This morning, I learned of a video on how to annoy a TV reporter from Jeremy Pepper’s blog POP PR Jots. Though I have known Jeremy (online) for two years now, I thought there was something fishy about this video. I mean, why on earth would Marc Slavin, communications director at Laguna Honda Hospital, be touching reporter Dan Noyes so much and getting up into Noyes’ face like he did? This had to be something staged, right? I mean, Holy Man-Handling, Batman!
So I did a little looking. And yes, this video IS real. And as they say on The People’s Court, the participants “are not actors.” This situation really happened, and it was caught on tape — and uploaded to YouTube and other sites pretty quickly.
For more stories about the altercation from this video, see:
- Hospital Flack Marc Slavin Won’t Stop Touching Dan Noyes — On Video (includes a short e-mail response from Slavin)
- See Spot Write: Laguna Honda Hospital Gets Handsy
- Reporter Dan Noyes Gets Furious At Most Annoying PR Flack Ever
So, if you’re Marc Slavin (the man-handling communications director), and this video has gone viral, what would you do?
I think Mr. Slavin, as PR person, should immediately send out a formal apology and re-schedule and invite the press to the next meeting. As the PR person, it is his job to be the mediator between the hospital and the press. It is the press’ job to get the facts of the story. Mr. Slavin should go back to PR school–clearly he is not a prime example of quality public relations and is not providing a good public image of the profession.
I think if the hospital has something to hide, Mr. Slavin did an excellent job of diversion tactics.
I think that the only thing that Slavin can do is apologize because he was clearly in the wrong. From the video it seems that he did not want the press to be there so he provoked them the cause a disruption so that there would be a reason for them to have to reschedule the meeting for another time when the press would not be there. This brings up the question of what Slavin is hiding where he would want to provoke the press in such a way. Noyes was clearly uncomfortable with being touched and politely asked Slavin several time to stop touching him. I would say that Slavin is very lucky that the situation did not get more physical than it did. I think that this will have a negative impact on Slavin from a PR perspective.