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Are some things just too sensitive to talk about? This week on Inside PR 515 we consider examples of tough issues and crisis points. Is it wise to keep your powder dry and hold off communicating? To avoid feeding the beast? Or should a communicator always look for a way to communicate the core principles and truths that he or she believes in.

• The Canadian Civil Liberties Association issued an open letter to Toronto Mayor John Tory asking that he hold off a municipal council vote on installing “ShotSpotter” microphone technology across the city. Less than a day later, Toronto was struck with a horrific mass shooting that left a 10-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman dead and thirteen others injured. What would you do now if you were the CCLA? Respect the grief of the bereaved and victims as well as the trauma being experienced by the community as a whole and back away from your position? Or would you persist in advancing your position?
• Burberry was caught out by environmentalists engaging in a long-established practice of luxury goods manufacturers, destroying unsold stock to keep it off the market and avoid dilution of their brand. That may have worked twenty years ago. But not in the era of social media when any person perusing a company’s annual report can spot something like this and deliver the news directly to an audience that will be critical of it. So, what’s a company like Burberry to do? Change its approach to be more in keeping in the times? Or keep its head down in the belief that this too will blow over? Watch with us in real time.
• Finally, we raise an example that we plan to discuss next week when Gini returns to the show – the James Gunn firing and the rehabilitation of Leonard Lopate. Every action leads to a consequence. What do we do now?

Linkworthy

• Civil rights organization urges city hall to delay purchase of gunshot-location technology, Wendy Gillis
• Burberry’s bonfire of the vanities is brazen and ecologically reckless, Lucy Siegle
• Dave Bautista Stands For Felled ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’s James Gunn As Free Speech Chill Sets Into Hollywood, Mike Fleming Jr.
• After WNYC, Leonard Lopate’s return to WBAI is met with protest, Karen K. Ho and Alexandria Neeson

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 515: Good judgment or an abandonment of principle? by Joseph Thornley, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.