By Kate Connors,

Senior Account Manager & Social Media Strategist at Media & Communications Strategies

It is hard to forget the media frenzy and public sympathy that occurred after it was revealed that Foxconn Technology Group had an alarming number of suicide attempts and tragic deaths amongst their Chinese workforce. But what was even harder to forget? CEO Terry Gou’s response to the news, which was to blame personal problems amongst employees and ignore any potential work complications. Gou had a chance to be a hero. He could have started an investigation of employee conditions, offered to have a psychologist on staff for a period following the deaths, or hosted work/life balance seminars. As PR professionals, it is our job to advise our clients when to take the fall and when to offer no comment. And most communications professionals would agree that playing the blame game is never the right answer.

How Blaming Others for a Personal or Company Communications Crisis Can Backfire

Rule number one of communicating during a crisis: If there is any reasonable doubt about whether you or your company is to blame for a situation, you should never bring someone else down to try and bring yourself up. History teaches us that this trick has never worked with these three classic examples:

1) “What the hell did we do to deserve this?” –BP’s CEO Tony Hayward, speaking to fellow executives in London about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

Tony Hayward made a lot of mistakes when it came to handling the BP oil spill crisis, but his biggest one was trying to place the blame on someone else. In the beginning of the crisis, Hayward tried to push the blame off of BP by pointing out that the oil rig was actually owned by Transocean, and BP was only leasing it from the company. He pointed out that most of the people working on the rig were Transocean people. People do not want to engage in a “blame game” in light of tragedy and death; they want all parties to take responsibility and work to fix it. Being the bigger person/corporation and taking on responsibility will ultimately help your public image more in the future and help you rebrand yourself after a PR disaster.

2) Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter Response to Obamacare

Papa John may be the face of pizza, but after he threatened to cut workers hours and raise the cost of pizza to offset the company’s cost of Obamacare, there were a lot of people who wanted to throw a pizza in his face.  The biggest issue here? Papa John’s had just surpassed the numbers from a year ago by 25 percent.  When brands offer mixed messaging about how they are doing overall as a corporation, it leads to consumer mistrust.

3) “Everybody knows that I have tougher ethics rules than any other previous President.” — Bill Clinton

If you were born before 1990, you probably remember Bill Clinton and his love scandal with Monica Lewinsky. Regardless of whether you love him or hate him, most would agree that the above quote would only come back to haunt him. Alleging that he has tougher ethics than any previous President is a pretty steep claim, one which is pretty hard to back up and justify. Bill would have been better saying that he built his ethical rules on the lessons learned from past presidents.

I know some individuals are going to argue “any press is good press.” In our business at Media & Communications Strategies, that isn’t the case. The best thing you can do is take responsibility when appropriate and offer to investigate cloudier situations. The worst thing you can do? Blame someone else for your mistake.

About Media & Communications Strategies, Inc:

Media & Communications Strategies, Inc. handles all kinds of critical public relations for US and international clients out of our Washington, D.C. office. We are a founding member of the Public Relations Boutiques International network for constant, far-reaching support. High profile crisis communications is one niche talent, reputation management in all kinds of media is our core expertise and client satisfaction is our specialty.