By Leo Valiquette
More often than not, clients of inmedia will set their sights on coverage in a flagship business publication like the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s or Fortune. Sometimes a client has a story that would appeal to such a prestigious publication, other times they do not. There is also the matter of whether such publications fit the bill as Tier One media targets for a specific client, but that’s a different post.
Regardless of the respect commanded by such publications, their writers and editors, struggling with fewer resources and tightened budgets, are as prone as anyone else to occasional inaccuracies and errors in their work. Perhaps they even, on occasion, fall prey to temptation and give their copy a little extra sensationalist spin to grab the attention of fickle readers.
You may have heard about Yale law professor Amy Chua and the firestorm of controversy that erupted in the past week with the publication in the Wall Street Journal of her ode to “Why Chinese mothers are superior.”
The article was excerpted from her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The piece paints Chua as a near-sociopathic tyrant consumed by her quest to make her daughters successful overachievers, no matter how much kicking and screaming it sparks along the way.
“Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do,” Chua wrote. “Attend a sleepover, have a playdate, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A, not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama, play any instrument other than the piano or violin, not play the piano or violin.”
There is even an incident where Chua banished her three-year-old daughter to the garden in subzero weather without a jacket for refusing to cooperate with her first piano lesson. The kid, however, proved herself every bit as stubborn as her mother and had to be coaxed back into the house with brownies and hot chocolate.
Not surprisingly, her essay provoked thousands of comments and even death threats.
However, it turned out that she had been somewhat misrepresented. It was WSJ editors, she claimed, who gave her article that incendiary title. And her book is not in fact a how-to manual, but a memoir of her experiences in trying to blend “western” parenting practices with the demanding methods employed by her own parents. In the end, she came to realize that the “tiger mother” method was in some ways too strict and she softened her approach . . . to a certain degree.
In an interview with the BBC earlier today, Chua articulates her position quite well and paints herself as a caring, loving mother who believes that children need a firm hand and a steady push to reach their full potential and acquire the confidence and self-reliance crucial to prospering in the real world. Many readers of the WSJ article, she says, missed the obvious comedy in the battles of will that erupted on several occasions with her daughters.
“It’s about helping your children be the best they can be, which is usually better than they think,” Chua said, rather than making their lives hell for getting anything less than straight A+s. It’s not the grades that are important, but the life lessons learned along the way.
I don’t want to get sidetracked into the pros and cons of her parenting approach. What I want to focus on is how deftly Chua has responded to the negative public outcry and media coverage that followed the publication of the WSJ article. I don’t know if she has engaged with any PR professionals for a crisis communications strategy, but she has certainly taken the right approach so far.
What has she done? Let’s recap:
- She has remained calm, cool and collected. If you listen to that BBC audio interview, there is no defensiveness in her tone. She is giving clear, thoughtful responses that state and clarify her position.
- She is not dwelling on placing blame on the WSJ for any perceived misrepresentations. She is, at least in the BBC interview, taking the highroad. In PR and crisis communications, this is the only road to take.
- She has a message and she is sticking to it like glue. In less than two weeks, the Amy Chua brand has become a national, even international, phenomenon. Every word she utters to the media is now in the court of public opinion. Any communication in a public forum, be it a live interview, a blog post or a Tweet, must be formulated with this in mind.
Of course, even if the WSJ editors did misrepresent Chua, thereby igniting a public outcry that wasn’t entirely warranted, it hasn’t done her any harm. In fact, it’s likely why the book climbed to sixth place in Amazon.com’s sales rankings on its first day of release and garnered her interview requests from other leading media outlets.
Is any publicity good publicity? It all depends on how well prepared you are to manage the fallout.
Photo from: Todd Pack’s Messy Desk
