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PR Fuel: Walking Away (and Waiting)I wanted to fire off a lengthy response explaining my position and knocking down the arguments of a journalist. My boss told me just to let it go."Ignore him, or send him an email saying, 'Good luck with your future endeavors,'" my boss told me. Advice taken. Short email sent. I won't get into the specifics, but I received a very strange phone call from a journalist today. The voicemail was laced with hints of blackmail and future slander. Issues totally unrelated to the problem at hand were brought up as if they were some big secret. Cool and calm, the journalist was sincere, threatening, filled with an inflated sense of self-importance and, sometimes, downright strange. He levied accusations but talked about how he enjoyed working me. The voicemail message and the ensuing email I sent ended a three-week trial of my patience. At times I tried to ignore the matter and at times I got so frustrated that I wanted to call the journalist to tell him off. He complained about our "disagreement" to a mutual professional contact and at times basically pleaded his case to me. I honestly don't know what the end result will be. Will the journalist let the issue rest? Will he make good on his threats? Will this thing come back and bite me in the butt at some point? I just don't know. What I do know is that this journalist has the power to reach a wider audience than I can reach. He gets the first shot, if he wants to take it, in a public war. He has the credibility because he has the by-line and the major media outlet backing. What do I have besides a copy of his voicemail message? Oh, right. I have him "on tape" making threats. I guess I have the upper hand. I realize that I'm being vague, but there is no upside associated with revealing who this journalist is or who he works for. What I wanted to do, however, was make people aware of how a relationship between a journalist and a public relations person can degenerate into something potentially dangerous: the threat-maker and the threatened. As a journalist, I was threatened more than once by a public relations person. I never took those threats seriously, and neither do most journalists. You get accustomed to upsetting people and hearing them tell you, "I'm going to call your editor and get you fired." In fact, a police officer friend and I had a running joke where we tallied up how many times each month someone threatened to get us terminated for just doing our jobs. (He usually won.) I don't, however, know if I've ever really been threatened while doing public relations work. The biggest threat that I can recall a journalist levying at me is that he wouldn't cover the news I wanted him to. That's not really a threat, just a fact of being in the PR business. In this case, the journalist is actually threatening to ruin our reputation because he's unhappy that I decided not to give him something for free. (Imagine a consumer electronics manufacturer not wanting to give a journalist a review product and you'll get the idea.) It's really a no-win situation for me at this point, unless the journalist continues to push the issue. I don't gain anything from giving into the journalist's demands because it's not in the best interests of my company. I also don't gain anything by trying to embarrass this journalist or get him fired. If he wants to be a jerk, so be it. I'm sure his bosses already know. At this point, it's best if I just walk away. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. ___ Speaking of my company's PR efforts, one of my co-workers made a very important decision today. He has decided to wait several weeks before launching a grassroots campaign. "There are some tweaks and things I want to get done before we go out and try to drum up some exposure," he told me. "I'd rather just wait." It was so refreshing to hear this, especially from someone who does not have any PR experience and who was very excited about launching a campaign. My co-worker obviously understands that there is no point in launching a PR campaign if you don't feel that the product is "ready for prime time." It's a lesson many people need to learn.
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