Public relations = spreading rumors???
The practice of public relations got an unusual amount of attention on Monday, January 7, when the San Francisco Chronicle’s lead story featured the work of Sam Singer, a public relations and crisis communications consultant hired by the San Francisco zoo.
Singer was hired to help the zoo deal with the “fallout from the Christmas Day escape of a Siberian tiger and mauling death of a teenage boy.” For six days after the incident, zoo officials appeared to be the picture of incompetence as stories circulated about the slow response of guards once the mauling had occurred and their inability to provide an accurate description of the wall the tiger leapt over.
According to the Chronicle, the public relations crisis started to ease when the New York Post published a story based on an unidentified source that the victim and his friends had a slingshot, that there was an empty vodka bottle in their car and that they had been using marijuana. The attorney representing the boys accused Singer of spreading the rumors about the boys. Singer’s response to the accusation? “Singer doesn’t deny pointing reporters to facts and rumors he’d heard in the course of the investigation.”
Wait a minute! Is that what pr professionals are supposed to do? Singer thinks so. The article continues: “For Singer, 50, kicking up some dust and taking some flak are just part of what goes with the territory as one of the –if not the–premier mouthpieces and spin doctors for companies doing business in San Francisco.”
The story outlines two other tactics practiced by Singer: attacking the opposing counsel’s credibility (”Anything that a defense attorney says has to be taken with not a pinch of salt, but a ton of salt.”) and strategically timing the release of a story also damaging to the zoo. The Chronicle refers to this as “dipping into the old PR bag of tricks.” When zoo officials discovered that a wall in the polar bear’s area was also below standard, they released the information late in the day on Friday during the holidays so it wouldn’t get much notice.
Spreading rumors, attacking the other side’s credibility, hiding the facts–all part of a PR practitioner’s bag of tricks, eh? No wonder public relations has a hard time getting respect.