Strive Notes

My daughter in Canada just sent me a link to a story about the Ottawa mayor getting all hot under the collar about a blog post. Her friend Darren loves to poke fun at politicians on his Apply Liberally blog.

Apparently blogger Darren McEwen had written a post accusing the mayor of misleading tax payers; the mayor’s son, Michael, who is in his 20s, took exception and left a comment.

When asked about it by a CBC reporter, the mayor cut short the interview and threatened to erase the journalist’s tape. The thing is, he’d agreed to the interview to discuss the blog site and only got steamed when his son was mentioned.

Here’s my question: should he be upset with the reporter for asking the question or with his own son for making the comment? Now the story’s got momentum with much blogosphere and high profile mainstream media coverage.

It’s a case study on how not to handle a media interview, how not to handle blogger relationships, and how not to handle family relationships.

Too too funny!

UPDATE:  FlackLife has a thorough analysis of Mayor O’Brien’s performance.  And check out YouTube for a summary with audio of the interview.

Filed under: public relations