Monday Morning Media Minute

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Former Major League home run hitter Mark McGwire finally confessed to the obvious last week — that he used steroids back when he was hitting all those home runs.

It may be too little, too late.  But it’s also too early to tell.

A basic tenet of crisis communication is that you need to act as quickly as possible to acknowledge your mistakes, fix the problem and take convincing steps to prevent the problem from happening again.

Even with last week’s confession, McGwire falls short on all three counts:

• His confession is late.  And self-serving.  Five years ago, McGwire refused to answer questions about drug use during a congressional hearing, saying he was “not here to talk about the past.”  Five years ago, he wanted to protect his reputation and avoid legal liability.  Now he’s talking because he’s accepted a job as hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals and apparently has gotten advice that a preemptive confession would make it easier to keep the job.  In short, the reason for his confession is self-serving.  And he’s still making the unbelievable claim that he would have hit all those home runs even without the drugs.  He only took them for “health” reasons, he says.  Really, Mark?

• He can’t “fix” the problem.  The Major League record books still list all those home runs, including the 70 he hit in 1998 to “break” Roger Maris’ single-season record of 61.  Statistics are a really big deal for many baseball fans.  McGwire and others who rewrote the record books while on steroids have created a huge statistics problem for Major League baseball.  And McGwire is still trying to argue his records should stand because the drugs didn’t affect his performance.  Of course not.

• McGwire retired nearly a decade ago.  He certainly can urge younger players not to follow his example.  But he can’t undo what he’s already done.

I heard at least one on-air suggestion following McGwire’s confession that he be banned from baseball.  Baseball commissioner Bud Selig almost certainly will face pressure to do just that.

McGwire’s already been passed over several times for baseball’s Hall of Fame because of suspicions about his drug use.  The early evidence is that finally coming clean won’t improve his chances.  If anything just the opposite is likely to be true.

There is one thing that may work in McGwire’s favor.  Apparently, he’s still popular in St. Louis.  McGwire received a standing ovation this weekend from local fans in his first public appearance in St. Louis since making his confession.  Popular support may help him keep his new job.  But stay tuned.  This story isn’t over yet.

In the meantime, what’s the lesson for the rest of us?  The opportunity to begin restoring your reputation by acknowledging your mistakes is short-lived.  Wait too long and it becomes virtually impossible to do.  Just ask Pete Rose.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

Tags: crisis communication, jerry brown, mark mcgwire, media minute, media relations, monday morning media minute

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Crisis Communication, Messages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.