Urgent Advice Needed: Strategies on dealing with possible extortion by press trip participant?

Posted by Max Pesling on September 18, 2011 at 1:44am

Hi everyone!  On a recent press trip to Argentina, everything was going extremely well until, the morning one blogger was due to leave, he reports a robbery from his room.  There was no sign of breaking and entering, and security records show no one used a card key to get in besides him. The hotel has offered to reimburse him the actual cost of missing equipment. 

The problem is that this person has been tweeting and Facebooking up a storm, and now he's upped the ante, demanding thousands of dollars because he claims he had years worth of work on that drive -- a backup drive, mind you. I think it's clear that doesn't cough up more "compensation," this campaign of slander will only escalate - and he does have a fair number of followers/readers.

It certainly underscores the danger of dealing with bloggers who have not been steeped in traditional journalistic ethics. I'm just curious, has anyone ever come across this type of thing, and if so, how did you deal with it?  

Max

 

 

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Tags: bloggers, ethics, press trips, travel PR
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Replies

  • Robert Haru Fisher September 21, 2011 at 4:29am
    The US and many other governments refuse to pay ransom when someone is kidnapped and held to ransom. You should follow their example and not pay off this character. Then ignore him. He should have had insurance for his equipment, anyhow. And he should have backed up his "years of work" on drives at home.
  • Elyse Glickman September 18, 2011 at 4:02am
    Try to see if you know of other people in the business who have worked with him or if he has a bad rap for causing trouble on the trip.  I unfortunately dealt with a "friend" who not only nearly put me out of business last year by planting a Gawker item about me to ruin my relationships, but has maneuvered her way on to FAM trips as a blogger, very chummy with the publicists, only to turn down writers with legit press credentials such as myself and others I know about.  This person is falling out of favor because people caught on to her, because I found like-minded people through the grapevine who reported similar strange behavior patterns she's exhibited at other trips.
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