ARTICLES
September 2002 ARTICLES
Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Cardinal Hollywood and The Wizard of Spin
Mahony Hires P.R. Firm
BY CHARLES A. COULOMBE
The sex scandals rocking the Los Angeles archdiocese have attracted world-wide attention; if anything, secular journals have shown far more interest than have Catholic ones. Here at home, KFI AM radio's Bob and Ken have not only convened crowds of alleged molestees outside the chancery office for a "teach-in," they have called repeatedly for Cardinal Roger Mahony's resignation. The New Times, an alternative arts and entertainment weekly, has kept reporter Ron Russell hard at work over the past few months chronicling the unfolding crisis and our cardinal's attempts to deal with it; moreover, the paper's editorial column, "The Finger," has had some rather harsh comments to make about Mahony.
Given the cardinal's unfavorable press, it is not too surprising that he has done what many other Southern Californian magnates in business, entertainment and politics have done in similar circumstances: hired a public relations firm. According to James Bemis, writing in the May 2, 2002 California Political Review: "Mahony's plan, evidently, for handling the controversy threatening to consume his episcopacy is more P.R.: he's just hired Weber Shandwick, an expensive public relations firm, to help extricate him from this self-created fiasco. Local parishioners must find that comforting."
Rumored to charge its clients as high as $500 per hour, Weber Shandwick boasts an important client base. On July 17, it was reported that they had picked up six Unilever brands as part of their consumer marketing practice. These included "all" of Unilever's laundry detergent, Q-tips, Mentadent toothpaste, ThermaSilk hair care products and Degree antiperspirant, as well as the Unilever Bestfoods brand, Ragú. In addition to Unilever, Weber Shandwick's consumer marketing practice includes well-known brands such as the Milk Mustache/got milk? campaign, Kraft, Harley-Davidson, Elizabeth Arden, Dunkin' Donuts, Campbell's Soup and Burger King. One of Weber Shandwick's top global priorities has also been medical companies. The past two years have seen international client names such as Pharmacia, Pfizer and Eli Lilly join the firm's client list. PRWeek recently named Weber Shandwick the UK's fastest growing healthcare practice. Thus Cardinal Mahony and the archdiocese have joined an all-star lineup.
But of course, as CEO of the archdiocese, Cardinal Mahony was faced with a much greater problem than establishing mere brand recognition. In the face of the cardinal's alleged cover-up of clerical misdeeds, Weber Shandwick was required to engage in what the company calls "crisis management." According to the company's literature: "crises have the potential to cause lasting damage to a company's reputation. Weber Shandwick has seasoned, senior crisis management experts who can prepare for and guide our clients through crises. Weber Shandwick's first-rate global crisis management experts have successfully advised clients on environmental, healthcare and financial disasters, organizational restructuring and downsizing, product recalls, labor issues and much more. All our offices around the globe are ready to help clients avert or work through a crisis. Additionally, Rowan Blewitt/Weber Shandwick of Herndon, Virginia, is a dedicated crisis management consulting firm that leverages extensive experience with the most advanced communications response methods available."
Despite its understanding of the archdiocese's unique needs, Weber Shandwick was not destined to last long with Cardinal Mahony; something more vigorous was required. In addition to Sister Judy Murphy and John McNicholas, Mahony enlisted more legal aid and hired J. Michael Hennigan, of Hennigan Bennett and Dorman in downtown Los Angeles. Hennigan is a distinguished corporate attorney: he has lectured at the annual conference of the Institute for Corporate Counsel (on securities litigation); assists the poor through the Legal Aid Foundation; and in legal circles has even coined a maxim: "ethics don't mean much in the absence of courage."
Once in harness, the archdiocese's new legal gun dispensed with Weber Shandwick's services and hired Sitrick and Co., a Century City-based firm more particularly involved with crisis management. According to the May 30 Los Angeles Times, Hennigan said he hired Sitrick because the archdiocese "was not doing well in the press. I thought the press was focusing on the very negative aspects without the whole story coming out."
Sitrick's clients have included the bankrupt fiber optic network operator Global Crossing; actress Halle Berry after her traffic accident; comedian Paula Poundstone after her child-endangerment case; and Orange County during its 1995 bankruptcy. The Los Angeles Times' initial claim that the company represented Enron has been denied; the Times later retracted the statement.
"We're really proud to be involved in this," said the firm's head, Michael Sitrick, 54 (whom the Los Angeles Times called the "Wizard of Spin"). "We're confident the church is taking proactive measures to make sure this doesn't happen again. I don't have to be Catholic to be anxious to help them work through this." Sitrick has met a couple of times with Mahony to "determine the facts." His goal is "to try to get perceptions of the Church to match reality." "First we determine what the facts are," said Sitrick, explaining his strategy. "We determine what is the perception. Is the perception equal to the reality? We're trying to get perceptions to equal reality. You can't do anything about what was, only what is and what will be."
Sitrick is co-author of Spin: How to Turn the Power of the Press to Your Advantage. The book commences with a fictional 1995 radio confrontation between a U.S. aircraft carrier and a Canadian lighthouse off Newfoundland's coast. In his book, Sitrick mentions Ivy Lee, the public relations man called in by John D. Rockefeller after Rockefeller's guards opened fire on tents housing striking workers and their families, killing more than a dozen of them. Lee spun the event to improve Rockefeller's public image.
Sitrick's work will not be a free-will offering, apparently. Declining to state how much his services will cost Los Angeles Catholics, Sitrick declared "our rates are comparable to lawyers' rates." Dealing with companies in bankruptcy he has reportedly asked for a $100,000 retainer. Sitrick's company was criticized for charging Orange County $450,000. Later that figure was reduced by $40,000 in exchange for the county hurrying payment. Sitrick defends his bill, saying the county audited all the fees and concluded that they were appropriate. Whatever Sitrick's fees will be, they must be added to the amounts the archdiocese's faithful have and will pay the victims of the cardinal's clergy.
Archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg told the Los Angeles Times, "we're pleased and grateful to have someone like Mike Sitrick with his understanding of the media market.... What we find in media coverage is the past mixing with the present. Trying to cut through all that with the clear pastoral message of the Cardinal has proven difficult for us."
Given the latest developments in the molestation cases, the cardinal's pastoral message (and that of his lawyers and P.R. maven) will soon have even more difficulties. According to Russell in the July 15 New Times, the worst is yet to come. After no less than three rounds of subpoenaing, the Grand Jury and Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley are at last beginning to receive records regarding the 72 accused molesters -- more subpoenas are sure to follow. The RICO law has been invoked against the archdiocese, and even the relationship of Cooley's spokesman, Joe Scott, to the defrocked Santa Rosa bishop Patrick Ziemann (they are cousins) does not seem to have much effect on the course of events.
Ziemann, formerly a close friend of the cardinal's, the spiritual director of the now defunct Our Lady Queen of Angels seminary and an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, was forced to resign after it became known that he had had a relationship with a priest he had brought up from Central America and ordained (despite his lack of seminary training). It has been alleged that Cardinal Mahony's willingness to pay out over five million dollars from archdiocesan funds last year in a molestation settlement was primarily intended to keep Ziemann off the witness stand. As another accusation against the bishop has emerged, it may well be that the cardinal's efforts and payments have been for naught. The plaintiff claims that his molestation by Ziemann began at age 12. The plaintiff says that Ziemann later paid him for sexual favors and that the relationship ended when Ziemann was named auxiliary bishop for Los Angeles in 1987. Many question how Sitrick will be able to handle Ziemann's testimony, should it become necessary to do so. The bishop is currently at a monastery in Arizona.
But these are developments of existing situations. Even more disturbing for the archdiocese must be the most recent news from Sacramento. On July 12, Governor Gray Davis signed into law a measure extending by three years the statute of limitations for plaintiffs to file civil lawsuits against child molesters and organizations that knowingly shelter them. According to Russell, "more significantly, it provides a one-year window of opportunity, beginning January 1, for any alleged abuse victim to pursue legal action against the church. That means untold numbers of priest abuse victims who've never come forward because the time limit for their filing a lawsuit expired will now get their chance."
Another bill introduced in the state assembly, AB 299, would force the church to turn over materials demanded by law enforcement promptly -- something which has not happened in the current round of scandals. Under current law, clerics, teachers, social workers and certain other professionals are required to place a phone call within 36 hours to a law enforcement agency or county child welfare department upon suspecting child abuse, but they are not required to turn over written reports or other documentary evidence. Under the new bill, Church officials would now have to reveal such paperwork after an investigating agency has asked for them.
According to Russell, "the bill's co-sponsors, Riverside County assemblymen Rod Pacheco and Russ Bogh, both Republicans, have acknowledged that the legislation is a direct response to Mahony's stonewalling of law enforcement."
But despite all of these events, the cardinal's commitment to the spiritual side of his office continues unabated. In keeping with his role as chief pastor of Los Angeles, Mahony issued a statement on the passing of one of the city's best-known individuals, movie mogul Lew Wasserman. Writing in The Tidings of Friday, June 7, 2002, the cardinal declared of the man who brought us The Last Temptation of Christ, and much else: "the passing of Lew Wasserman closes an era in the entertainment industry which will never again be experienced. Lew was both the architect and the patriarch of the motion picture and television industries, and his creativity and energies took the industry forward in ways never envisioned. What you and I take for granted in today's entertainment medium did not just happen. It took extraordinary initiative, daring, courage and talent."
Certainly, it took daring, given the number of times films produced by Wasserman have been condemned by Catholic bishops. In any case, the cardinal went on to assure us: "the English language does not possess the superlatives needed to describe this exceptional human being and leader. I considered him a dear friend, a wonderful counselor, and a model leader. In the Hebrew scriptures, he would surely be called both prophet and patriarch, because so he was."
Perhaps. But Wasserman's rumored mob connections, the nature of much of the cinematic material he produced, and the situation in which the cardinal and the archdiocese's people find themselves gave a deep poignancy to the cardinal's penultimate sentence. "May our lives and our own commitment reflect ever more fully the vision and gifts which he lived out so magnificently." Surely none knew better than Wasserman how to use spin -- a vision and gift the cardinal might be able to use.