Mike Paul's Blog

NEW YORK - As we begin 2010, now is the time for me to reflect on the top reputations in crisis in 2009. The following is officially Mike “The Reputation Doctor” Paul’s Annual Top 10 List of Reputations in Crisis for 2009. This list is compiled by and solely the opinion of crisis public relations and reputation management expert Mike Paul. You've seen him weekly as a guest TV news commentator analyzing top individuals and organizations with reputations in crisis in the media.

1. TIGER WOODS – Clearly the biggest reputation in crisis in 2009. We believed his image as a good father and husband, but his true reputation as an alleged sex-addicted, pill-popping, blonde-loving, adulterous, party animal put Tiger in severe crisis in 2009. We are still unsure whether he will get divorced or he will be able to rehab his tattered marriage. Ironically, this crisis, like that of Kobe Bryant a few years ago, has nothing to do about his ability to play his sport with excellence. Tiger's crisis is all about the difference between an image as a loving dedicated husband and father and a true reputation as a serial adulterer. This is a warning to all athletes: your conduct external to your sport matters and can ruin your life. The six building blocks or bricks of an excellent reputation include truth, honesty, humility, transparency, accountability and consistency. Sadly, Tiger failed with all six bricks in his marriage and life external to the golf course. Look for Tiger to re-appear after sex addiction rehab and play in the Masters tournament this Spring. Will he win? Will he save his marriage? Stay tuned! The drama is only just beginning.

2. BERNIE MADOFF – The top headline-grabbing financial scandal in 2009 was Bernard Madoff's breathtaking $65 billion Ponzi scheme. While the fraud came to light in 2008, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison in June 2009. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin described Madoff's crimes as "extraordinarily evil" and said that Madoff's was "not merely a bloodless crime that takes place on paper but one that takes a staggering human toll." He will most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. Yet there is still much we don't know about the scam. Investigators are still trying to figure out who all was involved and where the money went. But the proof that it happened can be found in the ruined lives of thousands of victims.

3. AIG – The financial products unit of insurance giant American International Group Inc became the poster child for Wall Street crassness when it was revealed in March that its employees were to get $165 million in retention bonuses after taxpayers pledged up to $180 billion to keep AIG afloat. U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg later vowed to limit bonuses at the unit, which caused most of the insurer's losses and threatened the global financial system. Other crises within AIG included Lehman's demise and the failure of exotic derivative instruments, threatening to take AIG down along with other major Wall Street players; the partial take-over by the U.S. government — the American tax payer now it's biggest shareholder; a global employee workforce in a state of shock, workers not only concerned about their livelihood, but also their physical safety; shareholder losses and ensuing anger; the stress on AIG's healthy insurance businesses from concerned customers and regulators; the slow, and continuing dissolution and restructuring of AIG as the former American success story, while it's former Wall Street partners recover and prosper and the defection of many senior executives, including 4 CEOs in a short period of time. As a result, AIG is now a brand synonymous with global corporate wrongdoing at the highest level.

4. GOLDMAN SACHS – Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., apologized for the firm’s role in some of the activities leading to the financial crisis. “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Blankfein, 55, said at a conference in New York hosted by the Directorship magazine. “We apologize.” Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses. The money accrued for bonuses, enough to pay each employee $527,192 for nine months, has fueled criticism because it comes one year after the firm received federal bailout funds. The firm is “very concerned” about the criticism because “our reputation is very important to us,” said Blankfein. “I don’t love it, we kind of sigh,” he said of the criticism.Since 2008, the company has outpaced the market enough to draw public scorn. With strong profits and expected strong bonuses, the company has set aside $500M to invest in small businesses. These efforts are an attempt to both improve the economy and their public image. Goldman Sachs has frequently performed above the market despite worsening economic conditions. Although the company did report a fourth quarter 2008 loss, GS regained profitability the following quarter. These losses and the overall market condition, forced Goldman Sachs to accept $10B in capital injection under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). In addition, Goldman received $5 billion in equity investment from Berkshire Hathaway and announced that it plans to raise another $10 billion from other investors. However, the company has since then repurchased the TARP assets in June 2009. Although Goldman has been the number one investment bank in terms of merger & acquisition in the past, it recently was surpassed by its rival JP Morgan Chase.

5. KANYE WEST – Ironically, I was at the VMAs and sat only a few rows away from Kanye West and saw him looking pretty drunk on the red carpet before the MTV Awards even began. Notice the bottle of Hennessy half empty in Kanye's hand in the photo on the red carpet. Kanye West once again lived up to his unpredictable reputation, crashing the stage at the MTV VMAs after he disagreed with the results. After Taylor Swift won the award for Best Female video for 'You Belong With Me,' she took the stage for her acceptance speech as expected. After humbly thanking MTV for the award, pointing out that she's a country singer, things went awry. West somehow got on the stage quickly and took the microphone from Swift to say that while he thought Swift was great, fellow nominee Beyonce "had one of the best videos of all time." The camera cut to Knowles, who appeared amused, shocked and embarrassed. As West walked off to boos, Swift stood there speechless, understandably. When she went to speak again, MTV cut her off and moved on to another promo. This isn't the first time West has acted up at an MTV awards show. In 2006, he rushed the stage at the MTV Europe Music Awards and launched into a profanity-laced tantrum over not winning best video for 'Touch the Sky.' In 2007, he announced that he was banning himself from the network after they chose to have Britney Spears opening the VMAs instead of him. Classic Kanye and once again, his reputation is in crisis.

6. JON GOSSELIN - Jon Gosselin has hit back at the cable network that made him famous by countersuing for $5 million, claiming TLC has harmed his reputation and sabotaged business opportunities reports RadarOnline.com. The father-of-eight also claims the network owes him another $175,000. The court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com (filed in Maryland’s Montgomery County Circuit Court system) reveal that Jon was earning $22,500 per half hour episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8 and $45,000 for every hour-long episode, according to the terms of an April 29, 2008 contract. Jon, 32, filed his countersuit in response to TLC’s breach of contract lawsuit. Jon claims that his sources of income outside TLC are legitimate and his contract with the network is against Public Policy, rendering it null and void. In his $5 million counterclaim, Jon’s lawyers say TLC’s parent company, Discovery, actively discouraged other media outlets from working with Jon beginning August 9, 2009. “As a result of Plaintiff—Discovery’s conduct and actions, Defendant—Gosselin has suffered and will continue to suffer harm to his reputation, lost business opportunities, lost profits, and other consequential damages, such as, but not limited to, a loss of good will and name recognition,” assert Jon’s lawyers. Jon also charges the network with violating Pennsylvania child labor laws and taking advantage of himself and his estranged wife Kate Gosselin, who negotiated their first contract without a lawyer or manager.

7. GOV. MARK SANFORD – From June 18 until June 24, 2009, the whereabouts of Governor Sanford were unknown to the public, including to his wife and the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for him, garnering nationwide news coverage. Lieutenant Governor André Bauer announced that he could not "take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts." Before his disappearance, Governor Sanford told his staff that he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail and while he was gone he did not answer 15 cellphone calls from his chief of staff Scott English; he also failed to call his family on Father's Day. Several hours after a reporter intercepted Governor Sanford arriving at an airport in a neighboring state after flying back from Argentina, and upon learning that incriminating evidence was being swiftly mobilized against him by the press, Sanford held a press conference, during which he admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife. In emotional interviews with the Associated Press over two days, Mark Sanford said he would die "knowing that I had met my soul mate."Sanford also said that he "crossed the lines" with a handful of other women during 20 years of marriage, but not as far as he did with his mistress. "There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn't have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line," he said. On June 25, La Nación, a Buenos Aires newspaper, identified the Argentine woman as María Belén Chapur, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two with a university degree in international relations who lives in the city of Buenos Aires and works as a commodity broker . The State earlier had published details of e-mails between Sanford and a woman only identified as "Maria". Sanford met Chapur at a dance in Uruguay in 2001 and admitted there was a more intimate relationship with her starting in 2008. Sanford's wife had become aware of her husband's infidelities around five months before the scandal broke, and the two had sought marriage counseling. She said that she had requested a trial separation about two weeks before his disappearance. Governor Sanford told reporters that months before his affair became public he had sought counsel at a controversial religious organization called The Family, of which he became a member when he was a Representative in Washington, D.C. from 1995 to 2001. His wife, Jenny Sanford, after telling Vogue magazine that her husband was having a “midlife crisis”, moved out of the South Carolina Governor's Mansion, with the couple’s four sons, returning to the family home on Sullivan's Island.
On December 11, 2009, Jenny Sanford announced that she was filing for divorce, calling it a "sad and painful process." Sanford resigned as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association, and he was swiftly succeeded by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. In a June 29 email to members of his political action committee, Sanford said he had no intention of resigning as Governor.

8. U.S. SENATOR JOHN EDWARDS – In October 2007, The National Enquirer began a series of reports alleging an adulterous affair between Edwards and former campaign worker Rielle Hunter. By July 2008, several news media outlets speculated that Edwards' chances for the Vice Presidency as well as other positions such as the Attorney General were harmed by the allegations, which now included that he fathered a child with Hunter and had visited her and the baby girl at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. However, the story was not widely covered by the press for some time, until, after initially denying the allegations, Edwards admitted the affair. On January 21, 2010, John Edwards issued a press release to admit that he fathered Hunter's child. In an August 8, 2008 statement,and an interview with Bob Woodruff of ABC News, Edwards admitted the affair with Hunter in 2006 but denied being the father of her child. He acknowledged that he had been dishonest in denying the entire Enquirer story, admitting that some of it was true, but said that the affair ended long before the time of the child's conception. He further said he was willing to take a paternity test, but Hunter responded that she would not be party to a DNA test "now or in the future". Initially, campaign aide, Andrew Young, claimed that he, not Edwards, was the child's father. Young has since renounced that statement, and told publishers in a book proposal that Edwards knew all along that he was the child’s father; Edwards pleaded with him to accept responsibility falsely. In the proposal, which The New York Times examined, Young claims to have set up private meetings between Edwards and Hunter. He wrote that Edwards once calmed an anxious Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band. ABC News reports that Young stated that Edwards asked him to "Get a doctor to fake the DNA results...and to steal a diaper from the baby so he could secretly do a DNA test to find out if this [was] indeed his child." Young is releasing a book detailing the details of the affair on February 2, 2010. In May 2009, newspapers reported that Edwards' campaign was being investigated for conversion of campaign money to personal use related to the affair. Edwards said that the campaign was complying with the inquiry. The relevant US attorney refused to comment. In the same month, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News reported that he had been told by members of Edwards' staff that they had planned a "doomsday strategy" to derail Edwards' campaign if he got close to the nomination. Joe Trippi, a senior advisor to the campaign, said the report was "complete bullcrap". In August 2009, Rielle Hunter appeared before the grand jury investigating this matter.

9. DR. CONRAD MURRAY – On Thursday, June 25, 2009, singer Michael Jackson died after he suffered cardiac arrest at his home in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California. He was treated by paramedics at his home, but was pronounced dead at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. His personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, stated he found Jackson in his room, not breathing but with a faint pulse, and administered CPR to no avail. While initial reports discussed the possible role of painkillers in Jackson's death, attention later turned to the medications he reportedly took for insomnia, most notably the anesthetic propofol (Diprivan). On August 28th, the Los Angeles County Coroner reported its conclusion that Jackson's death was a homicide caused by the combination of drugs in his body. Before his death, Jackson reportedly had been administered propofol, lorazepam and midazolam. Law enforcement officials are conducting a manslaughter investigation of his personal physician, Dr. Murray, who has told investigators that he had been trying to wean Jackson off propofol. Jackson's death triggered an outpouring of grief around the world, creating surges of Internet traffic and causing sales of his music and that of the Jackson 5 to soar. He had been scheduled to perform his "This Is It" concert series to over one million people at London's O2 arena, from July 13, 2009 to March 6, 2010. His public memorial service on July 7, 2009 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where he had rehearsed for the London concerts the night before his death, was broadcast live around the world, attracting a global audience of up to one billion people. The court of law is not done with Dr. Murray yet. Look for law enforcement to continue their investigations into his alleged role in the death of Michael Jackson. However, the court of public opinion has already convicted Dr. Murray as the killer of Michael Jackson. As a result, Dr. Murray's reputation continues to be in crisis. Many people, including me, question why Dr. Murray still has his license to practice medicine in any state in the U.S.

10. ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER SILVIO BERLUSCONI – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had fractured nose, broken teeth and a bloodied face after attack on a campaign stop in 2009. He is the leader of the People of Freedom political movement, a centre-right party he founded in 2009. He is the longest-serving current leader of a G8 country. The man accused of hitting the controversial prime minister in the face with a replica of Milan's cathedral was charged with grievous bodily harm and held overnight, Milan police said. The attack at a campaign rally in the Fall of 2009 in Milan left Berlusconi bleeding profusely from his left upper lip and cheek. He underwent a CAT scan at Milan's San Raffaele Hospital, and his personal physician, Alberto Sangrillon, recommended more tests be done, Berlusconi spokesman Paolo Buonaiuti told CNN. The three-term prime minister faces trial on tax fraud charges after Italy's top court struck down an immunity law that shielded him from prosecution. He denies the charges, calling them politically motivated. And his private life has been in the spotlight since his wife of 19 years, Veronica Lario, filed for divorce in May. The divorce followed allegations that an Italian businessman hired escorts for the premier and that he had attended the birthday party for an 18-year-old girl, with whom he has denied having an inappropriate relationship. Berlusconi remains popular among the Italian public, however, with his approval ratings remaining well over 50 percent. He won a third term in 2008, and his conservative coalition has control of both the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Silvio Berlusconi has an extensive record of criminal allegations, including mafia collusion, false accounting, tax fraud, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges. Berlusconi has been tried in Italian courts in several cases. In three of these cases accusations were dropped by the judiciary because of laws passed by Berlusconi's parliamentary majority shortening the time limit for prosecution of various offences and making false accounting illegal only if there is a specific damaged party reporting the fact to the authorities. In all of them, but one, he was acquitted, either by a court of first instance or on appeal, or when proceedings came to a halt because the statute of limitations had expired. Therefore he has a clear record up to now. Berlusconi claimed that "this is a manifest judicial persecution, against which I am proud to resist, and the fact that my resistance and sacrifice will give the Italians a more fair and efficient judicial system makes me even more proud", and added that "789 prosecutors and magistrates took an interest in the politician Berlusconi from 1994 to 2006 with the aim of subverting the votes of the Italian people" reeling off statistics that he said have constituted a "calvary including 577 visits by police, 2,500 court hearings and 174 million euros in lawyers' bills paid by me". Berlusconi has always been able to afford top lawyers, for example Nicolas Sarkozy was one of his French top advocates. Some of his former prosecutors are members of the parliamentary opposition. Some of his attorneys are also members of parliament. One warning for Berlusconi and us all: the truth always bubbles to the top - eventually and when it does and you have done wrong, be prepared to face the consequences of your actions!

Remember, do the right thing when your reputation is in crisis and seek the counsel of an experienced crisis PR and reputation management expert. It will be a major challenge, but ultimately the rewards of repairing your reputation will be great. Why? Because Your Reputation Is Everything!™

Mike Paul is editor of The Reputation Doctor blog. The Reputation Doctor is a nickname given to him by a global client years ago. Mike's blog is located at www.ReputationDoctor.com. He appears regularly on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, TruTV (formerly Court TV), ABC News, ESPN, CBS News, BBC, and others as a weekly contributor and expert in the global news regarding corporations, CEOs, celebrities, athletes, politicians and other public organizations and public individuals with reputations in crisis. Mike is also interviewed often by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, NY Daily News, NY Post, Business Week, Sports Illustrated and Forbes. Mr. Paul is also president and senior counselor of MGP & Associates PR (www.mgppr.com), a leading strategic public relations and reputation management firm based in New York. For interview requests, keynote speeches, senior counseling or other business opportunities with Mr. Paul, please call 212-595-8500 or email mpaul@mgppr.com.

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Comment from: renommierte Online Casinos [Visitor] · http://www.renommiertekasinos.com/

It seems that Tiger Woods' already tarnished reputation took a nose dive after that last story about him being a regular at Escorts London. 2009 Has probably been his worst reputation downfall but I think he's also enjoying the extra press he's been getting. You made me late for work reading this. Nice blog, just bookmarked it to come back later.

Feb 27, 2010, 5:05 am

Comment from: James [Visitor] · http://www.gedoptions.com

Very fun grouping of events and news that stand out. I love our skuzzy "leaders" of our country with their affairs and other unethical cover-ups that are constantly getting blown wide open. It doesn't matter republican or democrat, nowadays we're seeing pretty much everyone has some serious dirt under their rug. Excellent work Mike, thank you!

Feb 28, 2010, 3:00 am

Comment from: Adele Renault [Visitor]

Just a quick Thank You - thanks to Mike Paul for appearing on CNBC today, March 4th regarding the problem of visible gun packing in public venues like Starbucks. I hope, Mr. Paul, that you will continue to speak about this from the point of view of business gains/losses and public relations. This is the only way many people will get the point. I am in California and thankfully it's unlawful to do that. But if that were to change, my children would no longer be allowed to stop in at any Starbucks after school and I would find a better place to chat with friends. It simply would not be worth the risk in this confrontational society of the big city. I live in Los Angeles. I also hope many other business people will join you is speaking out about this from the practical, business perspective more than the visceral voice of fear. It's far superior at getting the point across and hopefully without threatening the other side directly. Respectfully, Adele

Mar 4, 2010, 4:51 pm

Comment from: inetryconydot [Visitor] · http://amoxilonlinepaypal.groupsite.com/main/summary

Some may feel squeamish about eating it, but rabbit has a fan base that grows as cooks discover how easy they are to raise — and how good the meat tastes.

Mar 6, 2010, 6:43 am

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