Media management and mismanagement,
The courts may be one route to defending your reputation, but there are other, simpler ones.
Experts like Bernard Motulsky, who teaches communications and marketing at the Université du Québec à Montréal, say clever media management is also an effective option.
He notes that one classic strategy is the pre-emptive strike, used by U.S. President Barack Obama in the eternal debate about his place of birth and nationality.
If you know you are going to be attacked, go public with everything.
Obama did just that, making his Hawaiian birth certificate public in 2008, before the election campaign. Conspiracy theorists notwithstanding, the issue slid off the campaign table.
The debate over the PQ government’s proposed Charter of Quebec Values offers another recent example.
After former PQ leader Jacques Parizeau made a very public statement saying the government was going too far, Quebec Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville remained calm.
Rather than respond to inflammatory questions about whether the sovereignist camp was splitting apart over the issue (Lucien Bouchard and Bernard Landry later joined Parizeau in criticizing aspects of the charter proposal), Drainville — a former television journalist who knows his way around the media — welcomed the former PQ leader’s comments as a “positive” addition to the debate. He said the government will take his views into consideration, just as it will the views of the 25,000 other Quebecers who submitted comments about the charter. The media soon moved on from Parizeau’s statement.
Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau also successfully disarmed a Scud missile attack.
In April, the Conservatives created the Justin Over His Head website to mark Trudeau’s arrival as party leader. Ads on the site included an attack video in which Trudeau removes his shirt, suggesting he was not ready for prime time.
Trudeau successfully swatted away the ads by noting the footage was shot at a fundraiser for the Canadian Liver Foundation where he raised nearly $2,000, and that he was proud of his efforts.
“I am quite confident that what I’ve heard from Canadians across this country about people being tired of negativity, of bullying, of cynicism means that the Conservatives are going to discover that the one thing they know how to do really well is no longer working for them,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.
Then there are those for whom media management seems to mean nothing, or might even be futile.
Rather than try to smooth the waters, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford took a “prove it” attitude in May when reports surfaced about a video that allegedly showed him using crack cocaine.
“Number one, there’s no video, so that’s all I can say,” Ford told a caller to his Sunday radio show. “You can’t comment on something that doesn’t exist.”
In a speech two days earlier, he was defiant: “I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine.”
On the other hand, former Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay — an old-school politician — struggled with his media message as allegations of corruption swirled around him and his Union Montreal party.
Unlike Ford’s bluster, Tremblay appeared defensive and agitated as the tide waters rose. He would eventually resign. Ford still has wide support in the polls.
Former Quebec premier Robert Bourassa was so media-sensitive and savvy, he had his driver fetch the early editions of Montreal newspapers in the middle of the night so he could see what was making news and to allow him more time to prepare the spin he would put on the day’s reports.
But it’s unclear if any kind of spin could have helped Maxime Bernier in 2008, when he was forced to resign as the Conservatives’ foreign affairs minister after leaving sensitive documents at the residence of a former girlfriend who had been linked to the Hells Angels.
Bernier has since rejoined the cabinet, as small business minister. Perhaps this is proof that even the most damaging blows to a politician’s reputation aren’t always fatal.