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Industry News  Crisis Management How to handle bad news: Deal with it |
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How to handle bad news: Deal with it
Print - FPinfomart - MCT Regional News - Tuesday March 4th, 2008
Mar. 3--A Chino slaughterhouse followed the basic rules of media crisis management after allegations of mistreatment of animals at its facility became public, according to several local public relations officials.
Officials with Westland Meat Co. and Hallmark Meat Packing expressed remorse, fired the employees involved and promised to take immediate action to ensure such acts would never recur.
Westland Meat faced an onslaught of negative publicity after a videotape taken at the plant by an undercover Humane Society agent surfaced in January. The tape showed two workers forcing sick or injured cows to stand so they could be slaughtered. Such cows are not allowed in the food supply to protect against mad cow disease and other contagious ailments.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered Westland Meat to recall 143 million pounds of beef amid fears it might have sold diseased meat to retailers and the U.S. government.
Closed since Feb. 14, Westland Meat laid off its estimated 250 employees, though its ultimate fate remained unknown late last week.
The company can reopen as soon as it presents a plan to the Agriculture Department describing how it will prevent further abuses, department spokeswoman Amanda Eamich said.
But Westland Meat will need to file for bankruptcy and close if it must pay restitution to its customers for two years worth of beef, the length of time the Agriculture Department believes animals were abused there, Vice President Anthony Magidow said Feb. 20.
Any business faced with bad publicity similar to the Westland Meat case must make sure it "stays ahead of the story" and maintains some control of the flow of damaging information, said Louis Desmond, president of Desmond-McLeish Inc. in Yucaipa, a public relations firm.
"The rules for crisis management in a scandal are simple: Gather all of the negative news you can find and then release it yourself immediately," Desmond said. "Then you have to put together a corrective plan that explains why whatever went wrong will never happen again. That gets you out ahead of the story."
Any damage-control campaign in the media requires people to do things they don't want to do, said Desmond, who has advised several clients on dealing with bad publicity.
"The problem is that you're asking people to do things that go completely against their instincts, which is to release bad information about themselves, but they don't have any choice. Otherwise, new details come out all the time and that keeps the story alive. Then you have Abu Ghraib."
Between 2001 and 2004, Desmond helped the Dave & Buster's restaurant chain deal with a racial profiling dispute that stemmed from the company's ban on patrons wearing sweatpants in its restaurants.
"We had to explain that it wasn't about race," he said. "It was the dress code. You couldn't wear sweatpants and get in. Race had nothing to do with it."
A company facing the volume of negative national and international publicity that Westland Meat has faced might need to change its name to remain in business, said Scott Kiner, chief executive officer of Kiner Communications in Palm Desert.
Like Desmond, Kiner followed news accounts of Westland Meat but has not advised the company.
"I think they would probably want to sell their assets and start over with a new name," Kiner said. "Then invite everyone, the media and government officials, into their new facility and show everyone how those things will never happen again. It would take time, maybe a couple of years, to get that done. But I think their brand has been irreparably damaged."
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