PR in Action

Want to see PR in action? I came across an interesting article about Wal-Mart’s efforts to calm a crisis situation. Apparently, a Wal-Mart technician was recording phone conversations between the company’s media relations staff and a reporter, Michael Barbaro, from the New York Times.

When news made way to Wal-Mart officials, an internal investigation took place. The technician was fired and disciplinary action was taken against two managers for “failure to carry out their management duties.” Wal-Mart then issued a release, strengthened its policies and scheduled a media conference call. In fact, when I “Googled” this incident, there were 471 articles!

The articles remained relatively neutral. Although they didn’t say anything extremely good or bad, the articles do question whether Wal-Mart has more information that they are not releasing. I’m sure the tone of the articles will change as more information is released.

According to the New York Times, The United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are also assessing the actions of the employee and others inside Wal-Mart to determine whether federal and state laws were broken, according to spokesmen for the investigators’ offices.

Wal-Mart did not say what led the technician to make the recordings or why Michael Barbaro was the target, but the employee may have had access to internal company documents. Needless to say, this situation has not been taken lightly. Do you know of any strong PR campaigns in crisis scenarios?