The crisis management debacle du jour is Asiana Airlines' decision to announce they will sue a television station for broadcasting a bad cultural slur/joke about their pilots who were unable to land the plane successfully at San Francisco airport.
You would think they would prefer the story go away as fast as possible, but they are keeping it alive through lack of debacle management insights.
Paula Dean did the same thing by testifying in a PC charged environment that she had used the N word and then going on one television event after another with a hillbilly headed campaign that destroyed her total franchise value.
These glaring examples of the consequences of winging it with inexperienced situation insight resources should be business school case studies in why professional crisis management should be called at the very first moment when a major problem can be spotted looming on the horizon.
You can't stuff this material back into the horse once the big initial mistakes have been so publicly made. Why make them?
Is the senior management of Asiana Airlines simply so arrogant that they believe the world owes them a duty to pretend they are thoroughly training their pilots? Can anyone be that out of touch?
Did the crash in Buffalo New York two years ago not teach everyone in the airline industry some lessons about arrogance and hysterical PR blindness?
The Internet has cured everyone of the disease of respecting the inept. While your employees (or rather some of them) may not go on the Internet with exposure information and tasteless jokes about your situation, the public at large can now do so with anonymity.
Reacting with indignant rage is the worst thing anyone can do. There is no difference between Asiana suing the television station and Paula Dean saying "I is what I is".
Who will be the next to fail to finesse an extremely bad situation?
It doesn't have to be that way.
Tamerlane group's purpose is to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot when you see a bad event threaten to develop. Our focused expertise in crisis management can prevent these situations from developing if we are called before someone makes self-humiliating public statements/files absurd lawsuits.
Richard is correct that quick and proper attention to PR matter is the right thing to do.
However a quick reaction without thought and care will likely make the situation worse, longer lasting and may be even fatal.
When people are angry and hurt, they have to hand off the responsibility for responding to the public to a third party.
I agree with Michael that a third party should respond. However, that third party should not be the attorney for the company.