By Felicia Knight
There are public relations blunders and then there are public relations disasters. There are PR problems that erupt out of nowhere and there are those that are self-inflicted. This week has seen a crop of all of the above, which prompted us to take a constructive look at some PR problems that we’re thankful landed on someone else’s desk:
A week after winning the Super Bowl, and most likely ending his NFL career on the highest of high notes, Peyton Manning is the focus of assault allegations first brought in 1997. As a star player at the University of Tennessee, Manning allegedly sexually assaulted a female trainer. For years, Manning has dismissed the incident as the immature prank of a young athlete, directed at a male teammate, not the trainer. For years, the media bought that, in part because the trainer left UT with a $300,000 settlement. Nearly 20 years later, a federal lawsuit has been brought against the University of Tennessee by six women claiming that UT has “created a student culture that enables sexual assaults by student-athletes, especially football players.”
New attention to this issue presents Manning—and UT—with self-inflicted PR problems. Self-inflicted because that $300,000 settlement came with a gag order for both parties. An order Manning ignored by writing about it in his book. That led to a lawsuit, and an even longer paper trail that is now being exploited by social media.
There was a time when a popular figure or powerful family could bury or spin stories like these at will. That’s nearly impossible now, and public figures would do well to remember that a mistake can be forgiven if the transgressor is sincerely remorseful and acts accordingly. Consistent bad behavior, however, and an attitude of entitlement will come back to haunt you.
Manning’s NFL career may be over, but lucrative endorsement deals could still be his. Or not. If his “aw shucks” image is replaced by that of a serial liar, his retirement may be a lot more peaceful than expected.
Speaking of consistent bad behavior, this comes under the headings of both “Self-inflicted” and “Are you kidding me?” The only known facts are that the NYPD responded to a 911 call for help from a room at the Plaza Hotel, where they found disgraced former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, in a room with a 25-year-old Russian call girl.
After that, it all gets murky. She said he tried to choke her. Then she said he didn’t. He said everything was fine, but it turns out she’d cut her wrists with broken glass. She was taken to the hospital for treatment of the cuts, then got on a plane to Russia.
Spitzer, known in earlier news reports—and one documentary—as Client 9, has likely cost himself any remaining credibility or chance at a political comeback that he might have had.
Cavorting with prostitutes derailed his political career, cost him his marriage, restricted him to the role of (unsuccessful) cable political pundit, and now eight years later, has put him back in the headlines. Some people learn from their mistakes. Others apparently like being featured on all the late night talk shows.
The Vatican (via St. John Paul II)
This one came out of nowhere. Sort of. Apparently, it was common knowledge inside the Vatican that Pope John Paul II had a special pen pal. A woman. A married woman. A married woman whom he visited at her home in Vermont and who reportedly was at his bedside on the eve of his death.
From 1973, when he was Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the man who became Pope John Paul II, maintained a 32-year friendship with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, a Polish-born philosopher.
Mrs. Tymieniecka kept all the letters sent to her by the Cardinal, then Pope, and in 2008 sold them to the National Library of Poland, which has kept them hidden until now. The BBC has produced a documentary: The Secret Letters of Pope John Paul II that discloses what’s in these epistles. But without the other half of the correspondence, it cannot be said for certain what the full nature of the friendship was.
This isn’t necessarily a scandal. More than once, the man destined to be a saint called himself a sinner. And there’s no evidence that either Cardinal Wojtyla or Pope John Paul II broke any vows or canon law. They are evidence, however, of deep affection. That’s not a vice, that’s a virtue.
The Vatican and the Catholic News Service have dismissed both the story and the letters as basically no big deal. Spokesmen (yes, men) have rushed to defend against “malicious conspiracy theories.” They are treating this as a PR problem, when instead, it’s a PR blessing. This revelation of humanness could be parlayed into a meaningful conversation about what it means to “have this conviction, some moral certainty of grace, and of acting in obedience to it” while living in the real world.
The Catholic Church doesn’t have a strong record of dealing with narratives it doesn’t like. One would think, however, that under the leadership of Pope Francis—a man who shuns limousines and embraces the downtrodden, who presents himself as a humble servant to humankind—that there would be less evading and more acknowledging the capacity for love between friends.
There are a number of lessons in these three cases, chief among them: tell the truth.