Well this BP oil spill and themanagement of the crisis is going to be fast-tracked into all university business management and communications courses across the country. Since my last post on the initial handling of the situation, BP has gone from bad to worse and mainly due to them trying to cover up a gun shot wound with a band-aid. They started out ok but as more and more information came out… well we all know how it’s been going. There are articles/blogs being posted everywhere about what should be getting done and what BP needs to do next – But hey, today they’re putting $20 Billion into a savings account! I hope they don’t get charged with monthly fees…

Onto the reason of my post. I just read the CNN teaser taking a look at the BP PR strategy after an oil blast back in 2005 in Texas. Campbell Brown is doing an in-depth piece this Thursday on it – but there are some documents out there today that caught my attention. The main one is an email from BP PR exec Patricia Wright to some fellow colleagues immediately following the blast. Here’s a piece of it:

“Looks like injuries and loss of life are heavy. Expect a lot of follow up coverage tomorrow. Then I believe it will essentially go away — due to the holiday weekend,” BP America public relations chief Patricia Wright advised other executives.

Wright added, “This is a very big story in the U.S. right now — but the Terry Schiavo story is huge as well.”

My question is this: Isn’t it  your PR teams job to let you know what the situation is and what the possibility is for positive, negative or no coverage at all? Communications professionals aren’t always working with the good news – there are days like this (on this scale, I hope not) when you need to respond and put some recommendations together to negative and in this case, tragic circumstances.

Now I am not privy to all of the documents referenced here, but in the information that is available, I don’t think Ms. Wright did a lot wrong. She was up front with her executive team, she let them know what to expect, she set a timeframe and also gave a lay of the land in terms of national news. What else could either highlight or push this catastrophe back.

Do you want your PR team (both external and internal) to be honest with you? Do you want their recommendations on how to deal with the positive and negative news put in front of you? In today’s age of citizen-journalism, don’t you need to have all the information and recommendations from all sides of the room? Your thoughts? What do you exepect from your communications team?