Perspective 2: Crisis Lessons from the Penn State and Sandusky Case
By Dr. Zeny Sarabia-Panol, Professor and Associate Dean College of Mass Communication, Middle Tennessee State University
Freeh’s report shows how misguided and callous Penn State has conducted itself during the entire Jerry Sandusky scandal. Motivated in part by fear of bad publicity and in an effort to protect the university’s reputation (as opposed to protecting the children), Penn State decided not to report the child sex abuse. Penn State’s actions violated and disregarded basic, long-established strategic communication/crisis communication principles in the books.
First of all, this scandal magnified in no uncertain terms the importance of involving and seeking strategic communication input (a.k.a, public relations counsel) before, not after a crisis. Freeh’s investigation also revealed that the in-house counsel for Penn State, minimized the seriousness of the investigation when she briefed university trustees. Have we been told time and again that winning in the court of public opinion is as critical as winning in the judicial courts? Can you imagine the reputational and economic cost Penn State now has to pay as a result of the cover-up?
One of the cardinal rules of crisis PR is to release complete, accurate information including “damaging” information rather than wait for if or when the media uncovers it. This approach will shorten the news cycle and lessen the overall mutilation of the organization’s reputation.
Both the scholarly and professional literature indicate that the leading causes of public anger and loss of confidence were “usually not the crisis itself but refusal to accept responsibility, incomplete or inaccurate information…” In other words, the cover-up or even just the appearance of a cover-up can be more detrimental than the original crisis.
A 1992 Porter Novelli survey also found that one sure way to alienate the public is to put corporate profits ahead of the public interest. In the case of Penn State what is more appalling than putting their reputation ahead of protecting children from sex abuse?
It is quite clear that strategic communication is not and has not been a part of the boardroom decision-making apparatus of Penn State. Otherwise, the university would not have acted the way it did. Who knows if Penn State would recover and how long it would recover from the damage to its reputation; the image that it wanted to protect in the first place.
So the main crisis PR lesson that the Penn State and Sandusky saga teaches us is this: It is wise to always include legal counsel, but to exclude PR counsel is the ultimate folly when it comes to image and crisis management.
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Zeny Sarabia-Panol is professor and associate dean at Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Mass Communication. She teaches public relations and does research on strategic communication. She also is the editor of the International Communication Research Journal.
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This author assumes Penn State had no PR counsel involved because if they had, University leaders would have done the right thing.
Nice fantasy world.
PSU had a large PR staff,and as the story started breaking, they had multiple major global agencies on board, and still retain external PR counsel in addition to their in-house staff.
Having PR counsel on staff doesn’t guarantee the leaders received wise counsel, OR that they trusted the in-house PR team enough to listen and follow the advice.
And having major global agencies on retainer (especiallyl when the univeristy retained an agency and the Board retained its own agency — a duel) doesn’t mean, again, that the counsel provided will be sound, OR (more likely) that the counsel will be heeded.
Saying that the answer to avoiding situaitons like this is to simply have PR consel on board is utterly simplistic, a typical classroom “solution.”
When senior management has consistently ignored PR counsel from inside or agency, and consistently chosen to put other concerns (football revenues) ahead of all other variables, then simply having PR people there achieves nothing.
At PSU, clearly the culture of football as God wasn’t going to change, nor would an obvious culture of secrecy and non-responsiveness.
Even today, with several more agencies having come and gone, even with the Freeh report out there, PSU leaders are still behaving badly. Times reported that one board member “sidestepped” an obvious question, and the board chair, when asked a flat out yes/no question that could have easily been anticipated, gave a “we’ll have to continue to talk about this” non-answer.
With “clients” like these, no PR person, team or agency can do much except point out the obvious and watch as counsel is just as obviously ignored.
Often it’s worth saying that senior management/C-suite execs need to go through realistic scenario drills as an exercise, long before any crisis happens, so they “get” the bsaics and are prepared to do it right when the crisis happens.
At Penn State, one senses that the arrogance there would have made even doing that type of training difficult to even conduct, and that no one would have listened anyway.
Bottom line: it is RARELY the issue of having or not having PR counsel available during a crisis that’s the defining variable, but rather the organizational and senior leadership culture that make the difference.
Having a PR person on staff didn’t solve this problem; the Penn State lawyers are managing this crisis or Penn State would have commented on the latest report. The horse is out of the barn and it will take many years to get it back in its stall, especially with attorneys calling the shots.