My secret to a personal crisis: just tell the truth
Crisis communications, which became a speciality of mine during the first decade of the century, is pretty much a scam. Now it’s well and truly reached its use-by date. Every crisis management course in the world can safely shutter its doors; every textbook scrapped. Students can opt for something useful instead – like Latin or art history. Why? Because, in the past two weeks, we have witnessed parallel stories that tell us all we will ever need to know about how to manage crises that arise in the media – ‘‘how to’’ and ‘‘how not to’’, in equal measure. No further case studies required.
I refer, of course, to the Virginia blackface scandal, on the one hand, and the already legendary Jeff Bezos sexting affair on the other. A quick review of both – and, for those who haven’t been following, be assured: every word is true.
Let’s start in Virginia, where sitting governor Ralph Northam faced publication of yearbook photos allegedly showing him dressed in blackface (next to a college classmate in KKK hood). He apologised at first but quickly changed tune: it wasn’t him in the photo after all, he claims, before copping to donning blackface on another occasion – while attending a dance competition as Michael Jackson.
He even seemed up to performing a moonwalk for the startled press corps before his wife talked him out of it. Resignation appeared imminent until Northam’s nominated successor, the Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax, was hit with accusations of rape and sexual assault, while the third in line – the state’s attorney-general – also fessed up to a blackface incident in his past. Thus, for the moment at least, Northam lingers on.
Meanwhile, across town, Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, who also owns the Washington Post, was being subjected to extortion attempts by the tabloid bottom-feeders at the National Enquirer over explicit text messages and X-rated selfies leaked to them by – are you keeping up? – Bezos’ mistress’ brother, who, it turns out, happens to be a close friend of the recently indicted dirty trickster and Trump pal Roger Stone.
In a manoeuvre befitting the richest man alive, Bezos waved off the threat and pre-emptively released the texts, along with uncomfortably graphic descriptions of the images, in a single, epic blog post. File under ‘‘boss move’’.
Not hard to extract the do’s and don’ts from all that, is it? In sum, it’s this: when confronted with embarrassing revelations, gather the facts, tell the truth. That’s it. All of it. Crisis comms in six words.
As I wandered into crisis PR in the early noughts, I wasn’t aware that manuals and protocols for such things existed. If anything, I leaned on lessons from two very personal crises that struck me five or so years earlier.
It was 1995, and I was in the midst of an insurgent bid for Porirua City Council. At a public meeting, the McGillicuddy Serious Party candidate stood up during the Q&A to accuse me of sexually harassing a dancer during a trip to Japan with a delegation of Ma¯ ori and Pasikifa performers. The immediate threat to my electoral prospects aside, this was a gutwrenching blow.
It was also entirely baseless in fact. There was no accuser, no witnesses, and Mr McGillicuddy was hardly a reliable narrator. And yet accusations like these, however fictitious, can take on a life of their own. So I swung into action, securing affidavits from each member of the delegation, as well as our Japanese hosts, attesting to my conduct on the trip. This was enough to persuade the Evening Post to quash the story, and thus – until today – the accusations never reached beyond the aghast audience of friends and neighbours at the Plimmerton Pavilion hall.
The fact I’m gay makes a further mockery of the accusations, but this was not a fact I revealed about myself until a year and a half later.
Accusations ... however fictitious, can take on a life of their own.
In fact, coming out itself is quite the crisis comms challenge. I had only told my ex-wife (faultlessly compassionate), my immediate family (likewise) and one or two close friends – but the rumour mill had reliably kicked into gear. Friends of mine across Wellington were batting away the gossip, defending what they considered my honour, and that of my wife. There was even the briefest flurry of fisticuffs in my defence.
Eager to put an end to this, I parked myself at the Old Bailey on Lambton Quay, in central Wellington, and invited one after another, in 30-minute increments, to give them the whole nine yards. It was only years later I realised this was called stakeholder communication and can attract a hefty hourly rate.
In the years since, as a client’s factory closed, or some overpaid footballer faced one booze-fuelled sex scandal or other, I drew on these straightforward lessons from my own brushes with controversy.
Isn’t it telling we live in an age where simply telling the truth – early, fulsomely and often – is such a radical insight that it’s followed by an invoice?