If you haven’t seen South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s news conference about his affair, you gotta take a listen. Calling it “rambling” is an understatement. He didn’t mention the reason for the news conference—”I’ve been unfaithful to my wife”—until 8 minutes into his statement. Up until then, and afterward, it was a mess of incoherent blather.

Obviously there was no preparation, no “messaging,” no clear goal, and while it was entertaining, I’m afraid he did himself more harm than good. Sometimes, the more you talk the bigger the hole you dig for yourself.

I know apologizing in public is the right thing to do to put bad news behind you. I’ve been preaching that for more than 20 years. But it’s getting awfully old. Especially since when most of these guys say “I’m sorry” what they really mean is “I’m sorry I got caught.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Crisis Communication, Mistakes in the Media. 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.

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