Crisis management

Across my email today came this interesting note: WEWS, the Cleveland ABC affiliate, the first news outlet to interview Charles Ramsey, the neighbor who was hailed a hero after he helped rescue the three kidnapped Cleveland women, APOLOGIZED for doing a report on Ramsey’s criminal past. The station posted the following message on its Facebook page: TO OUR READERS & FOLLOWERS: We heard you. Wednesday night, we made a poor judgment call in posting a story about Charles Ramsey’s criminal record and how he’s since reformed. While the story was factually sound, the timing of it and publication of such information was not in good taste, and we regret it. Your comments prompted us to quickly remove the story from our website and Facebook page, but we...

Did you hear? Jason Collins, the NBA player who last week announced he is gay, is reported to be shopping a book. It isn’t the “National Enquirer” (no offense to the “National Enquirer”) reporting this. It’s the Associated Press. Yes, the AP. If you aren’t aware, the AP is one of those rare journalism outfits that reports only things that it can be really sourced. It goes above and beyond in sourcing stuff. If the media outlet cannot confirm what it needs to, it will pass on the story. Its standards are that high. (Unfortunately the same can’t be said for all news outlets.) Officials at three publishing houses told the Hollywood Reporter they have been “contacted about a planned memior by Collins, the...

So I was reading Mediabistro this afternoon and this article headline caught me eye: “Rob Morrison, Interviewed at a Bar, Maintains Innocence.” Unless you are a bartender, under mostly any circumstance doing an interview at a bar is a mistake. It’s a huge problem if your name is Rob Morrison. Morrison, in case you are not following the story, is accused of trying to choke his wife. He’s reported to be involved with a string of domestic abuse allegations. It seems apparent that he has anger management problems. And there are reports of drinking problems, too. So why in the world would the now former WCBS news anchor agree to an interview at a bar with a New York Postreporter? That venue only gives the appearance that he is drinking his...

The story is breaking in the United Kingdom: After two weeks’ worth of deny, deny, deny… Burger King now admits that its burgers, including its popular Whopper, contained horsemeat. Burger King has more than 500 stores in the U.K.  New tests show that despite what Burger King publicly said for a couple weeks, the flat-out denials were simply false. “It… raises serious questions about whether the food company, which sells around one million burgers a week in the U.K., has any good idea about what goes into its products,” writes the U.K. Mail. “These guarantees were incorrect in a revelation that threatens to destroy the trust of customers.” So how big of a problem is this for BK? I don’t think Burger King is dead...

So I read with interest how Larry King would guest star on the new, much hyped NBC show ”1600 Penn.” Larry King, though he interviewed news makers, was not a hard core journalist. He is a talk show host. But Savannah Guthrie of “Today” and NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd are very real and very working. Both are influential journalists who also have been tapped for guest-starring roles on “1600 Penn.” Am I the only one bothered by this… that real journalists covering some of the biggest issues facing the world today are appearing in a fictional comedy about the White House and the President of the United States (POTUS)? I have nothing against the show. Really not. In fact I am rooting for it....

NBC broadcaster Bob Costas knows how to get attention. Yesterday he decided to opine about the Jovan Belcher tragedy to advocate for gun control. Bob Costas generally offers opinions that are popular with the public. He’s been the sports commentator version of a populist politician, expressing positions that the vast majority of the public typically agree with. Not this time when Bob Costas fired off his mouth on gun control. Bob Costas used his halftime segment on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” to talk gun control following the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher. Belcher shot and killed Kasandra Perkins, his girlfriend and mother of his child, multiple times and then killed himself. Here’s what Bob...