Do you follow Murdoch? We have been. He’s been in crisis since the closure of NOTW on July 7th2011. Now he’s on Twitter – @rupertmurdoch – 160,000+ followers and climbing; following 18.
In crisis public relations, for recovery we require 6 check-points:
- accurate self-assessment,
- accurate assessment of community expectations,
- time,
- accuracy, honesty and transparency in frequent communications,
- preparedness to eat crow, and
- patience.
What many people seem surprised at, no surprise to the Australians who have observed RM for decades, is that he says exactly what he thinks. That kind of directness seems to work well on Twitter. Below the NYT calls Murdoch’s tweeting, ‘almost cute’.
We would expect RM to have a keen understanding on community expectations (point 2 above) – afterall, that’s what tabloid journalism is all about.
Would is work for son, James?
A Glimpse of Murdoch Unbound
By DAVID CARR
Published: January 29, 2012
As American business has become more and more media savvy, its leaders have appeared in media less and less. Business reporters have to work their way past background conversations with underlings, written statements that state nothing, and that increasingly hardy perennial: the “no comment.” The modern chief executive lives behind a wall of communications operatives, many of whom ladle out slop meant to obscure rather than reveal.
But, Twitter has the potential to cut past all that clutter.
………………….
… His posts are devoid of nuance, partisan in the extreme and prone to crankiness, all consistent with the Rupert Murdoch we have come to know.
In the middle of January, when it became clear that the ill-conceived legislation to prevent piracy was going nowhere, his anguish and anger squirted out in 140-character bursts, day after day, leaving little doubt about whose ox was being gored.
He took on the president: “So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery.”
He took on Google: “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.”
And he took on movie stars: “On SOPA, where are all big film stars with many millions to lose?”
He even responded to pushback from users who suggested that people who run companies that hack phones should not give lectures about piracy:
And just in case we still weren’t sure these posts were the unadorned handiwork of somebody not used to typing or computing, there was this gem:
“Seems like universal anger with Optus from all sorts of normal supporters. Maybe backing pirates a rare miscalculation by friend Axelrod.”
He meant “Potus” — for president of the United States — and blamed the autocorrect function on his iPad for the goof, but the rest of the message was vintage Murdoch.
