Crisis Communications

We've all at one point gotten ourselves into an unfavorable situation that places our reputation at stake. Corporations being no exclusion to these situations need to act abruptly in order to get their businesses running smoothly again. For News Corporation, this crisis was the phone-tapping scandal.

The phone-tapping scandal included 91 victims whom privacy was breached in order to receive leads on stories for British publications that News Corp. acquires. Included in the phone tap were film star Sienna Miller, former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, and football commentator Andy Gray.  The scandal came into the public eye when the UK government considering approval for News Corp to buy the remaining portion of BskyB, a UK satellite network, that News Corp did not already own. 

News Corp'.'s C.E.O. Rupert Murdoch, addressed the issue ASAP, via a press release which denied any involvement in the scandal. Denial also was Murdoch's answer in interviews such as at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho stating, “If that had happened, I would know about it," said Murdoch. Yet his other spokespeople failed to comment when asked such as Alice MacAndrew, the spokeswoman for the International unit. The lack of cooperation between these employees shows the pushmi-pullyu symdrome, of sending mixed signals, at play. 

In fact, the company apologized and offered to pay damages to victims of the practice the same day they denied any dealings with the phone-tapping, which lead many people to suspicion. Rupert Murdoch's son, James Murdoch, who runs News Corp.’s European and Asian operations stated, “It’s how newspapers work," but who also then went on to pay $1.1million to a victim of the phone tapping by the News of the World. It is good that News Corp is taking responsibility for this situation, but if they had nothing to do with it why are they paying all the damages? Either way it's a loss for the company so the next step for the News Corp crisis team was to say that nothing has changed, and they did.

In the end, News Corp said they were not hurt as,  “The interesting thing about a reputation crisis is actually the business is doing really well...It shows what we were able to do is really put this problem into a box" said C.E.O. Rupert Murdoch. Thus with this reinforcement, the media and public can move on from the phone-tapping mishap and on to another sensationalized crisis for the moment being.