Today, the crisis communications experts at Fineman PR issued their annual Top 10 PR Blunders List. Nine contenders, including the contaminated pet food crisis, Paris Hilton’s home confinement and Ellen DeGeneres’ dog adoption saga, were elbowed from first place by FEMA’s bungled news conference on the Southern California wildfires. The judges at Fineman offered this analysis of the winning entry. 

No Reporters? No Problem

Already troubled by continued claims of inadequate disaster response and wasteful use of funds, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) truly fumbled when it held what the Washington Post described as a “phony press conference” in response to Southern California wildfires. “Questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters,” “lob[bing] one softball after another so [Vice Administrator Harvey E. Johnson, Jr., could] praise FEMA’s work,” said the Post. Homeland Security Department head Michael Chertoff was reported by CNN, CBS and others to have said that “it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things [he has] seen since [he has] been in government.” FEMA became defensive and insisted that reporters were expected — albeit with only 15 minutes notice of the conference — but did not show up, and that the questions posed by staffers were originated by reporters. FEMA deputy director of public affairs “Mike” Widomski, one of the reporter-impersonating staffers, responded to Post columnist Al Kamen’s inquiries by saying “if the worst thing that happens to me in this disaster is that we had staff in the chairs to ask questions that reporters had been asking all day, trust me, I’ll be happy.” Okay.

In fact, the ‘worst thing’ that happened to Widomski is that he was promoted to deputy director of public affairs, a detail that should earn FEMA a bonus prize – for worst recovery from a PR disaster.