Posted on September 24th, 2008
It’s tough to be the official spokesperson when a crisis strikes an organization. Emotions always run very high when something really bad happens. That was never more evident than in the case of Denise Tyrrell who was the spokesperson for the Metrolink commuter rail system in Southern California. On the afternoon of September 12, 2008 Metrolink Train 111 collided head-on with a Union Pacific freight train near Chatsworth, California after apparently blowing through a red stop signal on the track. 25 people died and 135 were injured in one of the most horrific commuter train accidents in recent memory. Battle-tested firefighters who have seen all matter of death and destruction were brought to tears as they described the rescue effort to reporters. Within 24 hours of the incident, the emotions of the tragedy brought Metrolink to make one of the most common mistakes in crisis management: Metrolink jumped the gun by assessing blame.
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Posted on October 31st, 2007
The Colorado Rockies had an amazing run through the Major League Baseball playoffs before falling in four consecutive games to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. What wasn’t so amazing was the public relations mess that the team created in selling tickets to the World Series games that were to be hosted in Denver. The team made a decision to sell the tickets on-line. For two consecutive days, the Rockies mumbled, bumbled, fumbled and stumbled their way through a ticket selling process that tried the patience of any fan looking to buy a ticket over the internet. 8.5 million hits to the Rockies website in the first 90 minutes of ticket selling on Day One brought the ticket selling apparatus to its knees. The Rockies tried again the next day and did sell all of its allotment of tickets, but not before further angering fans and committing several public relations offenses.
You don’t have a crisis unless you create victims and the Rockies managed to create thousands of victims all across Colorado. For those who attempted to buy from home or work, thousands of hours of productivity were lost as people sat at their computers and watched the screens go blank as they attempted to buy tickets. This was true the first day and on the second day of ticket sales. For anyone living in Colorado, if you didn’t experience it yourself, you likely knew at least ten people who were shut out by the computer snafu. (more…)
Posted on August 7th, 2007
What a performance it was!
Destined to become must-see-viewing in every crisis communication consultant’s training seminar.
Bob Murray is the owner-operator of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah where six miners have been trapped 1500 feet underground since the mine collapsed before dawn on Monday morning.
Murray violated every canon of crisis communications during a televised news conference Tuesday morning. In the course of the extended appearance on live national television Murray:
· Spent precious little time expressing concern for the trapped miners and their families.
· Spent comparatively little time explaining what was being done to reach the trapped miners.
· Devoted most of the news conference to arguing the disaster was the result of an earthquake, not a collapse of the mine itself.
· In the process of making his argument for earthquake versus structural failure of the mine, Murray contradicted scientists from the University of Utah and the National Earthquake Information Center who have suggested that seismograph readings registered at the moment of the collapse are more consistent with the failure of a mine than an earthquake that caused a mine collapse.
· Murray attacked the former head of the U.S. Mine Safety Administration, Davitt McAteer and another former federal mine safety official, Tony Oppegard, calling them “lackeys for the United Mine Workers” union.
· And Murray criticized the news media, singling out and the morning news on the Fox network and Seth Borenstein, a reporter for the Associated Press, for quoting the likes of McAteer and Oppegard who raised questions about mining practices at the Crandall Canyon Mine.
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