It is a general truism that media companies and media figures are often bad at their own public relations, especially when the news is bad.
Chris Cuomo, a prime time anchor at CNN, and his brother Andrew, the governor of New York, are in the middle of a mini-media crisis tangential to the sexual harassment allegations that have been lodged against Andrew.
Not surprisingly, it has been revealed that Chris Cuomo has been giving his brother communications advice on the harassment investigation. Chris has a policy of not covering news about his brother and avoiding any attempts to influence CNN’s coverage about his brother. Nevertheless, news of Chris’s informal advisory role forced both CNN and Chris Cuomo to make statements on the issue this week both to apologize and to promise it will never happen again.
The Cuomo brothers have been described as brash, bold and sometimes arrogant. That’s one communication problem. Another can be seen in Chris Cuomo’s statement, which from a public relations view, tries to have it both ways.
Conflicts of interest have always existed in the world of political news coverage. It is not unusual for reporters and sources to develop friendships. It is not unusual to find journalists who come from families with political backgrounds. But the Cuomo situation seems to be a train wreck of the inevitable variety. And what makes it worse is when the Cuomo’s try to tell us the situation is something other than what we can all see it is with our own eyes.
