Case Study: How To Lie to 60 Minutes, by a PR "Crisis Manager"

This is an educational, entertaining and creative example of professional tap dancing, spin-doctoring and counter-punching from reader and Crisis Manager George McQuade, currently Vice President of the Internet Account Team at MAYO Communications, Los Angeles, http://www.mayocommunicatons.com. The case history won 1st Place/Crisis Communications awards from IABC and PCLA and 2nd Place from PRSA.]

In January 1998, Los Angeles Housing Authority PR pro George McQuade learned firsthand why the Web should be a part of every crisis communications plan--and why it shouldn't be the only part.

On his first day back from a vacation, McQuade was interrupted in his regular Monday morning staff meeting. "About an hour into the staff meeting, a usually quiet employee in public relations abruptly barges into the meeting pointing to me to come outside quickly. "You had better get upstairs to the HACLA Board of Operations Committee meeting right away," he said. When I asked why, he told me there was a "60 Minutes" camera crew, and that there was standing room only in the boardroom."

It turns out L.A. commissioner Diane Middleton was about to announce her resignation -- which was news to McQuade. In announcing her departure from the HACLA board, Middleton read a laundry list of reasons why she was stepping down -- in front of a crowd of union representatives, staff members, former employees, and reporters from CBS's newsmagazine TV show "60 Minutes."

In addition, Middleton had faxed explanatory letters to several media outlets. "In one letter, she wrote that she was 'greatly disillusioned at the misuse of taxpayer funds that I have encountered, and disregard for rights of taxpayers, public housing residents, HACLA employees, and contractors,'" McQuade says.

The resignation letter was also faxed to the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, several Congressional offices, Los Angeles's mayor, and 15 L.A. city council members. The letter accused McQuade's boss Don Smith, the executive director of HACLA, in her list of mismanagement and wrongful doing charges.

Luckily, McQuade had drafted a crisis plan in 1995 which called for communicators to respond with an action plan within 15 minutes. His first step was to meet with Smith to figure out a strategy. "As I was walking out the door of his office, my boss joked that Commissioner Middleton had voted yes on 99 percent of the spending items, and she also approved the procurement policy," he says. "I nearly hit the floor. I now had perfect ammo for the news release."

The news release -- sent to all major and local media, including "60 Minutes" -- implied that if Smith was misusing funds, so were each of the commissioners, including Commissioner Middleton. McQuade also called "60 Minutes'" producer and gave her a lead to a half dozen more visual "better stories" from the area, both positive (for the Housing Authority) and negative (about area government and politics).

Next, McQuade attempted to surf the Internet to find out if the story had already hit any online news outlets, and if the crisis was being discussed in newsgroups. He also planned to post the news release on the agency's Web site. But he kept getting server errors each time he tried to access HACLA's site. "At first I suspected it was the computer I was on, because MIS was installing a new Sun 5000 system and it was interfering with everything from payroll to e-mail and the direct Web connection," he says. "But the next evening I tried it from home from my wife's computer, at MAYO Communications and again server error messages popped up. First thing in the morning I confronted the MIS director, who told me that the entire Web site had been deleted, and he was trying to contact the contractor to see if they had it backed up. The contractor told him no." The immediate effect was that no information was going out and no questions or information were coming into the site. Any e-mail arriving was either deleted or went unanswered until the site was back up.

McQuade decided that employees were the first audience that needed information. He announced that the site was down -- but for different reasons than the reality. "Instead of announcing the site was dead, I announced that we planned to redesign it from top to bottom," he says. "No employees questioned our actions, and in fact one wanted to be on the committee for redesigning a page." The announcement was made on the agency's "Employee Grapevine," a weekly dial-in voice mail newscast. Next McQuade faxed the news release to Business Wire, which posted it immediately on its online wire service. He then dealt with members of the housing management, HR and modernization departments, which had been using the Web site to accept bids for contractors or announcing new jobs. "I told them to be patient and that the new site would be shorter, sharper and stronger when clients visit their pages," McQuade says.

"There is a clear and present danger of becoming too dependent upon your Web site for communication with the public and employees," McQuade says. Make sure you have other means of communication, should an emergency arrive, he advises. HACLA's 'Employee Grapevine' is a toll-free, emergency 24-hour hotline, which dials through a phone trunk center outside of California. McQuade offers some further tips for using technology during a crisis:

Back up your site! "We never learned who erased it. It could have been an inside job, but the lesson learned was we had barely backed up the Web site," McQuade says.

Back up all news releases on other employees' systems. HACLA PR pros send completed releases to each other via e-mail.

Establish a home office with necessary tools to work out of your home, such as a basic computer, printer, and fax machine.

The media are using the Internet more, and you'd be surprised who's up all night cruising the Internet for news stories--so don't let that crisis release wait until morning. "Sometimes the traditional ways don't grab the attention of assignment editors who receive more than 200 paper faxes per day," McQuade says.

Arm yourself with lots of evergreen positive stories or PR events you can launch with little effort on the Internet. "I placed more than a dozen stories on the Web site giving the agency a positive light within two weeks of the crisis," McQuade says.

Learn the capabilities of the MIS department. "MIS might have a technical solution to help you solve your crisis communication just by setting up facilities or stations and people to man them," McQuade says.

Ask for help. There are a host of volunteer agencies and interns or students at the local university who would love to gain experience and help during a crisis--physical or computerwise, McQuade says. "Help them on slow days and do PR for them, and you'd be surprised what happens when you need help," he says.

The No. 1 rule is stay calm, "even if you feel like you're going to have a nervous breakdown. Presentation is everything, and if you appear to be calm, the people around you will feel that way, and so will your boss. And the media will be less likely to prey," McQuade advises.

[McQuade, vice president, MAYO Communications, www.mayocommunications.com is also a board member of PRSA/L.A. and a regular contributor to Jack O'Dwyer publications. He is also a nationally recognized speaker on Crisis communications, external affairs and employee communications.

It's time for real coverage of how the news is made. Here's some questions for CBS:
How large is Rather's staff? Does he take "research" from the DNC or their spin-off fronts?

If he's "fed" the "news", is there an inherent bias to keep his handlers in power?

Is there a conflict of interest when your "news" is from people out of power? Is there incentive to slant news to get "your guys" back in?

Does Rather have a dog in this fight? Is that a conflict, not just an appearance of one?

If the DNC is doing Rather's work for him, what are they getting in return? What's the cost? Does CBS pay with their reputation for Rather's "scoops"?

What is the coin of the realm for a one-sided "bribe" in the news field? Is it information?

Given that 60 Minutes isn't revealing their source, this could have any one of a number of agendas.

It could have been from the Kerry organization.

It could have been from a Kerry supporter working independently.

It could have been a Republican misdirection play to discredit the Kerry camp.

It could have been someone angry with or seeking to discredit CBS.

Mr. Cook: I believe that you are guilty of deception yourself.

1) The title of the source web link is not "Case Study: How to Lie to 60 Minutes, by a PR "Crisis Manager". It's "Eye on PR". The word "lie" is never used, and the only lie that I can see that's even implied (about why the web site was down) wasn't directed to 60 Minutes.

2) The excerpt of that page that was posted was prefaced by the following:

"This is an educational, entertaining and creative example of professional tap dancing, spin-doctoring and counter-punching from reader and Crisis Manager George McQuade, currently Vice President of the Internet Account Team at MAYO Communications, Los Angeles."

And I'd say that's pretty accurate. Not exactly the type of behavior that I thought FR encouraged; in fact, it's generally criticized on these pages.

3) Quite simply, at no point is it even alleged anywhere in here that anyone lied to 60 Minutes, never mind showing proof thereof. McQuade's statements to 60 Minutes were quite factual; the person whose statements they covered had voted for the expenditures that she decried, and I will presume that the positive stories were also true. And also note that there's no evidence that 60 Minutes used any of the information that McQuade gave them. And no one, including McQuade, has stated that any of Middleton's statements to 60 Minutes were false.

So, can you tell me why you changed the title from the actual one of the web posting, and why you put the word "lie" in when in fact, no one involved in this is alleged to have lied to 60 Minutes?

The (original title) was copied from their site.

The summary (shortened!0 title was chosen specifically to answer Koppel's questions (last night!) on Night Line about how easy it was to feed a lie to the media, WHICH this PR manager DID DO by describing in detail his cover stories, backup stories, and preset plans and discussions about how he was 9deliberately!) manipulating the media to present HIS SIDE of the issue.

My title, since you chose to split hairs, specifically says "How to Lie" to CBS, NOT that "HE lied" to CBS or to 60 Minutes.

And, indeed, this is a specific case story about "how to lie" to the media.

So the title you gave was not, in fact, the title of the web posting. It is customary here on FR to use the web page title as a posting title. If the page itself is a repost of something else (as this one is), then people do use the original posting's title, but you didn't do that; you made up a title that was misleading, as it states something happened that didn't.

I say it's misleading because using cover stories, backup stories, and other media manipulation so as to get your side of a story out is not lying, unless they contain statements that are not true. It's certainly true that by couching truthful statements properly, people who listen uncritically might draw erroneous conclusions. But that's not telling lies, as people with critical faculties can tell.

The title you made up includes "How to Lie to 60 Minutes". But no one, in fact, did lie to 60 Minutes.

And even if you think that spin doctoring is a lie, then even in that light your title was a lie, since at the most favorable interepretation of it, your title was "spin doctoring" the content of the posting.

Am I splitting hairs? If so, distinguishing lies from truth is worth it.

My title, since you chose to split hairs, specifically says "How to Lie" to CBS, NOT that "HE lied" to CBS or to 60 Minutes.

And, indeed, this is a specific case story about "how to lie" to the media.

Tell me where the PR manager ever advocated or described telling a lie to 60 Minutes, as opposed to presenting truthful information that gave his viewpoint.

The PR manager lied about the web site being down. In fact, he was proud of his lie.

The remainder of the story was about manipulating a gullible and naive media, which includes specifically (in this case) 60 Minutes crew that was standing at the door. The false story of the web site being down is a specific part of that manipulation and distortion. The votes, the money spent, the influence, and the corruption being "explained away" by deliberate deception and misleading statements are detailed in the story. Again: "how to lie" is the key. That is the focus of what you should be looking at, lest, like CBS and Dan rather, you believe that the "seriousness of the charge" is enough to warrant investigation, even if the evidence presented is faked.

Would you be happier if I had "Spinning" instead of lying?

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