123: How to Spot the Guilty Culprit From This Type of Media Response: Tells from Ted Cruz to Andrew Cuomo

Ted Cruz two weeks ago. Remember the image of him lumbering through the airport with an overstuffed suitcase for his one day trip to Cancun to chaperone his capable wife and daughters? Of course you do.

So do I was whether the decision to go was tone deaf. Look, it was obviously a mistake and in hindsight I wouldn't have done it. I was trying to be a dad and all of us have made decisions. When you've got two girls who have been cold for two days and haven't had heat or power and they're saying, hey, look, we don't have school, why don't we go, let's get out of here. I think there are a lot of parents that'd be like, all right, let me if I can do this. Great.

Welcome to the Confident Communications podcast, where we help you find the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. In this episode, I'll share how to spot the crisis response tactic that points to guilt and flat out doesn't work anymore. People constantly trot it out, but it creates even bigger problems for the reputation. Ask Ted Cruz. Not only that, but it's also a tell indicating guilt, which is why you never want to use it in your official media response. If you have a story, there are two sides to that story. One could lead to a crisis, whether a professional one or personally. So there's typically one side and then there's the guilty side. In this episode, how to spot the difference. Also, three reasons why people do this. Last week I asked this question in a fleet and fleets. If you don't know, those are the Twitter posts that are temporary. So after 24 hours your fleet that you film or post is gone forever and you can only see it on Twitter mobile apps here's the question I asked. What is the one tell when there is an incident or when an incident blows up that points to the guilty party? And it's funny, as soon as I said blows up, a big gust of wind hit my face and blew my hair back like it was a shampoo ad. The optics were fabulous, but so were the replies. My takeaway from that fleet experiment is that a lot of people do shifty things nowadays. Some replies were close to the answers, some were spot on. So the question is as timely as it is important for effective crisis response and also for spotting the guilty culprit when you hear or see this type of media response. Now, before I tell you the specific tactic, see if you can spot it in this clip. It's from Ellen DeGeneres during her first monologue of the season this past season, and her first since her reputation took a massive hit starting last March when reports surfaced of a toxic work environment at her talk show. Here you go.

I learned that things happened here that never should have happened. I take that very seriously. And I want to say I am so sorry to the people who were affected. I know that I'm in a position of privilege and power, and I realize that with that comes responsibility. And I take responsibility for what happens at my show. This is the Ellen DeGeneres Show. I am Ellen DeGeneres. My name is there. My name is there. My name is on underwear. We have had a lot of conversations over the last few weeks about the show, our workplace, and what we want for the future. We have made the necessary changes, and today we are starting a new chapter.

Did you catch it? Now, if you're a frequent listener to this podcast, you've heard me discuss Ellen more than a few times. I discussed it in how to apologize during a PR crisis. This was episode 94. So it's why Ellen DeGeneres kept quiet in her response. And also episode 101, how to Admit yout Mistakes. The Ellen DeGeneres apologies. So both links to those show are in the show notes. But the reason why I spent so much time on Ellen is because her response was completely off base for how to handle crisis in an age in open source media. In other words, social media that anyone can use and anyone can see and anyone can comment on the public. Their fans can comment in real time with their opinion of a response. And Ellen DeGeneres was known as one of the most likable personalities and brands out there. Her Persona was the nice lady. All it took was one small start to a bad rep that started last March with just a question on Twitter. And it caused a colossal problem for her brand. She's still on the air, but no one can argue that it did a lot of damage. And the jury's still out if she will be back. So for this reason, you don't want to use this tactic anymore. And that crisis response tactic is blame. Blame is no longer a tactic that works. Remember the adage, when a person points the finger at someone, three of them are pointing right back to the person who's actually to blame. This is a crisis communication tactic that always creates a bigger crisis. Always. Ellen blamed her team, her fellow producers, for the problem with the show's culture. She may have sprinkled language about her name being on the show. You see it here and here. Well, actually I can't remember if she said here or she said there, but there and here were attempts at deflecting the blame. There was no way in that official response, which was the monologue, by the way, that was her official response to her reputation crisis. There's way that Ellen would accept any responsibility for the mess. None. And that's a huge mistake. You all know if you listen to this podcast that we are still firmly in the era of the cancel culture still. So remember that emotion and intent behind the cancellation at full power is people creating an online groundswell that determines that someone must go removed from their position. Their time is up. And that position is often a lofty one. But the reason behind the crowdsourcing of cancellation is due to a behavioral misdeed. I've studied this a long time. I even have a book coming out in the next few weeks in part about why the cancel culture happens. Now, I'm sure you've heard it in recent weeks, this narrative created by the conservative arm of the Republican Party party, they talk about the cancel culture. For example, when Simon Schuster canceled Missouri Senator Josh Hawley's upcoming book after on the heels of the siege on the US Capitol, Hawley's response for the cancellation of the book was to craft a cancellation culture narrative. People were out to get him. People were out to bring him down. You can hear it in his response during an interview with Jim Daley, the head of Focus on Family. It's a fundamentalist Christian organization. Take a listen.

Senator Hawley, it's great to have you on Focus on the Family. Thanks for having me. Let me say it as straight as I can. You've had a rough couple of weeks. Tell me what's going on. And in that context of cancel culture, well, I think we're really seeing here the left, many, many people on the left feel very emboldened right now and they are trying to shut down conservative voices all across the country and from all different backgrounds. Conservative voices in politics, conservative voices in media, conservative voices in the faith community. And it's really the liberal woke mob is out there.

If you are a communicator working for a leader with a similar narrative, you want to recognize the true intent behind the cancel culture. If you're going to use that narrative and what it really means, why it matters is because you fall into a trap of using the blame tactic, one that points the finger back at you. So if you are using rhetoric, either you as a leader or you as a communicator calling for the cancel culture to be banned or the only reason this is happening because people have decided to rise up and cancel you. It's a wrong tact to take because the call for cancellation is not a crowdsourced act of revenge, but an act of justice. People do not want other people, often with power, to abuse that power any longer. Therefore, they're canceled when allegations were made by more than 30 different people against actor Kevin Spacey, the two time Oscar winner, he was canceled when longtime Bachelor host Chris Harrison received widespread criticism for his comments perpetuating racism in the recent season of the Bachelor. He's now going to be replaced by Emmanuel Acho for the after the Final Rose episode. He was canceled when actress Gina Carano from the Mandalorian part of the Star wars franchise shared a post on social media implying that a Republican today is like being Jewish during the Holocaust. She was fired when Kevin Mather, the president and CEO of the Seattle Mariners, made disparaging comments about multiple players on his team during a Rotary Club meeting earlier this month. He air quotes resigned. He was canceled. You see, you don't run afoul of an online mob who can decide the fate of a person in the press and the impact of the cancel culture just because they want to get you. It's because the cancel culture kind of created these new set of rules for people with influence. You could be the head of a major League baseball team or the head of a local school district. Reprehensible behavior that falls outside the lines of human decency will cause a person to lose their position. The cancellation is removing the persuasive power of that person. It's also sending a signal that companies or groups, organizations will not tolerate bad behavior. The cancellation culture is really about a crisis of character. That's why when you hear people painting the cancellation culture as power run amok, it's just the opposite. It's striking. The power running amok. So when people bemoan the effects of the cancel culture, it's just another version of blame Blame. Nowadays, when you hear it, always seems to lead to bigger problems. It's a tell that there is more to uncover. Let's look at this example. Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID 19 nursing home fiasco. So here's someone who made the news when the coronavirus took hold in New York City. First, if you remember, before it was nationwide, it hit New York City, his press conferences were broadcast live. Do you remember that? He was a true media darling. I even highlighted his speeches on the podcast about how to give a memorable quote I'll also include that in the show notes. But here's a clip where he's discussing deaths in nursing homes. This is from last May. In one of his pressers. He is discussing the impact, but you will hear a new tactic. It's a dodging tactic. So as you hear him speak, I want you to picture him with a look on his face and the nonverbal gestures that says, get me the hell out of here.

We had 68,000 hospitalizations, so the 4,000 number would be a subset of that. And I don't know what information we have that we haven't released at this point. Do you know?

No, I don't think there's any information that we have that we haven't released at this point. That last voice you heard was Cuomo's top aide, secretary to the governor, Melissa DeRosa. You've heard her name in the press recently. Here she's telling the press that all the information about the numbers in nursing homes throughout the state of New York, that they were accurate when they were giving them. She was quite defiant about that. But now we know. Here we are in March of 2021. We know that they were both withholding information because DeRosa came out in the press admitting that they hid the data on the nursing home deaths, which is why Cuomo likely used the blame tactic in that same presser from last May. Listen to it.

Look, we're in a political environment here. I get it. I understand it. I'm a big boy. I can say all day long, I refuse to politicize this discussion. And I have not and I will not, because I represent Democrats and Republicans and independents and atheists and short people and tall people. And the politics makes no difference to me.

Blaming politics, the discourse, the nature of the war of politics. Cuomo is throwing up a misdirect to make it about political rhetoric rather than revealing the increasing numbers of deaths in the COVID 19 patients that were transferred from hospitals to nursing homes. It was classic. It was a misdirect. So Cuomo's fall from grace, it doesn't stop with the COVID up. It never does. Dateline, Saturday, February 27 New York Times headline, cuomo is accused of sexual harassment by a second former aide. Blaming begs scrutiny. Scrutiny uncovers bigger problems. Cuomo likely tried to make the right decision in the early days of battling the virus. Anyone can see how incredibly difficult it would be for any leader making life or death decisions about such an unknown as the coronavirus. But this doesn't absolve leaders. It doesn't absolve Cuomo from taking responsibility for mistakes and missteps. You have to own it, take your lumps, learn from it, and everyone will likely move on with you. Lie, blame, and it's over. The fall from grace is hard and it will be painful. Take an athlete overcoming cancer to go on to win the Tour de France seven consecutive times. How do you lose it all? Well, you sit down with Oprah Winfrey and blame something else. You said to me earlier you don't think it was possible to win without.

Doping, not in that generation. And I'm not here to talk about others in that generation. It's been well documented. I didn't invent the culture, but I didn't try to stop the culture. And that's my mistake. And that's what I have to be sorry for. And that's what something. And the sport is now paying the price because of that. And so I am sorry for that.

Another retread from the podcast. Remember the time when Hilaria Baldwin, the wife of actor Alec Baldwin, blamed everyone else for thinking she was from Spain, even though she told people that she was, as did her husband. Well, shame on all of us for getting it wrong. Hey, guys.

How are you? So I wanted to respond to some things that I've been seeing on Twitter, and I just want to be very clear, just because I think that there's is that there's some stuff that needs to be clarified. You know, I've tried in the past to be clear, but sometimes people don't.

Always.

Report and write what what you say. And I've kind of just put my.

Hands up since then. Hilaria has come to her senses. She apologized on Instagram, where she is now Hilaria Thomas Baldwin, by the way, which she said in her post was the way I've spoken about myself and my deep connection to two cultures could have been better explained. I should have been more clear. And I'm sorry. I still hear, like the fake Spanish accent when she does this. So from Lance Armstrong to Hilaria Baldwin or to anyone else who's been canceled, it truly is a challenge to return to a power position after you've been canceled. Power, as fleeting as it is, is difficult to maintain after a misstep. Sometimes people are a dime a dozen. You lose one and there's someone else lined up in the queue to replace them. Once Lance Armstrong was vanquished, there were plenty of other athletes behind him for everyone to get excited about. So why do people do this? Why do people blame shift when acknowledging, admitting it would be the better course of action. Well, one, blaming someone is easy and it's the ultimate defense mechanism. Nothing is going to stick to this person. They do not want to attach their name to anything that is wrong or causing a crisis. So they will avoid their flaws, their failings at all costs. They want to conquer and destroy in a war by blaming someone or something else. Two, there's less effort involved when you blame someone else. You don't have to think about your contributions to the problem. You don't have to detail everything that went wrong. It's a natural reaction to not want to attach yourself to it. So again, it's easier to blame someone else. You don't want to put that effort into it. But three, the reason why people blame is that people lie. And blamers often lie. That's why they're blaming. So here's the truth. When a person blames others, they are avoiding some truth about themselves. So listen again, I know it's normal to defend yourself in a crisis. It's a knee jerk reaction to point the finger to someone else. But in a digital landscape where the public can call you out for it immediately, it simply doesn't work anymore. Back when newspapers and television news set deadlines at the end of the day, people had that cushion of time to manage a crisis. I remember Those days, time no. 1. There was no conversation or dialogue happening online where people were calling you into question. You could respond to the issue, you could even blame someone else at the end of the day. So whether it's an official statement or a press release, because reporters, the press, they had to chase down both sides. So it was a gamble back then. And I'm talking not too long ago, you know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that often paid off. But now with so many people on social media, they will uncover the truth in mere moments. People love a mystery, and people love a crowdsourcing mystery. People, politicians in particular, are often motivated by this desire to avoid blame where they can. They would rather put energy in avoiding the blame or making blame rather than being part of a good story or a positive reaction to a good story. Saving their hide is more important than getting a better reputation from it. So some of the terms we hear, scapegoating, passing the buck, attacking the accuser, deflection. We've all heard them before. So no matter what you call it, they don't work. Blaming is part of the rhetoric of renewal. It's better to focus on something else rather than accepting your role. You're creating your own narrative for something else. But again, it's a mistake. Misdirect. Remember another word for blame. How people see it is denial. Simple denial. I didn't do it. Blame shifting. She did it. Bottom line, Spot the guilty culprit. From this type of response. He who blames is guilty. She who points the finger has three fingers pointing right back at her. The deeper tell that there's a guilty party. Listen to the language. Look for the vague accusations where people are being blamed for something but blamed about nothing in particular. There's no evidence, just the accusation J' att accuse. But for what? The language sounds like this. She's out to get me. They want to destroy me. A woke mob mentality. When something happens, when there's a blow up again at work, in the press, within people, you know when the blame is generic, the likelihood that the person dishing it out is guilty of serving it in the first place. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks for listening. Look for more tips on blame shifting if you you follow me on Twitter @Molly McPherson. Look for the hashtag ResponseTip. Each week I reveal three tips from that week's episode. It's additional learning about the podcast episode that week. All right, everybody, have a great week. Bye for now.