Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: BP, crisis communications, eric holder, gulf of mexico oil spill, media relations, obama administration, offshore drilling, offshore oilrigs, oil spills
Whenever you’re positioning yourself as a corporation, non-profit, or government entity, you have to keep in mind that whatever exigency you’re responding to right now isn’t always going to be the biggest thing on people’s minds. A great example of this is the Obama Administration’s positioning on the giant oil spill off Louisiana’s coast, illustrated by the first few paragraphs of this WSJ story.
Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday said he had dispatched Justice Department officials to the Gulf Coast to determine whether there had been any “misfeasance” or “malfeasance” related to the leaking oil rig off the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Holder, speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” said he sent the officials to the area to advise him on “what our options are.” He said the government’s primary focus was on preventing the leaking oil from devastating the coast when it reaches land.
This is smart stuff that serves two purposes:
- The less important purpose: It positions the federal government as having looked into every nook and cranny, so it can continue to appear as though it is doing all it possibly can. In truth, well blowouts are a sad reality of the dangerous, technically demanding, and expensive process of drilling for oil, and there’s really nothing the federal government can be expected to do to make this one turn out any better. That, however, doesn’t change everyone’s expectation that the federal government should be able to bend the laws of physics, weather, chemistry, and anything else to prevent disaster.
- The more important purpose: It helps position the Obama Administration to continue with its offshore drilling plans, which it believes are a necessary tactic in the overall strategy to wean the country from foreign oil. If this sad incident were found to be the result of malfeasance, then that means it can be – rhetorically, at least – attributed to human failings that can be addressed in the immediate term by arresting people and hanging them out to dry, and in the longer term by implementing new rules and regulations “to ensure that something like this never happens again.” Then, after a reasonable mourning period, offshore drilling can again be discussed, having put this ugly business of malfeasance behind us.
In the absence of malfeasance, the explanation for the disaster is much less conducive to the Administration’s offshore drilling plans: offshore drilling – especially in deep water – carries inherent risks that human technology cannot yet mitigate with any significant degree of certainty.
Holder’s recent pronouncement therefore might seem small – a throwaway gesture, even – but its net effect, as this drama unfolds over months and years, could be significant.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: american cancer society, cancer, chemicals, lasalle D. Leffal Jr, media relations, President's cancer panel
You’d think this is a simple enough dictate to follow, but people ignore it all the time. One of the most recent examples is this story, in which President’s Cancer Panel report is taken to task by the American Cancer Society, and many others. It all stems from overreach in the report, exacerbated by one of the report’s authors essentially confirming that they jumped the gun.
The President’s Cancer Panel report basically says that we’re all swimming in a toxic brew of carcinogenic chemicals that are almost certainly killing us by giving us cancer. Based on this conclusion, it urges the President to use the power of his office to regulate chemicals more thoroughly. This call to action is issued despite the report’s conclusion that, “At this time, we do not know how much environmental exposures influence cancer risk.”
Okay, that would seem to be a bit of a stretch… recommending the POTUS to regulate chemicals based on a lack of knowledge. But perhaps an explanation from one of the report’s authors would clear things up, so we might understand this apparent disconnect. Here’s the article’s paraphrase of such an explanation:
[Report author Dr. LaSalle D. Leffall Jr] acknowledged that it was impossible to specify just how many cancers were environmentally caused, because not enough research had been done, but he said he was confident that when the research was done, it would confirm the panel’s assertion that the problem had been grossly underestimated.
To my point about sticking to what you know, Dr. Leffal is WAY off course, and pretty much comes out and says so. His report concluded that there’s not enough information, but because he is “confident” that research will bear out his recommended course of action, he has no compunction making that recommendation.
The problem that needs to be illustrated here is that Dr. Leffal has let his personal biases and baggage color his statements AND his report. According to this report in FAQs.org, Dr. Leffal’s career has revolved around primarily one issue:
Surgical oncologist LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr. has worked to focus attention onthe problem of high cancer death rates among minorities, especially African Americans. As the first black president of the American Cancer Society and asan educator at Howard University, Leffall has dedicated his career to educating both the medical profession and the lay public about cancer risks for minorities.
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