Mac's Musings

Crisis News Management – A Fresh Approach

Protecting reputation is the cornerstone of crisis news management.

So Gordon Brown's approach to protecting the reputation of his Work and Pensions Secretary, Peter Hain, is an interesting one. We are familiar with the time-worn phrase 'has my full support'. In politics this translates as 'you'll be out of a job by the end of the week'. But the Prime Minister described Mr Hain's poor - and probably illegal - book-keeping technique as 'an incompetence'.

Setting aside the grammatical niceties of the indefinite article before the noun 'incompetence', Mr Brown has also rewritten the grammar of crisis management. Or perhaps he never intended the phrase to be an unequivocal warm hug.

But I suspect it will become one of those long-remembered political phrases like Ann Widdecombe's description of Michael Howard as 'having something of the night about him', Alan Clark's 'economical with the actualité' or Christine Keeler's 'well, he would say that, wouldn't he?'

Anyway, for some reason I don't think this useful little phrase is one I shall recommend to Alexander Macdonald's clients when they next face adverse media coverage because of a screaming error.

Click here to find out more about how we advise clients to handle crisis management.

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