Wrecked Relations With Ambassadors

The Guardian  called the news the “biggest intelligence leak in history” and a “worldwide diplomatic crisis” for the United States.

On Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010, news organizations announced the leak of 251,287 classified diplomatic cables. These diplomatic documents, also referred to as cables, represent a sampling of the everyday communication between the State Department and 270 embassies and consulates.

These cables contain damaging information, such as the following:

• Criticism offered by U.S. commanders, the Afghan president and local officials in Helmand of England’s military efforts in Afghanistan.
• Alleged corruption when local officials in the United Arab Emirates found that Afghanistan’s vice president was carrying $52 million in cash.
• Allegations that China’s Politburo hired hackers to sabotage Google’s system in China.

This is a small sample of the significant secrets that were revealed yesterday. The cables also include frankly worded messages, such as the cable in which Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (depicted as “pale and hesitant”) is labeled as playing “Robin” to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is called the “Batman” in the relationship.

These cables were allegedly leaked by a low-level Army intelligence analyst to WikiLeaks, an organization designed to share official secrets. WikiLeaks publishes original source material, along with news analysis, to bring greater transparency to the world. WikiLeaks shared the illegally obtained cables with five publications: The New York Times, London’s The Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, Spain’s El País, and France’s Le Monde. Each news source has been instructed to release the cables in timed stages, which WikiLeaks has organized by country or topic. This slow-drip method will keep the cables in the news for a long time.

The Public Relations Response
White House officials learned about the leaks in advance when The New York Times contacted them, shared the information the newspaper planned to reveal and asked for any statements that appeared to put lives at risk. The newspaper complied with some of the White House’s requests and shared the administration’s requests with other news organizations, as well as its own decisions about what to exclude.

With advance knowledge of the leak, U.S. ambassadors were warned and instructed to talk with their contacts about what to expect before the information comes out. It’s a smart move to get ahead of a story and to prioritize publics when doing so. As developed by Grunig and Hunt and discussed by Brad Rawlins, publics with functional linkages to an organization have high priority. A functional linkage means that a public provides input or output to the organization.

Thus, U.S. ambassadors, diplomats and intelligence operatives should be among the first to know about the leaks, and they should have the ability to talk with their contacts about the stories before they appear. There is an excellent example of part of an ambassador’s statement on The New York Times’ blog (scroll down to the statement by Cameron Munter, America’s new ambassador to Pakistan).

Crisis in the Relationship With Ambassadors
One of the many consequences of the leak is the damage to the United States’ relationship with its ambassadors, diplomats and intelligence operatives: Will future cables be safe from leaks? How can ambassadors convince contacts to trust them when there is a breakdown in trust between ambassadors and the U.S.?

Trust is based on perceptions of competence and promise keeping (see Hon & Grunig). The government will need to communicate the effectiveness of efforts to fix the security breach. It will also need to make promises to the diplomatic community and keep those promises to gradually rebuild trust. Cultivating personal relationships can also play a vital role in repairing trust.

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Zuckerberg, Hearst and Hollywood: PR Lessons Learned From the Past

 

Photo by Jason McELweenie (deneyterrio on flickr), Attribution Creative Commons License

 

Mark Zuckerberg and William Randolph Hearst do not have much in common; however, each media mogul has a movie in which an actor portrays the person in an undesired way.

Hearst’s Pressure Response
Hearst attempted to buy all negatives of the film, so he could destroy them. When the RKO studio turned down the offer, Hearst banned his empire of newspapers and stations from mentioning any film made through RKO. He also banned his newspapers and stations from accepting advertising from any movie produced through RKO. (After two weeks, the ban was lifted for all RKO films except “Citizen Kane.”) Hearst blocked “Citizen Kane” from opening at Radio City Music Hall by threatening to publish a negative story about Nelson Rockefeller’s grandfather in American Weekly magazine. Many movie chains decided not to play the film because they feared Hearst’s wrath. The movie lost $150,000 in its first run. According to Variety magazine, Hearst was behind a voting block to keep Orson Welles from winning Best Picture and Best Actor awards for “Citizen Kane.”

“Citizen Kane” suffered a heavy hit from Hearst’s efforts; however, in the long run, Hearst’s attempts to extinguish the film only enhanced its significance.

Zuckerberg’s Blowing-It-Off Response
Three message points are common to the stories about Zuckerberg’s reaction to the movie.

1. “It’s a movie; it’s fun... I can promise you, this is my life so I know it’s not that dramatic. The last six years have been a lot of coding and focus and hard work, but maybe it would be fun to remember it as partying and all this crazy drama” (comment during Oprah Winfrey’s show). In another version of this message point, Zuckerberg light-heartedly characterizes the movie as fiction.

This response suggests that other people shouldn’t take the movie seriously either — it’s just fun. The response also features Zuckerberg as someone who does not take himself too seriously, a characteristic of successful politicians.

2. “We build products that 500 million people see… If 5 million people see a movie, it doesn’t really matter that much” (comment from Ben Parr’s interview).

Creating this context by focusing on audience numbers is a strategic way of framing the movie as insignificant.

3. Zuckerberg also steers the conversation to a safe area by talking about “lots of messages” he has received from people who saw the movie and feel inspired to become entrepreneurs. This gives Zuckerberg room to say something complimentary about the movie and himself.

Zuckerberg’s Little League Strategy
Zuckerberg also appeared on Oprah on the day the movie came out to announce the establishment of his foundation and his first gift of $100 million, which was given to the Newark school system. He says the timing was coincidental, which seems to insult the audience’s intelligence. This is what Jim Grunig critically referred to in his classes as the little league strategy, which occurs when an organization looks bad and decides to sponsor the little league team in hopes that this gesture will make up for things.

Is it effective? I don’t think so. Zuckerberg’s denial about the timing (even if it is authentic) is unbelievable, so people have reason to doubt his integrity. The timed date adds significance to the movie and makes it look like Zuckerberg is compensating for the film portrayals. It would have been smarter for Zuckerberg to have made the donation at a different time.

Hence, Zuckerberg’s public relations response is mostly smart: The message points are strong, but the news of his foundation and donation were poorly timed. What do you think?

Hearst Sources

Carringer, R. L. (1996). The making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Citizen Kane. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Kane

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