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Learning how to work effectively with the media is particularly difficult for lawyers for a host of reasons. The skill requires right-brain, not left-brain, thinking. It is about aberrations of the norm, not the comforts of precedent. And, it is usually required under the worst of circumstances when reporters are chasing after lawyers and their clients for something they’d rather keep private.
Yet lawyers can be great students of marketing and media. Many of them are also baseball fans. And yes, lawyers can learn a lot from the latter about how to manage the former.
In 1946, the Boston Red Sox, having finished 12 games over the second-place Detroit Tigers (and an extraordinary 17 games ahead of the hated third-place New York Yankees), were strong favorites over the St. Louis Cardinals in the upcoming World Series. That year’s fall classic, which ended in a decisive seventh game, is still vividly remembered, especially in Boston.
That World Series is worth remembering for another reason—as a lesson model for media and public relations during high-profile litigation.
Lesson One: When all the eyes are on you, your every move is magnified. Enron, Martha Stewart, WorldCom, and other crises are the stuff of communal and public discussions, just like the World Series. Any misplay may well become the misplay. Bill Buckner, playing for a more recent iteration of the ill-fated Red Sox, booted a ground ball that allowed the New York Mets to score the winning run of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series (the Mets won the decisive seventh game the next day). After a career distinguished by his fielding prowess, Buckner was immortalized for one unfortunate blunder. He was hounded out of town.
The story of the 1946 Series begins with a slightly injured Ted Williams. He was one of the greatest hitters of all time, but he had a mediocre series. Lesson Two: Companies often rely on key people to keep them out of trouble, but sometimes those folks just aren’t available.
It wasn’t obvious to the fans, but Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis was in terrible physical condition that fall—poor enough to have an impact on the outcome of the game. Lesson Three: Reporters and even regulators draw conclusions based on partial knowledge. Exculpatory factors that are obvious to industry experts may never see the light of day or be taken seriously even if they do.
Dom DiMaggio, Joe’s slightly lessskilled brother, was a spectacular fielder for the Red Sox in 1946. So were second baseman Bobby Doerr and shortstop Johnny Pesky. Lesson Four: Greatness gets taken for granted and, the better you are, the more conspicuous and unforgivable are your lapses—and the more likely you will become a media target.
For the seventh and deciding game in 1946, the country’s attention was glued to the radio and wire reports (television would not cover the World Series until the following year). That’s when the boys of summer delivered their most pointed lessons for crisis and media managers.
Late in the decisive game, down two runs, with two outs, Dom DiMaggio hit a double, driving in two runs and tying the game. Rounding second base, he pulled a hamstring and was forced to come out of the game. Up next, Ted Williams made the third out; the inning ended with the teams still tied.
Leon Culberson, a holdover World War II stand-in player, replaced DiMaggio in center field. No student of the game, he missed Dom’s frantic signals from the dugout to shade toward left center. Sure enough, after Cardinal great Enos (“Country”) Slaughter singled, Harry Walker hit the ball exactly where DiMaggio had wanted Culberson to be positioned. By the time Culberson got the ball back to Johnny Pesky at short, Slaughter was rounding third and heading home.
Then came the immortal moment. Pesky held the ball for a split second as he eyed Walker on the right side of the infield. As the world saw it, Pesky’s “hesitation” allowed old Enos to score what would prove to be the winning run in the 1946 World Series.
So there you have it, the right man in the right place at the wrong time on a mangled field that slowed response time. Pesky swears until this day that he didn’t hold the ball, that Slaughter would have scored anyway (an assessment that players from both teams agreed to), but no matter. After a distinguished career, Johnny Pesky was the media’s goat.
There was no instant replay to review the play. As lawyers, you may want to remind your clients that there is seldom an instant replay in the court of public opinion and that, in a world ruled by perception, extenuating circumstances don’t always extenuate. In real life, no one cares about the facts.
There are nine players and nine innings in baseball. So why not nine rules for dealing with the media during your own high-profile crises?
Rule 1. Just like the fall classic, periodically every industry—today it is food, chemicals, and, now, corporate accounting, among others—becomes the media focus. The whole world is watching.
Rule 2. Your audience largely does not understand the intricacies of your client’s industry. The defense that your client followed “generally accepted accounting principles” has no meaning to lay audiences. They don’t watch sausage being made and they’re not interested in excusing the unsavory detailed realities.
Rule 3. “Smoking guns” prove guilt. They don’t prove innocence. You need to craft a single message (e.g., “I am not a potted plant”) that will clearly communicate your position in terms understandable to lay audiences. If it’s all Leon Culberson’s fault, you may have to say so, or find someone else who can.
Rule 4. Your audience is not interested in the facts. They make their decisions based on whom they like or relate to. Slicing cabbage angrily on national television makes Martha Stewart look like a “bad actor.” That’s all audiences need to make a decision.
Rule 5. In every high-profile crisis, someone has to take the blame. If your client is positioned in the bad actress role, you need to find third parties who are liked and trusted to speak on her behalf and help build back her credibility. The first phase is to get audiences to think, “Maybe she’s not such a bad person.”
Rule 6. Uncorrected public allegations become “truth” and in time take on the power of myth. If you do not want a “truth” to stand, you must introduce an alternative, believable position, or manage to have someone else do it, such as a sympathetic reporter or editorial board. Had someone immediately defended Johnny Pesky, an alternative myth might have replaced the unfortunate and untrue rendition.
Rule 7. Popular “wisdom” will overpower the beliefs of even those who know better. Opinions have momentum. It’s hard to proclaim minority alternatives.
Rule 8. Patience. All media messages take time to infiltrate your target audience. If you are trying to change minds, you need to give people a chance to forget, and to learn an alternate version of history.
Rule 9. It is natural to hide from the media when things are bad. But do not stay away for too long. Most lawyers who have had one bad experience are permanently deterred, and that just makes matters worse. Where there are no relationships with reporters, there’s no fund of goodwill to draw on when a crisis begins.
Spend your time with reporters on the easy stuff—the big wins—and brief them on issues background during informal lunches so they can better grasp complicated matters. You will help make them a supportive resource for you in the future when the high-profile, and more problematic, case comes along.
By the way, Enos Slaughter later said that, had Dom DiMaggio been in center, he would never have tried to score. A truth lost to history.
Richard S. Levick, rlevick@levick.com, is President of Levick Strategic Communications, which has directed and handled the media for more than 150 law firms worldwide on the highest profile matters. DRI members will be receiving a complimentary copy in the mail of Mr. Levick’s forthcoming book, Stop the Presses: The Litigation PR Desk Reference.
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