Public Relations Scandal 101

Kim Cameron
9/14/07

Public Relations Scandal 101



Disgraced High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens pulled out of her appearance on Thursday night's The Tonight Show in the wake of her nude-photo scandal.


The pretty teenager hit the headlines after confirming she posed for saucy snapshots intended only for the eyes of boyfriend and HSM costar Zac Efron.



The camera-phone pictures fell into the hands of a third party, which went public with the sexy images, placing them on select Web sites.



In a statement released last week, the actress said, "I am embarrassed over this situation and regret having ever taken these photos. I am thankful for the support of my family and friends."



But she no longer wants to talk about the controversy and pulled out of her appearance on The Tonight Show on Thursday afternoon.


E! News featured the star’s fans giving their take on whether this controversy would ruin the clean image of the star. The answers were split with some saying she would lose the respect of her young fans and their parents while others stated that this would make her more human and raise her status in the entertainment world.

Like myself, I know many of us are considering entering the entertainment field of public relations and I can’t help but think what I would have advised Vanessa to do.

First off I think that she should not have canceled her appearance on The Tonight Show because America loves nothing more than a humbled star facing the music so to speak. I think she could have handled it gracefully and people would look favorably towards her especially considering she is young.

I also think putting out an apology statement as fast as possible instead of saying “no comment” was a wise move and allowed Disney to stand behind her confidently saying they “believe she has learned her lesson”.

Recently, Vanessa was also conveniently snapped leaving a church with her family, public relations strategy or coincidence, either way it shows her repenting and looking for forgiveness and its exactly what she needs right now.

On the other hand, I realize that Vanessa will eventually want to shed her squeaky clean image as most young child stars do, and when that time comes those pictures will definitely come into play, but for now I think the best public relations strategy would be to move forward, regain her status as teen star and when asked about the scandal, be honest and regretful.

Sports PR: A Dream Career

By: Holly Gibson



A growing and exciting field in Public Relations is coming forth and taking the field over with a storm—Sports PR. For die-hard sports fans in the journalism field, there couldn’t be a better match for a career opportunity. There are many different positions one could choose in the field, the most glamorous and prestigious being the Sports Information Director, or SID for short.

An SID can work for college or professional sports teams. He or she is basically the liaison between the team’s program and the mass media, just like any PR practitioner is between their company and its publics. Their position includes a wide range of job tasks: holding and organizing media conferences, dealing with all of the team’s publicity, writing press releases and newspaper stories, campaigning, publications (media guides, promotional vehicles), game management and supervision, handling crisis situations and compiling statistics and sports data.



Colleges and universities all over the nation are starting to recognize the growing interest in the field of Sports PR. Journalism and Mass Communication departments are starting to offer courses dealing with the specifics of being an SID. One of those colleges is the University of Oklahoma, where SID Kenny Mossman teaches an exciting course where students learn hands-on the duties and responsibilities of Sports PR practitioners.

The sixteen-week JMC course at OU teaches students the ins and outs of the Sports PR world, with a focus on intercollegiate athletics—right from the horse’s mouth, so-to-speak. Mossman explains all of the aspects of his job as the SID at OU, and is able to give in-depth insight to the duties he performs on a daily basis. Students get the chance to visit the football stadium’s media rooms to see where all of the hectic action occurs on game days. Their midterm assignment is to creatively compile a campaign for a college sports athlete. There is even a mock crisis management situation and press conference where students test their PR knowledge and skills in a real-life setting.

The business of Sports PR is difficult to get into at first, as most professionals start out as graduate assistants or interns. Experience is required in writing, research, publications (and publications programs such as Adobe InDesign and PhotoShop) and campaigning. Sports Information Directors have a difficult job, many working 7 days a week and traveling a substantial amount, but for a true sports fanatic, it is absolutely the definition of a dream job.



For information on job openings, visit the NCAA website at http://ncaa.thetask.com/market/jobs/sports_information/index.php.


Links:
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall01/latimer/ -- Sports PR
http://www.jobprofiles.org/eduunisports.htm -- Sports Information Director
http://www.hr.niu.edu/employment/specs/spec1047.pdf -- job tasks
http://soonersports.com/genrel/mossman_kenny00.html -- Kenny Mossman
http://www.cmiatl.com/news_article43.html -- crisis management
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/200101/20010108idsnprof.pdf -- Adobe InDesign

Globe-Trotting

Globe-Trotting

To many students of public relations, working for an international agency sounds like a dream job filled with endless travel to exotic locales, priceless cultural experiences and rare opportunities to communicate to publics across the globe. However, as with most dream jobs the initial task of entering into this arena seems incredibly daunting (if not impossible). How does one just pack up and move to an entirely different country and get an entry-level position at an international agency? Not to mention all the worries that come with housing, food, insurance, visas, student loans, bank accounts, travel expenses and an almost endless list of other things that are normally taken for granted when just getting a job in one’s home country. For the purposes of this post, let’s just explore the first steps of getting the dream job. After all, in order to get the housing, food, insurance, visas… etc, one must have a job opportunity waiting for them.

The PRWeek website has a job search feature that is available to any registered user. There is a PRWeek site for the US, the United Kingdom, Germany and people in the Asian-Pacific region as well as affiliates in Russia, Argentina and Poland. This is perhaps the most straight-forward way of stepping closer to an international career. A similar job search tool can also be found at the Monster.com Global Gateway which has an ever-expanding list of job opportunities from a variety of countries.

Another International Public Relations site features links offering information on global agencies, communicating across cultures and PR organizations all over the world.

A blog called PR Conversations gives fascinating perspectives about the PR industry from bloggers around the world. Staying up-to-date with global trends of this nature could be very beneficial in the interview process for a world-renowned company.

I, personally, would like to begin my international career in the United Kingdom. However, it would not be in my best interest to send a possible employer my traditional one-page resume. This is where a curriculum vitae (CV) would come in handy. Any employer located in a member state of the European Union will expect an applicant to provide a CV.

It may seem as though finding a job on the other side of the world is just a pipe dream. However, with some research and motivation, anyone can be on their way to becoming a globe-trotting PR practitioner. As the world becomes more connected through advancements in technology (particularly in the realm of communications) it is becoming increasingly important for public relations practitioners to expand their skills to communicate with publics globally.

-Michael Maldonado, 9/10/07

Eastern Michigan University Covers Student Murder

Eastern Michigan University Covers Student Murder

After days of unanswered calls, the family of Laura Dickinson became very worried about her. The 22 year old student at Eastern Michigan University was found by campus police in her dorm room, raped and killed. Campus police, however, told her family and the community surrounding the campus that there was no evidence of foul play.

Although Dickinson was found with a pillow covering her face and semen on her leg, the official word from Eastern Michigan University was that Laura had died of natural causes, that somehow the healthy student had been killed by a freak accident.

Ten weeks later, Dickinson’s family was shocked to hear that an arrest had been made in the case, and the man arrested was being accused of murdering and raping their daughter. This was how her family and the EMU campus learned of this murder.

With evidence of foul play certain at the scene of the crime, university officials and campus police kept the investigation quiet. They failed to inform the student body that there was a possible murderer still on the loose in their area.

By keeping this information secret, the university was in direct violation of the Jeanne Clery Act, mandating that colleges must inform the campus community about crimes that are considered to be a threat to students and employees.

The Michigan Board of Regents commissioned an independent investigation into Laura's death. The almost-600-page report states, "The facts show that the University failed to timely and properly warn the campus community about Ms. Dickinson's death, which was unquestionably a possible homicide."

With this obvious breakdown in federal policy, the university exposed many students to extreme danger. Although classes had broken for the holidays shortly after the incident occurred, there were ten weeks before the public was alerted to the activities in Dickinson’s dorm room the day of her murder.

Without asking more questions, pressing for a real cause of death, it is unfathomable that the parents did not push for a more intensive investigation that was out in the public eye. By bringing forward their questions, the university would have had to bring the facts and the hunt for a killer out in the open.

With security of students on high alert following the Virginia Tech shootings, this university set an example of how NOT to handle a crisis situation. Statements made the day after the alleged murder assured the public that there was no reason to be alarmed about what happened, when the crime scene held clues that indicated otherwise.

The university has not only possible legal troubles from failing to comply with the Clery Act, but they also have a public image crisis. By failing to inform their students, they put themselves in jeopardy of gaining incoming students. Students would have a decreased trust and sense of security on campus, and rightfully so. With reports and statements, this university has a long road ahead, taking steps to improve their credibility. Not only with students, but with their parents- the ones who write the checks.


--Lacey Earls

Has Facebook Gone Too Far?

By: Kelsey Martin

As college students I am quite confident in assuming that every student in our class has at least heard of Facebook and most likely have a profile of their own.

With that being said, I propose a question to you, have the features on the social network of Facebook gone too far? It seems each week a new feature is added to entice its members, which reached 30 million members in July 2007. Facebook now allows users to not only network among each other but also to post photo slideshows, top friend and song lists, profile tracking, wall graffiti, honesty boxes, daily bible verses and the list goes on and on. With more than 200 new applications added to Facebook, users have reacted differently all over the Internet, including many blogs being created where users can discuss Facebook. The interesting twist is that Facebook did not develop all 219 applications themselves and instead have allowed corporations such as Forbes, iLike and Ford Models to launch applications through Facebook. This has created a vast array of opportunities for Facebook to monopolize on their already popular website, not to mention the numerous advertisements sold as banners with the click of each page.

But the new applications have stirred up a large amount of users who disagree with the relevance of many new functions and feel a violation of privacy with others. Facebook which started out as only available to college students has now broadened to almost anyone with a valid email address. This opens the networking options for professionals and students alike however are the new applications necessary for the original goal of Facebook: a social network? It seems that Facebook is beginning to look more and more like MySpace, but how far will the monopoly of Facebook go? For more information check out an interview with Time Magazine and the Facebook site’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

On January 24, 2002, a Juneau-Douglas High School senior held up a 14-foot banner that read “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” as the Olympic Torch Relay passed through the town of Juneau, Alaska. The student was immediately approached by the principal of the high school and asked to take the banner down. When Joseph Frederick did not comply, the banner was confiscated and Frederick was suspended from school for 10 days. The student appealed his suspension, but it was upheld by the Superintendent, as well as the Board of Education. Seeking to prove a point, the student then took his case to the District Court. Here, it was also upheld that the principal had the right to suspend the student and that it did not infringe on his First Amendment rights. The Ninth Circuit reversed this decision and stated that Frederick’s First Amendment rights were being violated because he was punished without the school demonstrating that his speech gave rise to a "risk of substantial disruption." Now, five years later, the Supreme Court upholds the high school’s decision to suspend Frederick and does not hold the principal financially liable. At the age of 24, Frederick says that he displayed the banner to try and provoke a response from the principal. He also says that this ordeal was set about in order to test his rights to freedom of speech and that he was not promoting drugs.

“I find it absurdly funny,” he said. “I was not promoting drugs….I assumed most people would take it as a joke.”

He asserts that the banner represents something completely different than drug paraphernalia or religion.

"What the banner said was, 'Look here, I have the right to free speech and I'm asserting it.' I wasn't trying to say anything religious, anything about drugs," Frederick said in a telephone news conference from China, where he now teaches English and studies Mandarin.

This is a case that causes one to question their true rights. The banner was displayed on a public street, not on school grounds. However, since it was an event that was sanctioned by the school, the school had the right to suspend the student for a banner that referenced drugs. The ruling from the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines states that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Yet this is exactly what occurred. A student was at a school-promoted event and held up a banner that had a drug reference.

While this might be considered offensive by some people, I think it is ridiculous that it is considered a probable reason to suspend a student. While there should be some limitations to what is said or read in a classroom, these limitations should be lifted once off school grounds. But, I, obviously, being an American citizen, am in no place to make this sort of judgment.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS TOO MUCH BAD PUBLICITY?

For those of us who hold the sexy, sizzling television show ‘Sex and the City’ near and dear to our hearts, we know that Samantha Jones always taught us that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Is this, indeed, true?
With one glance at the magazine rack in your local grocery store, you can find the tabloids to be ripping apart one of three very ‘in’ celebrities. Unless you have been in hibernation for the past year, then you should know that I am talking about Britney, Lindsay, and Paris. Juicy stories of hook-up’s and all night partying have been splashed across television and magazines simply for our entertainment. But, in the midst of all of the chaos I have to wonder where is the public relations?
I know at one point or another, we have all been thankful that we were not the ones in charge of having to clean up a celebrity’s dirty mess and restore their image. I know that they have a public relations representative because every once in awhile when they mess up really bad there is a very vague, generic statement released. And how is it that these celebrities go from one bad tumble to the next within the matter of 24 hours?
From one drug bust to the next, these panty-less celebrities aren’t favored to quit any time soon. The public relations representatives need to come in and take charge of their client’s image. But then again, going to rehab is now a trend so maybe there is a brilliant public relations rep out there somewhere.

www.tmz.com

www.enews.com

www.extra.com

www.mtv.com

www.perezhilton.com