Video killed the radio star - block it, don't rock-it!

In another example of the "gift" that keeps on giving, we continue to hear more detail and back story to the CBC's own version of video killed the radio star - yep, natch, we are talking about the Jian Ghomeshi scandal which rocked the CBC nation severely in recent times. In fact, one reason why the story remains top-of-mind is that the CBC themselves keep it there, via their silence on the internal investigation ongoing, their lack of a replacement for the disgraced host, and by now removing all traces of him from their brand by pulling archive videos of his interviews. 

One could argue for ages whether those interviews (as interesting as some of them were) should remain online or not, but we don't have time to get into that. The guy was a pretty good interviewer, even though with time it began to become terribly self-congratulatory and evidently self-indulgent, with he himself preening like a peacock who had just rocked it. As much as many would now rather block-it, not rock-it, well, a new story involving none other than rock-tt (promotions) got our attention today. 

If you recall, this was one of several rats-off-the-sinking-ship agencies who after staunchly standing by their man in the early days of the media explosion, then turned around and disowned him totally, by dropping him like a lead zeppelin. Business as usual probably for such agencies that feed off the lifeblood of the fatted star calf - once the fame or the money or the marrow has all been sucked away, well, it's time to walk away. It's business, not friendship, even if rock-it head honcho Debra Goldblatt-Sadowski made it sound that way:

"I stand with massive solidarity by my client and dear friend @jianghomeshi. His courage is remarkable and admirable." 

That comment was posted on October 26th and yet he was history at the agency by October 31st - now that is one telling turnaround! From using terms like "remarkable" and even "admirable" about him, her "massive solidarity" suddenly turned into total disassociation in mere days. Of course, she probably knew more about what had gone on than we did, but the situation had been converted from a PR challenge to save his ass into one where Ms. Sadowski's agency had to try to save its own ass, because her credibility had taken one big tumble over her Twitter post above. 

It sounds like she could have used a PR firm to guide her own PR firm on how she should have handled the PR forest fire instigated by one of her top clients, and rock-it surely did not come across as anywhere near sophisticated enough to deal with the Ghomeshi file, in the end. And business is business after all, so they bailed on him for the same reason they reeled him in, in the first place - money! Previously he was in a position to make them money, so they engaged him, and then he was in a position to hemorrhage money, so they dumped him. It's not personal, it's business, they say, even when it involves a "dear friend". 

Rock-it dropped him with a minimum of fuss with zero media splash, and you can be pretty certain that Debra G hoped she would never hear his name or be asked about him again. But a new piece in the becoming-legendary Toronto Star (thanks to Jesse Brown!) has brought the mess back to rock-it's doors: 

"How Ghomeshi's publicist worked to shut down Toronto Life story".

In what is clearly perhaps only half as bad as it looks, the Star implies that Ms. Sadowski went out of her way to block a commissioned story about various girls that had dated #JG, due to the fact that the former radio star was far from happy about it. So like all self-indulged narcissistic minor celebrity little boys, he had gone to mommy to cry and complain, and then Ms. Sadowski got to work on killing the story, apparently. 

“We feel this is a really unfair and absurd piece” she said in the summer of 2013. In return for the story being buried, the Star reports that she offered full access to the former star for a more elaborate story - but not one that included what his proclivities might have been at the dining table or especially in the bedroom. It was the publicist equivalent of a gag order, but what is not clear is just how much rock-it understood about why #JG was so nervous about the original story. It can be viewed simply as a PR firm doing its job, or as someone desperately trying to cover up the sins of their "dear friend", depending on how cynical you are. 

For sure, if Debs had heard the rumours freely circulating around Toronto media circles about his boudoir "idiosyncracies", and one can only imagine that she had, then any move to gag Toronto Life reflects a darker underbelly. When the paper asked Goldblatt-Sadowski recently if she had tried to evaporate the story about ex-girlfriends in exchange for offering access for another type of piece, Goldblatt-Sadowski said by email:

“Yes - and what’s your point? I did my job."

Someone really should talk to her about doing her own PR with the same thoughtfulness she may utilise with her clients, because she comes across as impatient, if not downright testy, and isn't doing herself any favours. It was she who jumped the gun and posted her massive support of the former radio star while theoretically not knowing all of the facts, which seems awfully naive for a PR firm facing a media firestorm. Or, if she was aware of the facts, then her support mutates from simply looking foolish into something a lot more suspect.

Completely inexplicably to this boy, she now admitted in the piece in the Star, that she actually saw the sure-to-be infamous Facebook post that was banged out hopelessly by #JG on the day he was fired by CBC. In an earlier blog about this whole sad, sorry story, I expressed disbelief that any of them (his various agencies) had pre-screened it, and that he must have impulsively cranked it out in desperation, but no - she actually must have approved of it, given her Twitter outburst of support after reading it - even if she attempts to exonerate herself of any responsibility for his outrageous post and turned the spotlight onto Navigator. 

“Jian genuinely wrote it (as far as I know),” she said via email. “He did read it to me before he posted it live, but he had others advising him at this point as I don’t handle crisis communications and he had a firm advising him that did.”

That just sounds woefully weak and inadequate, and perhaps further underlines the lack of true sophistication mentioned above, because I am no PR expert but the second I read that bizarre work of pure fiction on Facebook, I told our Cris that he was either out of his head or one of his agencies must be, because it was as sure to come back to haunt them all as the Demonic itself. Quite what Ghomeshi, rock-it or Navigator hoped to achieve with it (other than perhaps another payment made by the former to the latter two) is incomprehensible. It was nothing more than an act of sheer desperate fear - a fear of what was coming next. 

"Behind every story, is a publicist that has pitched it" is the tagline and one cannot help but wonder how rock-it really feels about having for years pitched a story that was just that - a veritable work of self-promoting fiction covering up the darker truth hiding in plain sight on the comfy leather sofa in front of them. The leather did indeed run smooth on the passenger seat, until the wild ride was over - and it surely is over. 

Rock-it is maybe better at dealing with home furnishing or sports brands, and they should leave PR work for (minor) celebrities to other more specialised agencies that are sufficiently sophisticated to handle them - even or especially if that sophistication is used to tear off the self-serving exteriors of such types to get to the real person hiding underneath - then the job can be less about dealing with BS and more about actual scintillating PR. 

Sometimes the best PR is a capacity to zip it, and not make a fool of oneself with impulsive misinformed Twitter posts, or comments to newspapers, or ridiculous Facebook rants. Whoever encouraged the $55M lawsuit against CBC was living in the same fantasy world as the former star, while taking his cash for their so-called "advice". The one single piece of good news for the former radio star is that he finally got some good advice, from Marie Henein, his lawyer, who seems to know how to deal with the media better than any agency he hired previously, i.e. she (and now he) has been a paragon of silence. - Kevin Mc