Jake Tapper Hires Crisis Management Team
If Penguin Random House had fired Tapper and replaced him with an AI bot, they couldn't have made a worse decision. According to PR Week,
Tapper, who co-authored the book with Thompson, confirmed to outlets that Risa Heller, founder and CEO of Heller Co., was hired to offer advice as the authors plan to roll out the book “as smart as possible,” per reports. It is set for release on May 20.
. . . Some commenters in President Donald Trump's party were critical of Tapper and Thompson, saying Tapper and Thompson were complicit in a “media cabal” that protected Biden from public scrutiny of his age. Meanwhile, some defenders of Biden said the two authors have a vendetta against the former president and are focusing too much on his age and health.
Heller Co. did not respond to a request for comment.
Heller Co., previously known as Risa Heller & Co., represented former CNN chief Jeff Zucker, convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and former Rep. Anthony Weiner D-NY). The consultancy has offices in New York and Los Angeles.
Representatives of neither Axios nor CNN were available for comment.
Heller's website says it does crisis and reputation management:
We are trusted advisors to clients confronting and navigating complicated issues that risk long-term reputational harm. From high-profile institutions facing a daily onslaught of media attention to private citizens tackling problems that require narrowly targeted and bespoke communications, our clients value our proactive strategies and tactical advice.
Well, according to the PR Week link, Jeff Zucker, then-President of CNN Worldwide, was a client of Heller. His reputational crisis appears to have come from an office affair that led to his resignation:
On February 2, 2022, Zucker resigned from CNN. In his resignation letter, Zucker acknowledged that he did not disclose a consensual relationship he had with CNN's Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Allison Gollust, when it began. The relationship was made public in early January 2022 during the network's investigation into Chris Cuomo. Following his resignation from CNN, Zucker also resigned from his position as chief of WarnerMedia News & Sports.
A quick web search shows that Zucker's name is irretrievably attached to the MeToo phenomenon. This story concludes,
Since the modern #MeToo movement exploded in 2017 with the assault allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein, many observers have expressed fears that the attempts to root out sexual harassment in professional settings might devolve into a witch hunt. That's a fair concern. But it's also striking how fast the careers of Jeff Zucker, Andrew Cuomo, and Chris Cuomo unraveled once anybody subjected them to even a small bit of scrutiny. It makes you wonder how many other dominoes might yet fall.
So I'm wondering, if Zucker hired Heller to "navigate complicated issues that risk long-term reputational harm", whether hiring Heller did Zucker the least bit of good. But that's just one case. How about Elizabeth Holmes, also listed as a Heller client at the PR Week link? Holmes is now best known for her federal criminal conviction and prison sentence for fraud in the Theranos case, and her public image is connected with her phony baritone imitation of Apple folunder Steve Jobs, delivered wearing a Jobs-style black turtleneck . As to her current reputation,
The case of Holmes is said to have created a stigma for other female entrepreneurs, particularly in the sciences and health care industries, who are often compared to her. Writing in The New York Times, technology journalist Erin Griffith commented that "Holmes continues to loom large across the start-up world because of the audacity of her story, which has permeated popular culture", with female entrepreneurs reporting that "the frequent comparisons [to Holmes] are pernicious".
If Holmes had hired nobody at all to "navigate complicated issues that risk long-term reputational harm", could her reputation have turned out any worse? But how about Anthony Weiner, who only now is fading as a national dirty joke? PR Week lists him as another Heller client:
Our subject is Anthony Weiner, whose surname was a burden long before it became a curse—so fused with his disgrace that you can’t say it without triggering an avalanche of cringe. Weiner, who was caught texting pictures of his penis, first denied it, then admitted it, then resigned from Congress, then ran for mayor of New York City, at which point he sexted again under the alias Carlos Danger, was caught again, lost the election, sexted a photo with his young son in the background, sexted a minor, and forfeited a laptop with emails from his estranged wife that caused the FBI to reopen its Hillary Clinton email investigation, greasing the way for Donald Trump’s 2016 victory and hastening the possible end of the republic and democracy as we know it.
Why did he even bother to hire a crisis managment team? An ordinary cheap lawyer with a second-story office above a deli would have told him to stay off social media, drop his e-mail account, keep his mouth shut, and maybe not run for office for a while until it all blows over. As far as anyone can tell, Heller must not have even told him to do that, or if they did, they couldn't make it stick. Yet Heller apparently allows Anthony Weiner to be listed as a client whom they helped "navigate complicated issues that risk long-term reputational harm". How could Anthony Weiner possibly have emerged with any greater long-term reputational harm than he got with Heller's help?This is why I think an AI bot came up with Tapper's strategy. He typed in, "It looks like my book launch is in crisis. What should I do?" The bot did a masssive search of all records everywhere, condensed it all, and replied, "Hire a crisis management consultant". Tapper tapped, "Which one?" The bot went back and reviewed all the people who'd had the worst crises for their reputation and hired a crisis management consultant. It came up with Jeff Zucker, Elizabeth Holmes, and Anthony Weiner.
I'm sure the bot checked but found out Hunter Biden never hired a crisis management consultant, but of all he ones who'd had the worst crises and hired a consultant, they all hired the same one -- Heller! So the bot replied, "Hire the Heller Company." I'm sorry, folks. That's how AI works. It won't make stupid people smart, and if you fire all the smart people, it won't replace them. I hope one day I can provide this insight to Pope Leo.
