An Example of a Public Relations Crisis...

On October 26th, 2007, the Federal Emergency Management Committee (FEMA) held a news conference in regards to the recent wildfires in Southern California. The conference, however, was fixed: the “reporters” present at the conference were actually FEMA employees. Real journalists were only given fifteen minutes notice of the conference, which essentially disabled and prevented them from attending. While they were allowed to call into the agency’s conference, they were only allowed to listen and were not allowed to ask any questions.

Instead, FEMA employees posing as journalists tossed “soft-ball” questions at FEMA’s deputy administrator, Harvey Johnson. According to the New York Times, the questions were “decidedly friendly.” The following questions were asked, which all conveniently enabled Johnson’s answers to shine a positive light on FEMA:

“Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?”
“What lessons learned from Katrina have been applied?”

Has FEMA not learned its moral lesson in public relations? The staged conference only draws more negative attention to the federal agency, which has been under intense public and media scrutiny since its failure in properly dealing with Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA was criticized during its Katrina response when instead of helping with search and rescue, agency firefighters deployed to the affected areas were evidently “undergoing training on community relations, watching videos, and attending seminars on sexual harassment in a hotel, waiting days, in some cases, to be deployed in a secretarial or public relations position” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/national/nationalspecial/11response.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=fb3d95d685b8f2f4&ex=1284091200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)
The most recent FEMA public relations disaster is every group's nightmare, whether it be professional, governmental, or in entertainment. Not only did the fake news conference further taint FEMA’s fragile reputation, but it also infuriated journalists, whose professions were irreversibly disrespected. A huge part of public relations is maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship with the media. FEMA’s fake news conference compromised this essential relationship, which will be difficult to repair.
The following video is a clip from Keith Olbermann’s response to the fake conference. In it, he and a guest mention public relations.