To Lie or Not to Lie — That is Not the Question

Posted: January 26th, 2010 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off

AOL — you’ve been a bad monkey. Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch was mighty peeved to learn he reported inaccurate information last week, when writing about AOL’s CTO, Ted Cahall, leaving the company. The short version is this: Erick heard a rumor about Cahall leaving and asked the Executive VP of Communications, Tricia Primerose Wallace to confirm or deny the accuracy of this rumor. She denied. Ten days later she sent an email to Erick stating that per their earlier conversation, she found out that Cahall was in fact leaving and wanted to tell Erick “immediately” so he could correct his story (or write a new one as it were).

Erick was miffed enough by this to write a post on TechCrunch calling out Tricia as a liar. Gives me the ickies all over.

Here are the truths of this situation, that we know of:

  1. Someone at AOL lied to TechCrunch.
  2. It’s never okay to lie to the press.
  3. Tricia Primerose Wallce has been humiliated and her career has undoubtedly been damaged profoundly.

Maybe she did lie. But always being one to give people the benefit of the doubt (stop laughing Julia) I would like to believe it’s a possibility that Tricia was originally given false information that she did correct as soon as she knew otherwise. Having dealt with probably every embarrassing PR situation in the book, I’ve experienced more than one time an executive or business owner giving the PR team false information that was then called out by the reporter who it was given too. Businesses large and small hear this: you are doing no one any favors by not giving your communication representative the whole story. PR is not about “spin” (have I mentioned how much I hate that word?) it’s about providing information that is meant to educate, inform, and in many cases, promote. But in all cases, it SHOULD BE honest. And yes, I’ve seen this happen at public companies by well meaning executives who actually thought they were doing the company a favor. Ick, ick, ick.

Now, Tricia had the option not to respond to Erick when he initially asked her to confirm or deny. But if she really was under the impression that the rumor of Cahall leaving was in fact, a false rumor, then it was her obligation as a communication executive to correct that. In which case, she took the right action. I have to believe that a woman in her level of position didn’t get there without knowing how to do her job (as women generally don’t get to those kinds of positions unless they prove themselves 100 times over).

It’s a shame TechCrunch was lied to, by a major public company no less. It’s a shame this woman’s career is probably in the toilet. It would be a bigger shame if none of us learned something from this.


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