Boston Pizza charged with over-serving booze in fatal pedestrian death

Three workers at Boston Pizza have been charged due to selling liquor to an intoxicated person. The intoxicated man was then later killed crossing the road. The 36 year-old unidentified man died in the Oshawa hospital after being hit at around 1am.  Kirandeep Khaira, Harinder Brar and Alicia Bruneau along with the Boston Pizza franchise have been charged under the Provincial liquor license act after allegedly serving alcohol to an already intoxicated person. The Oshawa located Boston Pizza released a statement expressing their devastation and clarified that they were doing their best to cooperate with the police in the investigation. If the alleged victims are convicted they can face fines up to $100,000 per person or 1 year in jail while the restaurant can face $250,000 in fines.

This particular crisis is an interesting one seeing as how the man was killed after having left the premise of the restaurant. According to Ontario law, the individual serving alcohol is given the responsibility of ensuring that customers do not reach a certain level of intoxication. It is not only the responsibility of the server but of the licensed establishment as well to ensure that the individual arrives home safely. Although the crisis did not occur at the licensed establishment, Boston Pizza is still liable since they did not take the precautionary measures to ensure customer safety.  This meso level crisis will certainly tarnish the franchises’ reputation, as customers will now be worried about drinking while going to the restaurant. Boston Pizza needs to release a statement announcing their turn around strategy that will ensure this crisis will never occur again. They also need to express their feelings of remorse and apologize in order to let the public get a sense of their sincerity.

This management/employee misconduct type crisis was not an event that was predictable but it should have been a crisis that Boston Pizza anticipated and was prepared for. When you are an establishment that handles alcohol it is your responsibility to take care of the customers regardless of what events can arise. Since this crisis is a more emotional one because it involves the death of an individual, audiences will show more constraints to Boston Pizza’s crisis communication. The audience will be mistrusting, hostile, upset etc. but it is Boston Pizza’s duty to ensure that they announce that they know they made a mistake but will do everything in their power to show that they have learned from their mistake so this never happens again.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/03/07/boston_pizza_charged_with_overserving_booze_in_fatal_pedestrian_death.html

Disney Will End Funding To Boy Scouts Over Anti-Gay Policy

The powerhouse company, Walt Disney, made a very bold decision earlier in the month to cut funding to the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) effective as of 2015. The reason for this decision was based on their policy placed on gay adult leaders being banned from the organization. The Boy Scout organization had made a decision last year to remove the ban on gay youth but still prohibited homosexual adult leaders. Although Walt Disney did not provide direct funding, they donated money to the Boy Scout troops. This will now affect the way in which the kids at BSA will be served due to the insubstantial amount of funding that will be available. Despite the clear disappointment that the kids and Boy Scout community feel, David Jefferson, the chief spokesman of Walt Disney did not make any comments nor answer any calls about the matter. Walt Disney announced their decision to cut funding via a memo that alerted the troops of their decision.

In terms of risk communication, Walt Disney is thinking in a macro, meso and micro level. They want everyone to follow their ideologies about non-discriminatory practices in order for all youth as well as adults to feel accepted. They are also thinking on the meso level because they want to reduce the risk for their own company by not being associated with a discriminatory organization. Lastly, Walt Disney is also thinking on the micro level because they are concerned about each homosexual youth or adult that will be influenced by the BSA’s actions. Walt Disney has really dealt with this crisis effectively as they have separated themselves from the risk by cutting all ties with the discriminatory organization. They did it subtly but effectively. The memo was to the point and rapidly spread through the World Wide Web in order for the general public to know exactly what their stance was on this situation. By having the memo spread online, it also allowed a larger audience to see exactly how the BSA feels about homosexual adults. This concurrently is very bad publicity for the BSA organization.

Therefore, Boy Scouts of America is placing themself in a very high risk because this news about their policies is spreading quickly, and soon it will effect their reputation very negatively. That will then influence their stakeholders and the parents of the kids involved and will eventually lead them to shutting down the program altogether or will force them to make different homosexual friendly policies.

Reference: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/02/disney-boy-scouts_n_4886851.html?ir=Canada&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067,

Malaysia Airlines flight to Beijing vanishes

Malaysian Airlines released a statement earlier in the week explaining how flight MH370 has disappeared. The flight leaving Kuala Lampur was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 but no plane arrived. The flight carrying 277 passengers went off the radar South of Vietnam.

This unfortunate situation is not only a macro level crisis but a meso and micro level crisis as well.  This crisis is macro level because it has created panic amongst not only the Malaysian population but worldwide unnerve as well. This is also an international crisis as the passengers on the flight were from 14 different nationalities.  This crisis is also meso because of the situation that Malaysia airline is in. The company must now deal with this crisis in order to keep their name from being tarnished as an unreliable airline company.  Lastly, this crisis is also a micro level crisis because of the individuals on the lost flight as well as the families of the passengers.

            Fortunately, Malaysia airline has done a remarkable job at being timely with notifying their audience, which is very important when dealing with a crisis this large a magnitude. Malaysia airline been as transparent as possible, ensuring that the information they release is accurate and quickly widespread. The airline has even gone so far as changing their twitter page to grey in order to represent the sorrow and grief they feel for the missing passengers as well as for their families. Not only is Malaysia airline doing their part but the Malaysian military is sending out a helping hand as well. "In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues," said Lt Gen Roy Deveraturda the commander of the Philippine military's Western Command.

            As social media has made it easier for news to spread faster throughout the world it is admirable that Malaysia airline has taken this with advance. Social media has allowed companies to share valuable information much quicker than other forms of communication such as TV, and newspapers. Individuals can now get news instantaneously. This proves to be very valuable for organizations in a crisis situation because they are able to communicate to their audiences efficiently. The challenges that social media poses is that individuals on the web now have the ability to post information online that can potentially be inaccurate. Therefore, it is very important that Malaysia airlines update their reports and monitor what is being posted in order to combat any invalid information posted.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26492748

Malaysia airline twitter page

Victims' families devastated as Colorado farmers avoid prison after deadly melon outbreak

In many instances, individuals working in certain industries or in charge of certain jobs carry much more importance and responsibility. If an individual makes a mistake at a, lets say, clerk job, their burden of responsibility would not be as high as a police officer for example. In recent revelations, farmers now in the United States carry a lot more pressure and responsibility and even bare the risk of jail time.  Two Colorado farmers, the Jensen’s, just avoided jail time but were sentenced to five years of probation and a large fine. This was due to their cantaloupe farm being contaminated resulting in the deaths of 33 people. The listeria outbreak occurring in the farm was not caused as a result of criminal negligence or for the sole purpose of harming others. This crisis was caused due to negligence and improper planning of procedures and product safety standards.

The most important factor in crises communication is to be aware of all your plans and procedures ahead of time in order to prevent a crisis like this from occurring. Even though preventative measures will greatly reduce risk, it will not completely eliminate the crises. In a crisis this like this where the disaster has already been done the most important task the brothers can do is to exhibit their sincerity, apology, to show their growth in that they learned from their mistake and to allow people to believe the deed done was unintentional.  The brothers willingly wanted to plead guilty to jail time as they stated that the outbreak happened on their watch. But they did not want their guilty plead to allow people to think that their negligent acts were done maliciously. As a crises communicator, this can go both ways. One, the families of the victims want to see retribution and will want to see the brothers punished no matter what they release. On the other hand, many individuals believed the brothers were “good, honest, Americans who just made a mistake” after they wanted to plead guilty. The Jenson brothers also apologized in court and stated that a third-party auditor that checked their products verified to them that their products were safe to be shipped.  In a crises like this where 33 deaths are involved, apologizing is simply not enough. This crises occurred due to their negligence and lack of procedure therefore, they must be required to do proper product and safety training in order to prevent this from occurring again in the future.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/28/22483133-victims-families-devastated-as-colorado-farmers-avoid-prison-after-deadly-melon-outbreak