Lawyers Who Do Their Own Media Strategy Have a Fool for a Client

From our good friend, Gene Grabowski:

A disturbing sidebar to the story about accusations that Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein engaged in decades of alleged sexual misconduct features the performance of his former lawyer, Lisa Bloom.

Bloom, who resigned after clashing with the Weinstein Company’s board of directors, was recently exposed for presenting to the board a plan to undermine her client’s accusers in the news media by planting pictures and stories showing their chumminess with him.

Board members were rightly appalled. But journalists and communications professionals weren’t surprised. We’ve seen it before. This is what too often happens when lawyers pretend to be media strategists.

In a memo to the board that was leaked to the Huffington Post, Bloom criticized the “largely false and defamatory” New York Times story that broke the news about Weinstein’s behavior. She declared that the piece constituted a “violation of journalistic ethics.”

Bloom, the daughter of celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred – herself a publicity-seeking staple of cable TV news programs – portrays herself as an expert on media relations and a master manipulator of journalists. In fact, she’s leveraged the media in her defense of the accusers of Bill Cosby and Bill O’Reilly.

But in the Weinstein case, like many other high-profile attorneys who prefer to weave their own media strategies, she did her client more harm than good. And like more than a few of her fellow lawyers, she believes that strategic communications is so simple anyone can do it.

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