The Old Founder Who Allowed the Media to Destroy Him

I met an old founder who allowed the media to des­troy him.

Many years ago, I got an email about a com­pany in a severe crisis. The email was sent from a wor­ried and con­cerned fam­ily mem­ber to the founder and act­ing CEO. 

I knew about the com­pany since the crisis had been plastered all over the news for a few days. I remem­ber read­ing the news­pa­pers, think­ing that “this com­pany is neck-deep in crap.”

So, I called the old founder up. He was an older man who star­ted young and built the com­pany from the ground up. He seemed very con­fid­ent and not startled by the com­mo­tion around his com­pany; how­ever, he felt he could use pro­fes­sion­al help to man­age the media storm. 

A PR col­league and I jumped on a plane. 

I was feel­ing a bit uneasy about the whole thing. I help organ­isa­tions com­mu­nic­ate bet­ter for a liv­ing, and that’s a good reas­on to get up in the morning …

… but would this be a case of help­ing evil forces evade what’s right­fully com­ing to them? 

According to the media reports, people’s lives had been at risk to save money and increase profits. And the old founder seemed dir­ectly implic­ated. But the old founder had­n’t offered any com­ments, des­pite being chased by numer­ous journalists.

I thought about all the defence attor­neys of the world:

Everyone, even the bad guys, has the right to a sol­id leg­al defence. And we’re all bet­ter off for it because it safe­guards our leg­al sys­tem and democracy.

Is every­one entitled to a rhet­or­ic­al defence in the spir­it of free speech and open­ness? I thought of myself as a defence attor­ney not in the court of law but in the court of pub­lic opin­ion. It was a romantic idea to make me feel a little bit easier.

Admittedly, I was also excited. Crisis com­mu­nic­a­tions as a PR prac­tice can be thrill­ing and emo­tion­ally powerful.

We arrived at the old founder­’s home, and the fam­ily mem­ber who had sent me the email led us upstairs to a make­shift con­fer­ence room. The old founder was a no-non­sense man; he asked us to lay out our plan for man­aging the crisis.

Perhaps I had hoped for a cof­fee first, but as a seni­or adviser, I know when to get down to busi­ness and dis­pense with small talk.

“First,” I said, “we must get the facts and estab­lish trust in our small group.”

The old founder seemed to appre­ci­ate my open­er, so I kept going.

“Then, based on facts, we must devel­op a nar­rat­ive that works for us. And with­in that nar­rat­ive, we must find a lead. Change the lead, change the story.”

I con­tin­ued: “We will also bring onboard leg­al coun­sel. If there’s any respons­ib­il­ity to be taken, we must pub­licly get out in front of the issue. This will include speak­ing with the media as soon as pos­sible. It’ll likely be a good oppor­tun­ity to empath­ise and acknow­ledge any pain and suf­fer­ing — even if we can­not acknow­ledge any leg­al respons­ib­il­ity. In any case, we will make sure that you are prepared.”

The old founder was still calm and col­lec­ted. I added:

“When the silence is broken, we’ll need to push for a par­al­lel intern­al pro­cess in which your com­pany takes a series of actions. Breaking the silence and speak­ing with the media will be tough, but speak­ing alone won’t be enough. We must demon­strate that your com­pany is also doing some­thing because of what’s happened. Actions speak louder than words.”

I felt that I had the floor, so I pressed forward:

“With the silence broken and your com­pany tak­ing action, our focus will be to ride the wave and make sol­id tac­tic­al decisions based on sound judge­ment and con­stant media mon­it­or­ing. It’ll be tough, but you’ll ride out the worst storm by being pub­licly avail­able and accom­mod­at­ing. Once out of the imme­di­ate storm, we begin restor­ing the brand’s trust.”

The old founder gathered that I was about done, so he cleared his throat and got ready to say some­thing, only to be inter­rup­ted by the par­ti­cip­at­ing fam­ily member:

She was upset.
And she went on to explain what had happened.

As it turned out, the old founder was­n’t guilty of malice. It was an employ­ee who had broken the rules by mis­take. Not for per­son­al profit or gain, just a mis­take. It could be eas­ily proven, too. The employ­ee had been loy­al for dec­ades, with only months to retire.

However, the news media had already gone two- or even three full circles, rip­ping the brand and the old founder to shreds. In the eyes of every­one read­ing a news­pa­per, the old founder was guilty.

I quickly glanced over at my PR col­league, and I’m sure her thoughts were roughly the same as mine. In my head, it soun­ded some­thing like this:

“So, we present evid­ence of the mis­take and dis­proof any alleg­a­tions of malice or undue prof­it­eer­ing; that’s our new lead. We apo­lo­gise and com­pensate those affected, and we fire the employ­ee. We estab­lish new pro­to­cols to ensure the same mis­take can nev­er hap­pen again. And then we take it from there.”

But the old founder, almost as if he was able to read my mind, finally spoke:

“No,” he said.

The employ­ee who had made a mis­take was one of the com­pany’s first employ­ees. The old founder refused to hang this loy­al cowork­er out to dry, espe­cially with only a few months to retirement.

“The neg­at­ive media would crush him and his fam­ily,” he said. 

“But I… I can take it.”

And take it, he did. New secur­ity pro­to­cols were imple­men­ted to ensure that such mis­takes could nev­er hap­pen again. Affected parties were hand­somely com­pensated. And dur­ing all this, the old founder took full respons­ib­il­ity, apo­lo­gised, and retired. He left his com­pany to young­er fam­ily members. 

And the employ­ee who made a mis­take got to retire with a large cel­eb­ra­tion and a happy family.

The incid­ent was dis­cussed in the news media for quite some time after­wards. And every­one was sure that the own­er was an evil older man — even later when the old founder was freed from leg­al charges.

Maybe the old founder made the right decision. Maybe he did­n’t. Who knows? It was his decision, not any­one else’s. Ultimately, he took the blame and shame into retire­ment and allowed a new gen­er­a­tion to start anew.

For a couple of months, my PR col­league and I did what we could to accom­mod­ate the old founder­’s dir­ec­tions. And that’s that.

So, why am I telling you this story?

When a media story is based on what people have told journ­al­ists, you can nev­er be 100% sure that what you’re being told is what truly happened. Some accounts are nev­er challenged.

We would all bene­fit from remem­ber­ing that there’s a real­ity behind and bey­ond the repor­ted media nar­rat­ive. Not all those por­trayed as dev­ils are evil. And not all those por­trayed as saints are good.

PR Resource: The Public Apology

The Public Apology

A pub­lic apo­logy is, by nature, an ambigu­ous state­ment; it ranges from sub­missive remorse to a che­va­lier­’s trope of humbly express­ing that the out­come was all that one could muster — des­pite best efforts.

“Public apo­lo­gies func­tion as ritu­al­ist­ic pub­lic pun­ish­ment and humi­li­ation, rather than for­give­ness, to enforce eth­ic­al stand­ards for pub­lic speech.”
Source: Rhetoric Society Quarterly ¹Ellwanger, A. (2012). Apology as Metanoic Performance: Punitive Rhetoric and Public Speech. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 42, 307 — 329. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​8​0​/​0​2​7​7​3​9​4​5​.​2​0​1​2​.​7​0​4​118

The audi­ence will not con­sider any­one’s pub­lic apo­logy until they under­stand why someone did what they did and how they feel about doing it. This ambi­gu­ity is why say­ing, “I apo­lo­gise” is nev­er enough — you must also express regret and explain yourself.

Anatomy of an Apology

Types of Public Apologies

There are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of apo­lo­gies to avoid. Unfortunately, as far as pub­lic apo­lo­gies go, these types of pub­lic apo­lo­gies are widely used — often with dev­ast­at­ing PR consequences.

From a PR per­spect­ive, I recom­mend only one type of apology:

Moving Into the Next Stage

Apart from an hon­est deliv­ery, this is what a wrong­do­er must under­stand about the stra­tegic use of a pub­lic apo­logy as a stra­tegic tool:

Public apo­lo­gies are not a meth­od of obtain­ing abso­lu­tion or mit­ig­at­ing the loss of pub­lic trust. Forgiveness and trust must be earned sep­ar­ately and in the long term.

A pub­lic apo­logy is a tool to allow the media nar­rat­ive to move into the next stage soon­er rather than later — whatever that stage might hold in store for the wrongdoer.

Learn more: The Public Apology

PR Resource: Perception Management

Walter Lippmann and Perception Management

In his sem­in­al work Public Opinion (1922), Walter Lippmann laid the intel­lec­tu­al ground­work for the idea that per­cep­tion and real­ity are not the same — a core prin­ciple of mod­ern per­cep­tion man­age­ment. ²Lippmann, Walter. 1960. Public Opinion (1922). New York: Macmillan.

Lippmann argued that:

Lippmann’s ideas res­on­ate deeply with per­cep­tion man­age­ment in pub­lic relations.

“We are all cap­tives of the pic­ture in our head — our belief that the world we have exper­i­enced is the world that really exists.”
— Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974)

On Creating Pseudo-Environments

Lippmann coined the term “pseudo-envir­on­ment,” which describes the filtered, biased, and often arti­fi­cial ver­sion of real­ity presen­ted by the media. He warned that influ­en­tial elites could exploit this man­u­fac­tured real­ity to manip­u­late pub­lic thought and behaviour.

Lippmann was scep­tic­al about the public’s abil­ity to dis­cern real­ity from the pseudo-envir­on­ment, which raises eth­ic­al concerns:

Perception man­age­ment is not inher­ently sin­is­ter, but as Lippmann warned, it places immense power in the hands of those con­trolling the narrative. 

In essence, per­cep­tion man­age­ment is the applied PR ver­sion of Lippmann’s media cri­tique. It acknow­ledges that facts alone do not win pub­lic trust—prim­ing, fram­ing, storytelling, and emo­tion­al appeal do.

Learn more: Perception Management