Don’t leave it to others to tell your story

By Abbie Fink on November 30th, 2009 In Advice

tiger-woods3The Tiger Woods story didn’t have to be a headline story the entire weekend. In the absence of a statement from the subject of the story, a good reporter is going to find information elsewhere.  The reason why he was leaving his house at 2:30 in the morning may be a private matter, but Tiger Woods is not a private citizen.  And because he was not willing to make a statement early on, others did it for him.  Domestic violence, an affair – might be true, might be a rumor – but you’d much rather be the one giving the information than defending yourself against it. 

He’d never been the subject of a scandalous story before. It may be why this got more attention than necessary. 

As someone who counsels clients in crisis situations, not making a statement is not an option.  Get your thoughts together and get your statement out there as soon as possible. Or what could have been a one-day story turns in to much more.

Don’t leave it to others to tell your story

Comments

Dan Wool Says:
November 30th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

Abbie – he has proactively made statements, so by your standards he has done this correctly not incorrectly.

Every crisis is different. Now is *not the time* for him to make a detailed statement other than what he has put out there. He cannot really get into any details until he talks with the police. It’ll go from there.

I also love how the world thinks Tiger owes everyone an explanation. He doesn’t! When was Tiger elected to public office? Never. That makes him a private citizen accountable to none of us. He’s not saying “no comment,” he’s saying respect his privacy until this gets sorted.

His fierce protection of his privacy is completely consistent with everything he has done with his personal PR in the past. Why should the public expect different? It is none of their business.

If this sort of incident happened to your neighbor last night, you wouldn’t expect your neighbor to come over to tell you all about it would you?

PR-wise, everything to date has been the right play. And the truth will get out there eventually likely from Tiger himself when the time is right. It isn’t right now. If you were truly his counselor, you would have voiced your concerns but done the exact same thing his people did.

Chuck Reynolds Says:
November 30th, 2009 at 5:33 pm

First off… good message… Don’t standby while somebody puts words in your mouth or brands your business as something it’s not. Nuff said.

Now onto Tiger… I don’t think he OWES anybody an explanation. The thing with his is he’s sooooo secretive and so quiet that of course this is going to blow up. The media is out to prove a point… say what happened or we’re going to create all these stories of what we think happened.. which they’re good at doing :)
He needs to clear his case if he’s going to get pissed at what’s coming out… if not then he’s just gotta deal with what poeople think of him based on what the media spins up

Veeds of Arabia ("Your man in the sand") Says:
December 1st, 2009 at 12:52 am

As Dan says, The Woodsman has no obligation to tell anyone anything. I say: lay low, pay your traffic fine, let the gossip folks fuss and stew for a few days until Brittney or the Gosselins or the D.C. White House party crashers step up to take the heat off with the Celeb Roob Press. In short, just get out of the woods (so to speak) in the fewest number of strokes and head for the fairway.

Mr Indifferent Says:
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:26 am

Who cares?- Haven’t we all got better things to be getting on with or is your life really this dull??? LOL.

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