Oprah Winfrey has been at the center of a crisis. An error was made in one of her past shows with the perception being made that she was attempting to hide the truth. So yesterday, rather than continue to cover it up, she dealt with it by appearing live on her show and communicating her errors. Today, breakfast television was full of this news about her show and reaction is quickly spreading across the web. What can be learned from this is that exposing the truth behind a crisis builds trust and helps restores the reputation. Perhaps certain government agancies and organizations who are currently facing challenges can learn something from Oprah. Read the story from the New York Times.

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The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) held its annual conference in Egypt on January 22nd and 23rd, under the theme of ‘Reputation Management in a Changing World‘.

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The couple at the center of the Wendy’s finger in the chili scandel have got their just desserts. Anna Ayala, 39, was sentenced to nine years and her husband Jaime Placencia, 43, will serve 12 years, four months.

Wendy’s reputation took a hit during the affair. They claim that the have lost $21 million because of the incident. Now that it has been resolved we shall see what steps are taken to restore their reputation.

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Should you view the Internet as a threat to your organizational reputation? No. You should leverage it to your reputational advantage by exploiting the opportunities that are there to build reputational capital.

People have different interest in your company. Investors, customers, employees, competitors, the media, suppliers, partners etc are all intrested in getting different types of information about your company. How can you use this to enhance your reputation? Make sure that the different messages going to these groups are consistant and contradiction free. This is difficult because there are different organizational functions interating with these groups. e.g. Finance with investors, Public Relations with the media, Sales with customers etc. Therefore it is essential that you have orgaizational buy-in to reputation initiatives and also effective internal communication of the reputation strategy.

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This has been a bad week for reputations. Mike Paul in his excellent The Reputation Doctor blog lists the top 5 reputations in crisis.

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A mother in New York is suing an Applebee’s restaurant after her 5-year-old son was allegedly served a Long Island Iced Tea instead of apple juice.

A manager at the restaurant declined to comment. Full story.

In a situation such as this perhaps concern for the child and detailed communication with the media would have been a better way to control this crisis. As it is Applebee’s is getting a lot of negative publicity and their reputation is declining.

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There have been many stories reported on how blogging is destroying online reputations. Here is one on how blogging has helped to restore the Sun Microsystems brand. more

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Another article, this time by Forbes magazine entitled ‘Attack of the Blogs’ looks at the damage that can be done to reputation by adverse bloggers. One interesting statistic from the article, put forth by a lawyer, is an estimate that “50% to 60% of attacks are sponsored by competitors.”

Do you know what your competitors are blogging about you? Perhaps it is time to monitor what they are saying.

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There are a growing number of organizations who are looking to monitor, track and analyze the ways that the public talks online about their products and brands. This article by Daniel Terdiman at CNET News looks at examples of how this is evolving.

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