The IRS is having a hard time defending itself before the public — and well it should.  The claim that a hard drive with two years of e-mails had somehow been destroyed is beyond credibility.  As commentators and technical experts have pointed out in recent weeks, it could only have been enormous incompetence or outright […]

Posted on June 30th, 2014 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 407 Comments »

It was once thought that a country would always pay its debts.  It would do so because it did not want to get shut out of international credit markets.  We know now that isn’t true, and some debtor countries resist what they call “extortion” by creditors who want to get repaid.  The perpetrator is claiming to […]

Posted on June 18th, 2014 by admin
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A public official is charged with committing a misdeed.  The official hires a law firm and tells it to investigate.  The law firm’s report exonerates the official and puts the blame elsewhere.  Would you believe the report?  This is the position that New Jersey’s governor is in now that the state has spent a million […]

Posted on March 28th, 2014 by admin
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There is little worse for credibility than making a decision only to unmake it.  The Affordable Care Act has seen a number of deadlines, requirements and other elements of the health care law changed to accommodate a flawed rollout.  The result is to feed the opposition’s schadenfreude and to make the President look like a […]

Posted on March 27th, 2014 by admin
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At the heart of PR, diplomacy, business dealings and relationships is credibility,  Do we trust another party? US and Western Europe are facing that question with the tentative Iranian deal to slow uranium enrichment.  Can we really trust them?  Israel does not, and President Obama has a major challenge in getting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]

Posted on November 25th, 2013 by admin
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The online world is considering what to do about sponsored content.  Some are labeling it prominently and have standards for readers to peruse.  Some are not.  From a PR perspective, sponsored content should be labeled prominently and frequently  to avoid credibility problems.  An online publisher who allows sponsored content to edge into editorial copy is […]

Posted on April 3rd, 2013 by admin
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Much of a business’ reputation relies on its numbers.  That is why accounting is the primary language of economic entities, (and why PR practitioners should be able to read income and balance sheets.)  Caterpillar has learned the hard way how accounting affects reputation with a write-down of Chinese assets.  It seems the former parent of a […]

Posted on January 29th, 2013 by admin
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When science becomes this refined, it is hard to grasp what researchers are doing.  One has to accept on faith that what is claimed is possible and true.  It is potentially a PR challenge for the scientific community as it moves farther away from a common understanding of the universe.  As with global warming, there […]

Posted on April 3rd, 2012 by admin
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Groupon, unlike Facebook, is a company with a credibility gap.  Its report of a fourth quarter loss yesterday didn’t help its case.  Analysts have been skeptical for some time about its business premise, citing a number of potential competitors and low barrier to entry.  Groupon has apparently decided to grow big quickly in order to […]

Posted on February 9th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 47 Comments »

“Cloud”  is the hot information technology.  This is storing data and software off-premises with a vendor such as Amazon.com.  However, there is a credibility problem with “Cloud” computing — security.  Predictably, in-house information technologists don’t believe that storing data elsewhere is as secure as they can do themselves.  This is to be expected.  Unless one […]

Posted on November 4th, 2011 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 199 Comments »