thebiglead.com is an Internet site that has been very critical of the television station ESPN. Recently an ESPN radio personality, Colin Cowherd, encouraged his listeners to flood this site with hits in an attempt to shut the site down. He was successful. After this first attempt's success, he encouraged his listeners to do it again, mainly just for fun. ESPN's original statement regarding the incident was a typical PR move. It had no real sense of compassion or interest in what actually happened just a blanket statement apology and a promise that it would "never happen again." ESPN's ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, was not satisfied with this response and went to Traug Keller, senior vice president of ESPN radio, for a clearer indication as to how ESPN was going to handle the situation. Keller was more than happy to give a statement of remorse and also explained that this type of behavior was not mentioned in their policies since it had never happened before. ESPN does not tolerate the use of their airwaves for personal attacks on websites and will be doing everything they can to prevent this type of behavior in the future. I was impressed with the fact that Keller had such a quick response to Schreiber's questions. I just wonder why the intial reaction from ESPN's communication's team was not as thorough when then first occured. My question is, is PR just getting lazy these days? It seems like many companies just have a blanket statement apology when an incident occurs and do not elaborate on the situation at hand. I think as future PR professionals we need to take these types of events into account. Click the link below for the full story.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=schreiber_leanne&id=2830113
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