By Steve Adubato, PhD
This past week’s controversy surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting his friend Harry Whittington while hunting provides numerous lessons on how NOT to communicate when things go wrong.
Some will say the incident doesn’t warrant this kind of media attention. Two things to consider. First, it’s not really the shooting incident itself that is so significant, even though we all hope Mr. Whittington makes a quick and full recovery. Second, it is the way Dick Cheney and his communication advisors mishandled the situation that made it front page news and the talk of the airwaves.
It took a full day for anyone connected with the hunting party to communicate with the local newspaper in Texas that the incident had happened. What’s worse is that the person delivering the news was Katharine Armstrong, a private citizen who was with the Cheney party and on whose land the incident took place.
To make matters worse, some of the initial communication implied that somehow Mr. Whittington was at fault because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. It is surprising that an experienced leader like Dick Cheney would handle this situation so poorly. Some questions that must be addressed.
Q: The Vice President says his primary concern was over the condition of Mr. Whittington, not how quickly the information about the incident was communicated. Isn’t that a fair argument?
A: Not really. The two are not mutually exclusive. The vice president was clearly affected by the shooting, as we saw in his first public interview on the FOX News Channel. However, this doesn’t absolve the vice president or some other high level White House official from the responsibility of releasing this information to a national news organization like the Associated Press.
Q: But in that interview on FOX, the vice president said he had no regrets about how the incident was reported. Given all the criticism he has received, why doesn’t the vice president seem to understand?
A: It seems Mr. Cheney has a very different perception of how and when to communicate around sensitive matters or how to communicate “bad news.” Mr. Cheney’s communication paradigm is not unlike many other top level executives. They don’t like being challenged or criticized. However, once you are in that position, it goes with the territory.
Q: So, how should the vice president have handled this incident?
A: Monday morning quarterbacking is easy,
but “communication 101” teaches us that when an incident occurs, immediate and accurate information is essential. The vice president himself should have called the White House communications team and had them inform the media. He should have then held a press conference either late Saturday evening when the incident occurred or early Sunday morning. He could have shared the basic facts around the shooting and then answered any and all questions. He could have expressed his concern for Mr. Whittington and stated that the incident was in no way the victim’s fault. Ironically, some in Cheney’s party implied that it might have been. However, the vice president later rebutted by saying, “I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend…it was not Harry’s fault.”
Q: But if the vice president took responsibility for the shooting, isn’t that enough?
A: No, because it took him four days to finally make that statement on FOX and many perceive that he did it only because of the criticism he received. There was no reason he couldn’t have said that same thing on Saturday night or Sunday the latest. If he had, there is a good chance this column and others written about the incident would never have been necessary.