Ep 125 The Tiger Woods News Dump May 4, 2016

So what is the best way to dump bad news on the media and get the least amount of coverage possible?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

There comes a time in the life of politicians, CEOs, people associated with large public entities where something happens and you know the public, your shareholders, stakeholders, voters have some right to know, are going to want to know, there's going to be media interest and yet you just don't want a lot of attention because it's not a good story, it's nothing positive. What do you do? There's all sorts of attempts at trying to bury news. What's the best way of doing it? Some politicians try to release it on Christmas Day and times when they know no one will be, no reporters will be very eager to follow up on it. That can come back to haunt you. Reporters can feel burned if it's a huge, huge, huge story, you've been caught embezzling something or you have to resign and you've known for weeks and now you're releasing it on late Saturday night. That can seem too cute, too clever and often backfire and you get even more negative coverage than if you'd released it at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon. That brings us to case in point. Tiger woods on April 1, 2016, announced that he wasn't going to be playing in the Masters. Now this was widely anticipated. He's had some health issues. Tiker has obviously gone through a spate of horrific publicity in the last six years or so with his huge controversy with his wife way back in 2009, I believe. But here's what he did. He put out this I've been hitting balls in training daily, but I'm not physically ready. I've said all along that this time I need to be cautious and do what's best for my long term health and career. Unfortunately, playing Augusta next week wouldn't be the right decision. I'm absolutely making progress and I'm really happy with how far I've come, but I still have no timetable to return to competitive golf. So that's the statement. There's nothing particularly unusual there. But here's what he did. He put out the press statement at 8pm on a Friday night on April Fool's Day when people are used to all sorts of silly nonsense coming out about celebrities. Now some commentators said that this was a masterful news dump. I have mixed views now. I've been criticized for my view on this before. I actually do think that there are times when you have some negative news and it is acceptable to dump it on an unpopular time. The whole key is how big of a news story is it? If you are, for example, a state senator and you've never run on the platform that you're more moral than other people, you've never attacked anyone's morals, you're not a part of the act of religious right, for example, and all of a sudden you're getting divorced and it's probably just not that interesting to people, but you kind of feel like you need to officially let the world know. In that case, I don't think you would get in trouble with media. I don't think you would cause a lot of long term damage by putting out a press release at 8 o' clock on a Friday night. Because by Monday morning when someone's looking at it, do we really want to cover this? Well, it's been out there for two days now. There is a chance that your timing makes an impact on whether any traditional reporters follow up and do a story on it. Now, if it's a much, much bigger story, if all of a sudden you are announcing that you have terminal cancer and the election is two weeks from now, you can't bury something like that. You're going to anger reporters, you're going to inflame them and you're going to make them want to write even tougher stories, harsher stories, more damaging stories. More on that in a moment.

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So specific to the Tiger woods situ. How do I grade that? I don't think it's a horrible thing, but I also don't think it helped Tiger woods that much. Tiger woods is someone who frankly was extraordinarily arrogant and cocky because he had so much good press for the vast majority of his career. He was able to dictate terms to reporters. He was able to get, for the most part, 99% positive coverage of everything he ever said or did. He was able to control what writers talked about him and then the whole golf club, chasing out of the house, the wife, all the mistresses, all those problems came out and it completely changed his relationship with the media. He was a textbook example of everything you should not do during crisis communications, he refused to talk to the media for so long, he created this vacuum where since he wasn't talking, everyone else was. And it was 100% negative of tiger Woods. He's still incredibly rich, folks, but you don't see him quite as high profile on so many of the endorsement deals he used to have. He did in fact, lose some of his endorsements. Yeah, he's still insanely rich, there's no doubt about it. But it was a permanent, permanent blot on his reputation. He's never recovered it. He doesn't help himself with things like this. The problem Tiger woods has now is a lot of reporters feel like they were burned by him. They gave him such good press for so many years, and then when there was a legitimately interesting story, he cut them all out. He cut them all off. This wasn't the biggest story in the world. The fact that, you know, an aging athlete who has had injuries, who hasn't been playing, who had been talked about playing at the Masters, now it's not the best biggest story in the world, but it was a story. Tiger woods builds no goodwill with reporters doing this because it's basically taunting them, saying, ha, ha, ha, I got a little story and I'm going to make it really difficult for you to use it. And that's the real problem with this. They're not going to suddenly do all sorts of horrible stories about, oh, he's not playing, because there were so many other stories leading up to the Masters that particular week. And again, it wasn't wildly unexpected that he wouldn't play. So what's the rule of thumb for those of you who perhaps you're in local office, state, national office, or with a company or corporation that has a high public profile, what is the rule? Thumb? Well, for starters, if there's something bad, some bad news, you need to be the one to get it out. Don't wait for a reporter to come knocking at your door. It's always going to be better for you to get it out, because chances are it is going to come out. And if a reporter finds it first, they're going to think, oh, I've got a scoop. Let me make this a big deal. Let me make this the lead story on the 6 o' clock news or the biggest story on the webpage, on the homepage. If you put it out as a press release and everybody's getting it, then nobody has an incentive to make a big deal. So that's the first rule of thumb, is you need to get it out yourself. The second rule is you've got to use judgment as to how big a story this is. You certainly don't have to go out of your way to find the absolute easiest time of the week, slowest news time to unleash bad news. But if you're going outside of nine to five normal business hours and it's something you knew of in advance, you better be pretty confident that it's not a huge story, that it's a story that fits the category of someone saying, I could do it, I don't have to do it. It's not a big deal. No one's going to be upset if I don't do that story. If it's a bigger story than that, I would release it on the busiest time of the day and of the week of that week, but sometime 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. That way reporters don't feel like you're trying to manipulate them and pull a fast one. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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