A Galaxy of PR Woe

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Should NASA have waited until forced by the Freedom of Information Act to release the e-mails?
I think it makes it look like they were dragging their feet. There may have been some legal reason behind it, but it's always best to rip the Band-Aid off, to get this behind you and take the action yourself. Don't let someone take that off. If the organization doesn't tell the story itself, others will tell it for you, and they will fill in the blanks. That's Rule No. 5: tell the story yourself. That's the story right now, it's been told by too many others. That enables something as insignificant as an alleged fact that she wore the diapers to become what everybody seized upon. [Nowak's defense lawyers have denied that she wore diapers on the cross-country drive]. That's not even germane to the story. When you ask people to say what they remember about this, that's what they are going to say: she wore diapers. When something like this happens, you have to immediately think, "What's the story that's going to be told out there if we don't come up with the story?" You have to come up with a story about a troubled woman who had to be removed, and took rash action, and you need to be respectful of her. You have to devise the right story whether you are in government or a private corporation.

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Posted By: wspaceport @ 02/01/2008 12:43:00 PM

What I find interesting is that nearly a full year after the incident, Newsweek's Lynn Waddell STILL manages to perpetuate ERRONOUS information as FACT in the opening paragraph. "One astronaut drove across country to confront another over a spaceman they both admired" sounds titillating enough, except that Air Force captain Coleen Shipman (the "another" astronaut being alluded to in the story) is NOT an astronaut, just a junior-grade officer who happens to work in the military space arena, not NASA. With this type of public scrutiny and lack of attention to the details and facts, it's no wonder the media whips themselves up into a feeding frenzy that no amount of professional PR spin will ever really recover from, as people will continue to believe what they want to, despite the truth staring right back at them in the face.
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Posted By: wspaceport @ 02/01/2008 12:41:44 PM

What I find interesting is that nearly a full year after the incident, Newsweek's Lynn Waddell STILL manages to perpetuate ERRONOUS information as FACT in the opening paragraph. "One astronaut drove across country to confront another over a spaceman they both admired" sounds titillating enough, except that Air Force captain Coleen Shipman (the "another" astronaut being alluded to in the story) is NOT an astronaut, just a junior-grade officer who happens to work in the military space arena, not NASA. With this type of public scrutiny and lack of attention to the details and facts, it's no wonder the media whips themselves up into a feeding frenzy that no amount of professional PR spin will ever really recover from, as people will continue to believe what they want to, despite the truth staring right back at them in the face.
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Posted By: baikonur @ 12/16/2007 9:48:48 AM

It's very difficult for me to see how NASA could have effectively smothered the Novak case with a PR barrage. The story in itself, an astronaut love-triangle, was attention-grabbing. The incredible mug shot of Novak would be all over the media, in spite of any barrage of photos of spacesuited protagonists. And the diaper story, whether true or not, once out in the public domain easily would dominate any positive spin NASA might have tried to insert. It was bound to be a difficult time for the space agency in the wake of Novak
no matter what they did. (I might add as well that I"m a little surprised that Mr. Grabowski thinks this is the first time NASA has had its reputation damaged since the glory days of Apollo.)