Maureen Dowd of The New York Times is using her journalistic pulpit to shine light on the the Catholic Church abuse scandal. In her latest Op-Ed, she says "It doesn’t seem right that the Catholic Church is spending Holy Week practicing the unholy art of spin."
Dowd is focused on the Easter public relations campaign defending the pope against accusations of pedophilia and cover-up at the highest ranks of the church, suggesting that the Church has "picked up the Washington P.R. handbook for political sins."
While I am not here to defend or chastise Dowd, the Church, or the Pope, I thought her comparisons of crisis management techniques between this Church's scandal, and political PR spin were interesting. She identifies seven similar techniques:
- Declare any new revelation old and unimportant.
- Blame somebody else
- Say black is white.
- Demonize gays
- Blame the victims.
- Throw gorilla dust. i.e. Argue that the pope has immunity as a head of state and that bishops who allowed an abuse culture, endlessly recirculating like dirty fountain water, were not Vatican employees.
- Use the Cheney omnipotence defense, most famously employed in the Valerie Plame case. Vice President Cheney claimed that his lofty position meant that the very act of spilling a secret, even with dastardly intent, declassified it.
