By Steve Adubato, PhD

Public relations mishaps and communication crises can happen any time, any where. Just ask Plaxico Burress, the Giants and NY Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. By now the entire world knows that Burress was hanging out at the wrong place at the wrong time. You all know the story by now.

Burress himself is doing virtually no communicating in public, but rather is talking through his lawyer Benjamin Brafman who is terrific at getting his clients out of legal problems, but doesn’t really understand a whole lot about public communication. What most lawyers don’t understand is that the court of law is not the same as the court of public opinion.

Look, mistakes happen. We all screw up and do stupid things. But when it comes to a crisis, it is rarely the initial mistake or "crime" that presents the biggest problem. It’s how you deal with it and, as Richard Nixon taught us 35 years ago during Watergate, the "cover up is ALWAYS worse than the crime." The Catholic Church learned this in the pedophilia scandal involving priests molesting little boys. Don Imus learned it when he said something stupid about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team and then refused to apologize immediately.

That’s the way PR mishaps and crises play out. The goal is to minimize the damage as quickly as possible and there are only a few ways of doing that. First, you must take full responsibility for your actions. No excuses, no caveats, no scapegoating of anyone else. Second, you must immediately personally apologize (not through your lawyer or spokesperson) to the people who have been hurt by your actions.

Next, you must communicate in public and answer all the tough questions on people’s minds. Your lawyer may tell you this is dangerous legally, but what lawyers don’t get is that if you lose your public reputation, but get a few months off your prison term, in many cases sometimes you cannot get your reputation back.

Simply put, Plaxico Burress shot himself by accident. It might have been avoided, but then again, maybe not. But he didn’t have to stick his foot all the way down his mouth and seal his fate in the minds of millions. The communication game is not the same as mastering the x’s and o’s on a football field or engaging in legalize. Burress clearly knows how to catch a pass and run down the field, but he knows nothing about what to do when he fumbles in public. Clearly he is not alone. The question is, what can the rest of us learn from his situation, because anyone at any time can face a PR problem or potential communication crisis.