Tareq Salahi and his wife Michaele Salahi along with their PR reps should face charges and fines if the kidnapping reports turn out to be nothing more than a publicity stunt, says a PR expert.
“This type of behavior, if true, is despicable and unacceptable,” says Glenn Selig, a crisis management expert from the PR firm The Publicity Agency. “It plays with the public’s emotions. It makes those of us in the PR industry look bad. It makes the world feel bad.”
Tareq Salahi and his wife Michaele Salahi are stars of the reality TV show ‘Real Housewives of D.C.’ who got where they are by crashing White House gates.
They are back in the news again. Tareq Salahi and Michaele Salahi got another 10 minutes of fame when Tareq reported his wife was abducted.
Tareq Salahi did an interview with a Memphis reporter working for the NBC station and broke down in tears.
Michaele Salahi later contacted law enforcement officials to say she was fine and didn’t want her husband to know her whereabouts.
A spokeswoman for the rock band Journey said Michaele and the group’s guitarist Neal Schon were together in Memphis for a concert.
Now the FBI and law enforcement officials are investigating. The scuttlebutt: that this was a publicity stunt.
“I understand the challenges of getting media attention. But you don’t fake an abduction for attention–especially in a post-9/11 world,” says Selig.
Selig points out that we’re living in times where child abductions happen more often that it’s beyond scary–especially for parents of young ones. Abductions are nothing to play around with, he says.
“If Tareq Salahi and his wife Michaele Salahi faked this kidnapping as a publicity stunt, they should be shunned,” says Selig. “They say there is no such thing as bad publicity. Yes there is. When it is created because of a boneheaded stunt that’s conducted in bad taste and it blows up in your face, then I categorize that as bad publicity you don’t want.”
ON THE WEB:
www.thepublicityagency.com
Direct link: https://prnewschannel.com/2011/09/15/michaele-salahi-abducted-real-fear-or-publicity-stunt/SOURCE: The Publicity Agency
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