PR Strategy: Edison Chen Sex Scandal

Chen appeared in the 2002 hit Hong Kong police thriller, "Infernal Affairs," and in the 2006 horror movie, "The Grudge 2." He also had a cameo in the Hollywood blockbuster, "The Dark Knight," released last year.




Public relations, also known PR, has been around for hundreds of years. Its technique and strategy played an important role in many of history's greatest events. Its profession is to improve how their clients are viewed by the public. No matter if its for companies or celebrities mishaps, it's goal is to establish and promote a favorable relationship with the public.

Ivy Lee, the father of modern public relations industry, was the first public adviser to change how PR really be run. Before PR advisers tried to conceal, fool or avoid the mishap situation to the public, but Lee had a different perspective that he brought. He suggested that the goal of public relations was no longer to fool the public, but believes that businesses should alight themselves with the public's interest rather than insisting that the public interest align itself with the business.

Take for example an incident in 2008: Edison Chen, an international Hong Kong celebrity that had sent his computer for repair along with nude pictures of him and many other famous HK celebrities that was illegally uploaded onto the internet by the computer technicians.

Article from Hollywoodgrind.com

"The scandal started after pictures were taken from Edison Chen’s laptop by a technician that was repairing it. There were a total of approximately 1,300 pictures. The naughty pictures included Bobo Chan Man, Cecilia Cheung Pak Chi, Edison Chen, Gillian Chung, Gillian Chung Yun-Tung, Joey Yung, Yu Chiu, Vincy Yeung, Cecilia Cheung, Yumiko Cheng, Mandy Chen, BoBo Chen, Rachel Ngan, Candice Chan, Jolin Tsai, Maggie Q, and some say even Japanese star Chiaki Kuriyama, and possibly more. On 2-23 we found out there are three more female celebrities that are now involved."

After days and weeks of the photo's release, Chen went into hiding from the public for awhile but then gave a statement admitting that the photos were real and that it was him who took it. Chen decided he would retire from the entertainment industry because of it and would do community service to make up for the scandal. Chen did use Ivy Lee's PR technique by not avoiding the situation and admit his mistake to the public. He also suggested to his fans to learn from his mistakes of taking pictures and hope they would forgive him.

Recently, Chen had been offer to star in a Hollywood movie after two years of service to the public according to Theinsider.com.

From my opinion, I think that Chen did the right thing to not avoid the incident too long. He admitted his mistakes and even suggested the public should learn from it. This types of incidents often occur in Hollywood and the story usually gets old after awhile, but a story that involves multiple International celebrity like this is hard to forgive and forget to most people.

Blog 9: Twitter

In today's world, social media such as Twitter and Facebook are taking society by storm. It gives the public the opportunity to express there thoughts and feelings on any given subject. Like many new innovations, everything has its good and bad. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have greatly affected people to become there own journalist, and depending on how individuals use it this technology will ultimately determines the outcome of it being good or bad.

The good that comes from sites like these is that it allows people to instantaneously post real time events for the world to know. It provides many different points of views on a particular subject and have the potential of many audiences participating in the matter. It could be use as eyewitness accounts worldwide without the editing of the mass media's involvement or government cover ups. Take for example the Iranian election from The New York Times. The article states that hundreds of thousands of demonstrators show defiance toward the presidential election in Tehran. With the help of Twitter and Facebook, Iranians twitted and posted eye witness accounts of what was really happening during the election. Although the government tried to censor these sites, there were still many other loopholes of getting the information out to the world to read. Sites like these makes it useful for journalist to get important information out to the public as fast as they could type it. However, these sites are not always good

As a matter of fact, incidents such as the supposed 'off the record' comment from President Barrack Obama's interview on ABC News and his thought about Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swifts acceptance award, was disseminated when he called him a 'jackass'. Posting something has many issues involved such as verification issues, rumors, misinformation especially during breaking news, government censorship, propaganda, fake accounts, bad intentions to slander and many more.

Some questions arise as to placing a limitation on journalism when using these sites, but I believe that these sites give good opportunities for journalist to share to the world the truth about the subject matter. However, the thing that it should be limited to is using this technology with the intentions of instigating a lie from the truth. I would recommend using the technique of judging a reliable website to a post by looking for an attribution, any authority support, what is the objectivity, and how current is it. Because these days, anyone can put anything online, it is up to the reader to be the journalist now in finding the truth of the matter.