prosecutors say they will criminally charge the actor in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. An incident connected to the news raises a crisis question: When is it okay to give reporters the slip? […]
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications There’s nothing the self-righteous embrace more than joining with their fellow self-righteous to gang up on some unfortunate target. The angrier the echo chamber, the better. Social media is their perfect rage machine. It’s where anonymous trolls can obsess and pile on. And they do it relentlessly and instantly over […]
GoLocal, an online publication in Providence, Rhode Island, recently wrote an editorial critical of recent decisions by Rhode Island education officials. The editorial creatively lists everything those officials have been doing to create a crisis juxtaposed with tips for managing a crisis the right way, written by Northeastern University’s Graduate School. We urge you to […]