183: Delete or Not Delete That Tweet

A tragic weekend occurrence in the NFL family. Dwayne Haskins, the NFL quarterback is dead. Mike Fisher reporting on the NFL for Sports Illustrated and the Arena Group. Dwayne Haskins, a month short of his 25th birthday, the former Ohio State star and first round draft pick.

That's how a breaking news story about a tragic situation should sound from a reporter telling the news. This is what it sounds like when the reporter becomes the news.

Today. We're here to talk about Adam Scheffner's insensitive remarks about my man Dwayne Haskins untimely death. Wow, this really wasn't called for in the NFL and fans alike are calling for Adam Scheffner to be canceled.

Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build indestructible reputation. When the tweets started to trickle in when Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins died after being hit by a dump truck in South Florida, the facts were scarce. The initial reports were short on information, but one tweet in particular stood out, and it still does weeks later due to the insensitivity contained in 284 characters on the podcast. This week, a problem anyone can relate to. Delete or not delete that tweet. An incorrect tweet, whether posted on behalf of a company or on your own account, can irreparably harm a reputation. Social media can certainly increase your credibility in your field when you know what you are doing, when you know the impact of every tweet you write. But there is a huge fear factor in writing the wrong thing and posting a tweet. It may look perfectly fine when it's written, when you're looking at it on the screen, but anyone on the other side of that tweet can take that information in a much different way than it was intended. I get this fear. I feel it every time I send a tweet or post to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, not so much. Those are platforms more about imagery, if you will. But on a social media platform where there's a lot of discourse happening, it can be incredibly damaging if you insert a tweet during that discourse and you get it wrong. NFL insider Adam Schefter received a lot of backlash for a tweet he posted while reporting on the death of Haskins. So this week on the podcast, what to do when you send that tweet? First, here's the tweet that got ESPN Reporter Adam Schefter in Hot water Dwayne Haskins, a standout at Ohio State before struggling to catch on with Washington and Pittsburgh in the NFL, died this morning when he got hit by a car in South Florida. RA per his agent Cedric Saunders. Haskins would have turned 25 years old on May 3, Schefter said in that tweet, which is now deleted. So did you hear the insensitivity in that tweet? He started with the statement that Haskins was struggling to catch on with Washington. And now Pittsburgh fans immediately expressed outrage about Schefter's decision to mention that Haskins was struggling. One tweet said, you really had to mention Haskins as a struggling QB the day he dies in a car accident. Amscheffner Smh that shake my head. Another reply I'm confused how am Schefter still hasn't issued his own apology yet is continually tweeting? Is he waiting on his and SPN lawyers to write him his? At Dan Clark Sports he's an MLB writer, he tweeted I'm confused how at Adam Schefter still hasn't issued his own apology yet is continually tweeting is he waiting on his and at ESPN lawyers to write him his Another tweet Adam Schefter wanted to make sure before announcing this untimely death of a young athlete that we remembered he was trash. That's one of the nastiest tweets I've ever seen. Several people who either replied or posted about Schefter's tweet and called him out were also auto blocked by his account. And auto blocking is Twitter's way of helping people control any unwelcome interactions online. So when someone puts their account in safety mode, Twitter will automatically block another account that's engaging in potentially abusive or spammy behavior. And if you do get auto blocked, you remain auto blocked for seven days. You're in Twitter jail for seven days against that account. So that means Schefter put himself in safety mode instead of doing what? So here's another tweet. ESPN needs to suspend Adam Schefter. That's what often happens, you know, when someone's in the hot, bright light of a mistake of their own doing, people not only get angry, but they also start to dig. They Google, they go back into their own archives to remember why this person annoyed them in the first place. Was there history there that brought them here? So here is a tweet I found in the aftermath of the original tweet it says Adam Schefter in the last year misrepresented the Delvin Cook domestic violence situation, misrepresented the Aaron Rodgers situation, missed on the Tom Brady retirement, said Daeshun Watson is innocent and was insensitive to victims of sexual harassment. Now Haskins that's what happens. People will find more and it makes the crisis stay not only stay in place but get worse. So Scheffner eventually deleted the tweet and kept reporting on the story. And as of this recording there has been no comment by the ESPN reporter and Schefter kept reporting on the story. So his first tweet after the deleted tweet was he mentioned the recent struggles of Haskin and focused on his standout years at Ohio. This is an example of one of those follow up tweets. Dwayne Haskins, a standout at Ohio State before becoming Washington's first round pick and playing in Pittsburgh, died this morning when he got hit by a car in South Florida. Per his agent Cedric Saunders, Haskins would have turned 25 years old on May 3rd. So that was the rewrite of the offensive tweets. And then he kept tweeting more on the tragic death of Steelers QB Dwayne Haskins. So that was his recovery. He just deleted the tweet and then nothing. Now I get though why Schefter wrote the tweet. You know, it feels like he was writing copy for a print story and he pulled the first two lines. It was a copy and paste from an article with context and he put it into a medium without it. What he needed to do was take a beat, read the tweet again, or add it to a thread where he could have mentioned more of Haskins successes in football. He could have countered that first line. But you know what, honestly, he never should have written it in the first place. That was a line for a story he was writing for ESPN or a story later on that was more biographical where he talked about his successes, what he did at Ohio State and what he did as a qb and then where he is now. For you, the listener, if you ever find yourself in this situation. I mean you're not many of you I'm sure aren't reporters for ESPN reporting breaking news on NFL players. But any of you can relate to worrying about posting an insensitive tweet if it does happen to you, first let me say I feel for you. It would be awful. You would have such a sickening feeling if you did not have control of your reputation if it was just like a runaway train on Twitter as the tweets kept piling on and on, and if that tweet was archived, if you knew people had it, which they did in this case, and they kept screenshotting it and posting it over and over again, there is one tactic that would triage the situation and likely repair a soiled reputation. So if it happens to you, delete the tweet. Yes, delete the tweet. Nothing on Twitter has to stay on Twitter. It is a retreat. You are waving a white flag. But it gives you an opportunity to stop the hate or simmer it down and pivot to a recovery in the form of can you guess it? And it's step one, an apology. Remember, from the framework, you want to take accountability right away. Apologize. This is when you need to apologize and leave that apology up and continue on. You don't need to reply to the hate, the dialogue, the back and forth. If you start replying, it could lead you right back into the mud. You have 284 characters or up to 284 characters to show your remorse and then move on. Twitter is fast. There's always breaking news mixed with noise, mixed with goodwill, mixed with good stories. People will move on and let's face it, someone else's mistake is right around the corner. But fail to apologize, then prepare to have a tweet come back to haunt you at some point. That tweet will never go away. In every podcast, I add an indestructible PR tip and here it is. When in doubt, delete or keep it in draft for a bit. See if the story changes. Wait for the mood to shift. If it still feels safe, if you've thought it out, then go ahead and tweet it. However, if you have any doubt, don't. You'll never regret a tweet you never sent. That's all for this week on the podcast. See you here next week. Bye for now. I spoke too soon. Or I should say I recorded too soon, because as of April 12, there is an apology from Adam Schefter. He apologized for his Dwayne Haskins tweet and according to Jimmy Traina from Sports Illustrated, it feels kind of gross. So I won't go too deep into the article, but I thought this episode did deserve a follow up because here we have a twist to the apologies. So if you listen to the episode, which I hope you did, if you're already here, I told you all about the tweet from ESPN's Adam Schefter what he did was wait on the apology. So Jimmy Trainor from Sports Illustrated, of course that's going to be a competitor to ESPN who also has a podcast. This was his opinion of that apology. So first he mentioned of course about the tweet and what had happened when he callously referred to Dwayne Haskins less than stellar professional career. But Schefter finally did offer an apology and he did it on his podcast. And Traynor took issue with this because instead of just coming out and apologiz right away and apologizing on the same platform, in this case Twitter, that's where he received all the heat. It seems that he took the time to generate some extra downloads and listens for his podcast. So instead of doing this on Saturday or Sunday and apologize on Twitter, he decided to do a more in depth apology and but did it to drive people to his podcast. Now a podcast does allow for a longer apology. It also allows for an apology with more context. But I have to agree with Trainor on this one. It seems a little, oh, what's the word that he called it? Gross kinda. It was just taking advantage of a situation to drive people to one of your channels. Now I will say doing an apology via audio. I kind of like this and I was just saying this. I was traveling this week and I was doing a training with a group of communicators and I was telling them, well after the training and it just happened to be in a bar. But that's okay. The learning can happen after the classroom, outside of the classroom. But I was telling them about audio because one of the participants was asking, she was a communicator and she was asking about her CEO using audio. The CEO was interested in it and interested in doing a podcast. So I'm going to leave it there. That yes, this does seem a little gross to leverage an apology and all the eyeballs or ears in this case to a podcast and to your own podcast. I would never advise that. However, there's something to be said about using audio to deliver your apology. So now that's really all that we have for this week on the podcast. We'll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.