TJ Walker and Mike Baco break down Anthony Weiner's 2011 scandal response, identifying ten media-strategy failures: dodging questions, insulting reporters, changing his story. The lesson for any crisis: answer directly, stay calm, stay consistent, and involve the right people.
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Welcome to Media Train Worldwide, our blog. I'm TJ Walker here with my colleague Mike Baco. We're going into almost week two of Wienergate, and this is Transfix, the national media, political media. To me, it's fascinating as a case study of everything not to do. If you're in the middle of a media crisis, doesn't matter if you're the CEO of bp, a prominent politician. There's so many things Anthony Weiner's doing that are classic blunders. For starters, he's just dodging basic questions. Now, when you've been in the media spotlight as much as he has, you just can't blatantly obviously dodge a question. What else are you noticing?
I'm just noticing the way that his story is changing from one day to the next. First, he came out very vehemently saying that it was not him. Then subtly, day by day, he's backing off it a little bit, not denying it, and then getting to the point where he's saying, I can't conclusively say that that isn't my picture.
And the problem is that makes you an object of ridicule. That makes the media think, oh, he's hiding something there, and it makes them want to dig more and it makes the story not want to go away. Now, another big blundery he made earlier this week on cnn called a reporter jackass. Now, as a general media strategy, not particularly effective. Do you like it when people call you a jackass?
I have not had that happen too often, but when it does, no, I do not like that.
Does that make you want to go out of your way to make someone look good?
No, not at all.
So just fundamental, this idea of reacting with anger.
And that's. And, you know, you think back to when you were a kid or get in an argument and you didn't have any response other than to call someone a name, pull someone's hair, get violent with them. And it's the same thing here as an adult not doing that, not a particularly effective strategy.
The next thing I found, without even having to think about it, sitting down for about five seconds, I came up with 10 big blunders. He made. The first, dodging questions. The second, calling him reporter a jackass. The third, just saying, I'm not going to talk about this anymore. It just doesn't work.
It doesn't work. It makes people want to ask even more questions.
So why not? You cannot be a major national media figure, especially someone with his prominence who's in the media, seemingly a Dozen hours a day attacking other people and then simply proclaiming you're not going to talk about something any longer. Now he's trying to control the interview. The only problem is that's not the way you control an interview. You want to control the interview. You have to answer questions in a way that does not arouse more curiosity and that actually answers a question. Ideally you do it in a boring way so that people want to move on. Unfortunately, he's been anything but boring. Now related to this, trying to say I'm not going to talk about it anymore. He then says things like I choose not to participate anymore. What the heck does that mean?
If I choose not to participate in something, it's because I feel defeated. I feel like I can't win this argument. And in this situation he's facing this throng of press, he can't win in this situation.
It's obviously a lie because he is participating. There he is at a press conference and he's done numerous, numerous interviews before that. He's done numerous interviews since that press conference where he stated that. So it just doesn't work. Number five, what I have, I'm here to talk about the debt issue. Well, here's the problem. You don't get to tell the reporters what the topic is of the day. Yeah, if you're President of the United States, you can announce something of huge importance. But when you are a lowly member of the House of Representatives and there's a huge, huge national scandal around you that everyone's talking about it, you do not get to arbitrarily pick a new topic. Nobody cares about your opinion on the debt crisis at this moment. If you're Anthony Weiner, number six of his big blunders, his answers simply don't make sense. Now that's slightly different from dodging. You can dodge questions and not have anything that sounds patently absurd. But if your answer is just make sense. I was hacked and that's horrible. Well, if you're a congressman and you're hacked and there's a security violation, what would you do?
Typically I would call the FBI, I would call the Washington D.C. police, I would call the New York police. And over and over again reports say that he has not done any of that. Even more so weirdly enough, he's hired his own personal lawyer, but yet he's not pursuing any legal action.
So again, that would lead, that would lead someone to believe a fair minded person. And hey, we've never bashed Wiener here before. It would lead them to believe. Okay, it is his picture. He is somehow responsible for it. He doesn't want to call the FBI because they would just figure out he was the one who did it. There isn't really any logical reason not to. He's saying he doesn't want to make a federal case out of this. But what's been a bigger story than this? I'm thinking back to Gary condit days in 2001. And so if that's his strategy, it is not working. And that's the next problem. Answers are just wildly contradictory. Sometimes answers cannot make sense, but sometimes they're just wildly contradictory and it just doesn't make sense. And that's hurting him a great deal. The next thing I've got to say when attacking him for his media strategy is just a fundamental level. If you are going to be attacking people every day and Wiener does that, he is an absolute pit bull. He attacks Republicans, he attacks conservatives, he attacks Mayor Bloomberg day in and day out. If you're going to be someone who attacks someone every single day, you better get ready to take a punch. And he has been spectacularly awful in doing this. Number nine on my list, as you mentioned earlier. He changes his story every single day. And number 10 on my list. This has now happened for so long, this is now six days into the story, that he really runs the risk of this. Painting his entire career and making him a joke.
Do you think, do you think he runs the risk of that or do you think it has already happened?
Well, it's too soon to tell. If he does somewhat. Let's say he came out and just said, all right, you got me. I took this picture a year and a half ago. I sent it to a few friends. We were goofing around. I had one too many beers goofing around. I never meant to send anyone. It wasn't to this. I was embarrassed. That's it. I'm sorry. There'd be one more piling on of, oh, what a fool he is. But then if he runs for the Senate, runs for mayor, continues to be on the attack every day on other issues. It's possible he could rehabilitate himself, but at this stage, I'm not optimistic.
I'm not optimistic either. The one thing possibly working in his favor is the woman that he reportedly sent it to has said that she's never met him, doesn't know where this has come from. So there is a certain degree of, you're thinking, okay, this is not as salacious as it could be, but again, he's bringing this media attention on him over and over again by all these things that you just outlined.
Anything else that you see that he's.
Done wrong, aside from the general nature of how he's handled these press conferences? We're analyzing a press conference that he had on the Capitol steps yesterday. Two days ago, he had an even more bizarre press conference where he tried to give an example, and reporters just kept on interrupting him with questions. He kept repeating the same anecdote over and over again, almost as if he.
Was in this robotic if I'm giving a speech to 200 people and somebody throws a pie in my face, do I spend two hours addressing that person throwing a pot?
Completely bizarre. As reporters, we're simply saying, just answer us this one question. Did you send this picture? And just going on and on in that repetition sort of way, not something that I would advise.
So a lot of lessons here for people. Whether you're in politics, whether you're in the corporate world. You've got to be prepared for any crisis. And how do you really do it in a way that minimizes the damage. For starters, look at what other people do. Look at their mistakes, learn from their mistakes so you don't have to make them either.
And unfortunately, just like Tony Hayward and BP Wiener might be the case study for this type of thing moving forward for politicians caught in this situation, we'll.
Keep you up to date right here at Media Training Worldwide. For Mike Baco, I'm T.J. walker.
