Ep 183 Ken Starr Does Worst Crisis Communications Interview Ever July 1, 2016

Ken Starr makes his mark on history again. This time for one of the worst crisis communication interviews ever.

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Folks, this is a true spectacle to behold. I'm going to link in the show notes in the description YouTube page. Wherever you listen or hear this or watch this program, you'll see a link to this interview. This is an interview with Ken Starr, the former prosecutor who was in charge of the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton years and brought about the charges that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. He's now, or he was until very recently, the president and chancellor of Baylor University. Now here's the further background. There been all sorts of scandals with the football players there raping students. And Ken Starr was removed from his position as president and also was stepping down as chancellor. He said he wanted to. He didn't know anything about this. But the captain must go down to his ship and he will bravely, valiantly take the blame, even though he was completely blameless. That was essentially his message. Now a little more background of why this is so fascinating to Republicans and conservatives. Ken Starr is a hero. He's someone who was widely respected for going after Bill Clinton, getting that scalp on his mantle to Democrats, liberals and a lot of moderates, Ken Starr is the devil. He is perhaps one of the three or four most evil people of the 20th century in their view. So we're talking about a very polarizing character. And if something happens to him, it's going to be of huge interest to a lot of people, a lot of people rooting for his success and his downfall. So in early June 2016, he was being interviewed. This is after he stepped down as chancellor after already being removed as president, by the way. He still gets to keep a plum perk of being a permanent tenured professor at Baylor and all the salary that that implies. But he was being interviewed by a local TV reporter stationed kwtx. And the reporter confronted Ken Starr with an email from a Baylor student from 2015. This student personally wrote to Starr with a subject line that she had been raped at Baylor. And she goes into the email talking about how she was raped by a football player. So his first answer to the question was, I honestly may have meaning I honestly may have seen it. I'm not denying that I saw it. Well, that's when his longtime crisis communications counselor, PR counselor Mary Spaeth, came out during the interview and shut the interview down, took Ken Starr into another room as if he were a little boy being taken to the woodshed, came back and said, let's try it again. She essentially chastised the reporter, saying, we don't want to make sure these quotes don't make us look bad. And reporters sometimes quote things the wrong way. A bizarre, bizarre thing, in my view, for a PR counselor or crisis communications counselor to be doing on the air. By the way, it's all in the clip that I'm providing in the link. If you have any interest in crisis communications and you're looking for a textbook example of everything not to do, I'm begging you, you have to watch this clip. So they start the interview again. I mean, this is almost like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch. He's asked the same question again of have you ever seen this interview or this email from more than a year ago from a student saying she was raped by one of your players? And he says, all I'm going to say is I honestly have no recollection of that. And Ken Starr then looks, turns away from the reporter, looks to his PR representative and says, literally says, is that okay? As if he were a little boy performing some kind of school play and being told to deliver the lines from the teacher director. And then the PR counselor says, don't look at me, look at the reporter. It just couldn't be any worse than that. More on this in just a moment.

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Now the plot thickens. This big time Reagan administration PR person who apparently was well respected in conservative Republican circles for her media skills, is essentially caught on camera trying to pressure the reporter or you can't use that. Well, the TV station knew this was a big deal. The news director went on the interview too. And to this station's credit, they used that. They used all the damaging statements from both Ken Starr and his crisis manager. And they frankly made him look like an utter fool. An absolute, complete, utter fool. I've never seen anything like it. Now, to a lot of Democrats and liberals, this is particularly delicious that Ken Starr essentially sees his career go down in flames over allegations of sexual impropriety. And the way it was handled. Now, it's not exactly the same thing what led to Clinton's impeachment, but it does involve essentially a cover up of a sex scandal. Now, here's what the other thing he's saying is. The president of a university gets lots of emails. I don't even see a lot of the Emails that come into the office of the president. I have no recollection. None. This is a statement he makes just moments after he says, I might have seen it. Here's what's what strains credibility. I certainly can understand that a president of a major university wouldn't read every email. I'm sure there's lots of spam. I'm sure there's lots of boring stuff. But how many times a day does the president of a major university get an email from a student specifically saying, I was raped by one of your football players? I'm guessing that that really doesn't happen very often. And I'm further guessing that in most universities, when that happens, someone looks at it and their eyeballs bulge out and it gets attention, and it's immediately shown to legal counsel, to the president of the university and a lot of other people because it is deadly serious. So the idea that this email would just be shuffled along and put in the category of someone complaining about the color of the new basketball uniform, it just strains all credibility. And it just. It makes Ken Starr look like a complete, utter liar. Now, I don't have proof that he lied, but he's definitely saying things that are wildly inconsistent. I don't know if I saw it. Maybe I saw it. I absolutely didn't see it. Those things just don't add up. Now, let's dissect this a little further, folks. There's nothing wrong with having a crisis communications counselor. That's a role I serve. But you cannot conduct a media training session in the middle of an interview. That's just not the time. The time to do it is beforehand. So that's one of the first big lessons. The next big lesson is your crisis communications counselor can't act like the director of. Of the show and be telling reporters to stop and be telling reporters not to use something. The easiest way to get a reporter to use a particular segment that you want is to tell them they can't do it, at least in the United States. Sure, in some countries, when you have the threat of putting reporters in jail, making them disappear, using that strong authoritarian force can be a way of manipulating reporters. Things are different in certain countries. But here in the United States, even in Texas, which is, last time I checked, still a part of the United States, you can't order reporters around and act like they are on your payroll. And that is exactly what happened in this situation with Ken Starr and his crisis communications counselor. I also think it's very bad form to want to stop in the middle of the interview, pull your client out and counsel them. The time to help a client is before the interview happens, once the interview has started. I'm a believer you have to simply execute. You have to do the best you can and the idea that you're going to stop it and start it and act like you're the executive producer of an interview for someone else's interview. Horrible, horrible. Practice.

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Folks. If you want to learn more about crisis Communications, I would urge you pick around look at some of the other shows we do here. Probably one out of every ten shows we do here on this program relates to crisis communications. It's certainly what I do on a professional basis, training you so you don't end up in situations like this. So if we can ever help you at Media Training Worldwide, please give us a call. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life and all of your interviews and all of your crisis interviews be a success and not end up like Ken Starr and company. See you tomorrow.

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