Quailgate: A News Katrina

Quailgate through a pure public affairs/PR prism. No politics allowed.

This is a "News Katrina," the category-five news story. Any news reader/watcher could have seen it coming the moment the trigger was pulled.

Where could blame be found?

• the Vice-President's office
• the White House media
• the national media

For whom should we feel sympathy?

1. Harry Whittington
2. Scott McClellan
3. the Vice-President

Who's missing here?

• A vice presidential spokesman

It's not easy being a reporter working under pressure, waiting to file a story on the wire. It's not easy running a public affairs operation, serving as spokesman for major breaking national law enforcement/legal matters. Having done both I can dispassionately straddle both worlds and decide that:

1. Scott McClellan apparently was caught off-guard by the Cheney story. Go to the White House gaggle transcript and note how on more than one occasion he said that the Vice President's staff was handling the media on this one. I've heard what that feels like, being familiar with one poor PIO who turned on the TV news one day to see a major news conference by his agency on a case he had worked for weeks from which he had purposely been cut out.
2. Dick Cheney has had enough contact with reporters in his public life (even if he reviles all of them) that he knew this incident should have been announced immediately.
3. Where is the Vice President's spokesman? I Googled close to 1,000 links for "Cheney's spokesman" and 365 of those pages were revised/posted in the past year. This should have been handled by his people. Is he/she hiding? Is there one? Why was McClellan forced to be the front man? He should have played a supporting role.
4. The media may well be effete. Today it's trained not to use "a rod and reel to fish" for news but to wait in the PR/public affairs soup kitchen as news is handed out.
5. The media have a point in complaining about the delay but they doth complain too much.

I say in media relations training/lectures, and to my clients, that nothing is going to be any worse than the truth.

This news Katrina proves my point.