Can The White House Use Spell Check?

Doing PR for the White House looks easy enough. When you make a “mistake” in a fairly important, official piece of communication, you can just point out there are bigger things to worry about and move on. I should try that with my clients. Don’t sweat the small stuff guys.

A fairly significant typo in a press statement this week around the Iranian Nuclear Deal (aka JCPOA or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) was pretty much poo-pooed by White House Press Secretary, Sarah Sanders, as she told reporters to focus on bigger issues than typos. 

“Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons programme that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people,” read the original statement, implying that Tehran was deliberately violating an important clause in the international agreement. A pretty strong comment most would agree.

The White House then quickly put out a second statement (changing the first ‘has’ to ‘had' on its web site) now stating: “Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons programme…”   Good going on the correction, but what use is it when the revised statement was not sent to the original recipients and just slapped online? Where’s the contrition? Also quite important when making a sincere apology? 

This is a highly sensitive issue at the moment given Donald Trump’s May 12^th deadline to stay in or out of the 2015 agreement, and one that could have serious repercussions for the Middle East and world at large. So you’d think that Sanders would approach the issue with a little more tact and regret – just a bit?

Did she miss the number one rule of crisis management – own an error and its implications first? Not forgetting rule number two - don’t go straight into defensive combat? Rather she had this to say to a room full of press: “The biggest mistake is the fact that the United States entered into the Iran deal in the first place…That to me seems to be the biggest mistake in the process, not a simple typo that was immediately corrected.”

Um, confusing the issues maybe?

This comes amid a series of official White House correspondence with typos and errors – my favourite being a comment about how the White House also hopes for a “lasting peach” between Israelis and Palestinians.

Well before Trump’s administration tackles World Peace, can it please do some fact and spelling checks first? Those of us in the communications industry take attention to detail quite seriously.