Dive Brief:
- The University of California, Davis, spent at least $175,000 to get two public relations firms to help suppress negative results to online Google searches of the university’s name and its chancellor’s following a viral video of campus police pepper-spraying nonviolent student protesters in 2011.
- The New York Times reports that eliminating undesirable search results is not possible, but the firms attempted to pad the Google search results with new content that would push negative results to the second page, which few people click to.
- The contracts, signed in 2013 and 2014, focused on controlling the conversation around UC Davis, and a university spokeswoman said an additional consultant was hired last month for crisis management.
Dive Insight:
Lawmakers are, again, calling for Chancellor Linda Katehi’s resignation following original reporting by The Sacramento Bee about the damage control contracts for public relations. Katehi previously took heavy criticism for highly-paid side work with DeVry Education Group and textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons. She resigned from the DeVry board of trustees in the middle of the outcry. The President of the University of Arizona has been called to resign over her refusal to do the same.
When it comes to crisis management, administrators have to protect the brand of the university. But contracts like the one UC Davis signed obviously come with their own dangers and challenges. In an age when most things eventually become public, decisions must be made even more carefully.