Public Affairs Staff Blamed for Femaâ??s â??fakeâ? News Conference
Arraynot found.Public affairs staffers took the blame for the slapdash â??fakeâ? press conference that the Federal Emergency Management Agency staged Oct. 23 during the California wildfires. The briefing touched off a firestorm of criticism.
FEMA chief David Paulison said the hurriedly arranged â??press co
nferenceâ? (sans press) had a â??devastatingâ? impact on FEMAâ??s already damaged credibility. He placed the blame for the debacle squarely on the shoulders of PA staffers.
The incident was also embarrassing for the PR Society since one of the chief players was John Philbin, head of the 100-person PA staff, an accredited PRS member and holder of a Ph.D. in communications/PR from the University of Maryland. His faculty adviser was James Grunig, Ph.D., one of PRâ??s most honored educators.
Faced with this embarrassment, PRS did flip-flops and cartwheels. Its coverage on the PRS website (www.prsa.org)did not even mention Philbin and chair Rhoda Weiss did not speak to him until Nov. 12, or 13 days after the Oct. 30 PRS web story. No one from PRS had spoken to him until then.
Several letters posted on the story on the PRS website did mention Philbin and two wondered if his APR could be â??revoked.â? These two letters were then removed from the site.
PA Should Have Stopped It--Paulison
Paulison, a career fightfighter who rose to fire chief of Miami-Dade before joining the federal government in 2001, said the â??careerâ? PA people in FEMA â??should have stepped upâ? and stopped the briefing.
Philbin agreed, telling the New York Times: â??I should have stopped it, I should have jumped up regardless of how awkward it would have beenâ?¦â?
Government PA veterans, however, thought that the major blame should have rested on No. 2 FEMA official Harvey Johnson who conducted the briefing and who was talking to senior FEMA staffers only a few feet in front of him in a small room.
CBS News published a picture of Johnson addressing the staffers and named most of them. The entire 12-minute conference was also put on You Tube.
In it, Johnson can be heard talking rapidly and almost non-stop, declaring that FEMA had immediately gone to the wildfire scene, was working closely with state and local officials and was behaving far better than it did after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. FEMA then and now was said to be like â??day and night.â?
Philbin had quit FEMA on Oct. 12 to join the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Oct. 25 but after the â??fake conferenceâ? flap ODNI cancelled the job.
Another casualty was press secretary Aaron Walker, who said he had planned to leave anyway to join a PR firm in Utah. He was fired by FEMA.
Conference Was RushedOfficials of FEMA, part of the Homeland Security Dept., were anxious to show that FEMA was performing well relative to the wildfires then raging in California.
FEMAâ??s lackluster performance following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was well documented.
HSD, headed by Secretary Michael Chertoff, had ordered the conference around mid-day. Chertoff and Paulison at that time were on a flight to San Diego. Chertoff was one of the severest critics of FEMAâ??s PA, saying the briefing was â??one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things Iâ??ve seen since Iâ??ve been in governmentâ? and promising that â??disciplinary actionâ? would be taken.
Philbin, who said that he and other staffers had been working long hours because of the wildfires, told Oâ??Dwyerâ??s that he did not â??advise, authorize or approveâ? of the conference as it was conducted but took responsibility because he was the PA head. He also pointed out he had many duties besides press relations including PA, legislative affairs, international affairs, intergovernmental relations, private sector relations, and employee communications Philbin was in the U.S. Coast Guard, retiring after 21 years of service, before taking jobs in private industry including one with General Dynamics Information and another with Anteon Co., $1.3 billion supplier to the intelligence community.
â??Softballâ? Questions Posed
Media said the â??press conferenceâ? consisted of â??softballâ? questions posed by FEMA staffers.
One staffer asked Johnson to compare FEMAâ??s response to the wildfires and its response to Hurricane Katrina.
â??It was like day and night,â? he said, adding: â??If you look at Katrina, there really was no leaning forward, there wasnâ??t a fabric of federal partners, there wasnâ??t good communications between government and the administration of FEMA.â?
With the California fires, he said, the federal partners were linked together in doing assignments and having controls in place and were â??following a game plan.â?
â??We didnâ??t have those kinds of things in Katrina,â? he said. â??Now you see a very smoothly, efficiently performing team.
At one point, someone asked, â??Any questions, please,â? and a staffer in the audience asked: â??Are you happy with FEMAâ??s response so far?â?
said Johnson: â??Iâ??m very happy with FEMAâ??s response so far. He said FEMA was â??aggressively linkedâ? to state and local authorities and that all government units were â??together as a teamâ?¦listen to the mayor of San Diego about FEMAâ??s performance and heâ??ll tell you he couldnâ??t be more pleased with the support providedâ?¦ask Governor Schwarzenneger what he thinks about FEMAâ??s performance and he will tell you the same thing, that he couldnâ??t be more pleased with how FEMA recognizes the role of the federal government is to coordinate the efforts to the benefit of the state and the community.â?
FEMA Is Prepared for Disasters
As a final point, Johnson said that what the U.S. public is seeing with the California fires is â??the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership, the benefit of good partnership, none of which were present at Katrina. So I think that as a nation the people should sit up and take notice that this was the worst wildfire season in the history of California and look at how the state and local governments are performing, look at how well they are working together with federal partners. Itâ??s a good thing to see and reassuring to the public that if a disaster does strike our countryâ?¦weâ??ll do the same thing, weâ??ll pull together, weâ??ll support state and local government.â?
PRS and Weiss Offered Code to FEMA
The PR Societyâ??s coverage of the FEMA press conference incident via a story in Tactics/online Oct. 30, did not mention Philbin by name. Instead, the item consisted of advice to FEMA to follow the PRS Code of Ethics â??which requires that a member be honest and accurate in all communications,â? â??avoid deceptive practices,â? and â??preserve the integrity of the process of communication.â?
The item said that chair Rhoda Weiss was available â??to convey and detail PRSâ??s recommendationsâ? either via live or taped phone appearances and interviews.
She was quoted as saying that â??Strong ethics is the central touchstone that guides PR professionals every day in how we advise management leaders to communicate. We encourage FEMA and all government agencies to adopt the PRS Code of Ethics and PRS offers its assistance in order to establish effective guidelines quickly.â?
Letters Mentioned Philbin The PRS story drew 11 letters from members, most of them condemning the FEMA conference and one of them asking if a memberâ??s APR could not be removed in the case of an â??egregious violation.â?
The letter was by Cassandra Stalzer, PA specialist, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Palmer, Alaska.
Gwyn Walcoff, Annapolis PR counselor, then posted a letter noting that she is ethics chair of National Capital, the largest PRS chapter with about 1,200 members.
She said, in commenting on Stalzerâ??s question, that she would be â??very interested to know if an official complaint had been made on this. Does PRS have the mitigating facts we seek to guide our response.â?
Stalzer told Oâ??Dwyerâ??s that what most concerns her about this â??debacleâ? is that â??PRS does not have the ability to revoke the APR of any member who violates the Code unlessâ?¦they are convicted of a felony, subject to a government sanction, or misuse their designation.â?
She asked: â??Without the ability, or perhaps the will, to enforce ethical standards, what does the APR designation really stand for?â? Stalzer, Walcoff Letters Removed The Stalzer and Walcoff letters were removed from Tactics/online sometime during the week that started on Nov. 12.
Philbin said no one from PRS or Tactics had called him to check his side of the story that appeared on the PRS website Oct. 30. He tried to reach Weiss during the week beginning Nov. 5. His call was returned by PR staffer Joe DeRupo who said Weiss was traveling and would talk to him on Nov. 12 (which would be 13 days after the Oct. 30 story in Tactics/online.
Philbin said Weiss did call him on Nov. 12 and he had a â??cordial conversationâ? with her. He did not think from the conversation that Tactics/online would do a follow-up story.