In a PR Crisis, Admit the Truth Now or Pay The Price Later
By Arthur Solomon for PRNEWS
There’s a maxim that says the cover-up is worse than the crime. Another variation is the cover-up makes the crime worse.
A prime example is the cover-up of the break-in at Democratic National Committee HQ at the Watergate Hotel, in 1972.
In our business, unsuccessful cover-ups have brought many entities massive negative media coverage. Years later, the National Football League, Boeing, Wells Fargo and Volkswagen remain excellent examples of entities that brought trouble on themselves when they tried hiding certain difficult facts.
- For example, the NFL has never lived down denying a link between football and brain-damaging concussions. This is mentioned whenever major injury news arises, as it did recently.
- Boeing attempted to shift blame for two crashes of its 737 Max 8, in 2018 and 2019.
- Wells Fargo played hanky-panky with customer’s accounts for years. The story broke in 2013, but reached page 1 three years later. When John Stumpf, Wells’ then-CEO, appeared on Capitol Hill that year, he downplayed the bank’s conduct and culture. It was a disaster. Stumpf was ousted within months. Wells Fargo’s blemishes haven’t disappeared yet.
- Similarly, and just prior to Wells Fargo’s news, Volkswagen attempted hiding that it falsified emissions statistics, in late 2015. Like the others already mentioned, that cover-up was a bust.
Avoiding drip, drip, drip
History shows one way you can limit negative media coverage is disclosing bad news ASAP and tell as much of it as you know. This prevents the dreaded drip-by-drip coverage. It’s painful, but it works.
Failing to come clean publicly about classified documents has engulfed President Biden in a large PR snafu. While the White House notified government authorities the moment classified documents were discovered, it largely kept quiet publicly. Once the documents story went public, the drip-by-drip negative coverage began.
Another mistake: the White House hid the possibility that more documents might exist.
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