Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Arizona shooting creates PR crisis for Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin has failed to squelch the rhetoric that she is in some way responsible for Arizona shooting because of a map on her website identifying the congresswoman as a political target.

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This map on a Sarah Palin website is causing a PR mess for Palin following the shooting in Arizona.

(PR NewsChannel) / January 11, 2011 / NEW YORK / Sarah Palin has been called many things since the former governor of Alaska burst onto the national spotlight as a Republican vice-presidential contender in 2008.  She lost.  But since then her rock-star status has led to best-selling books and her endorsements to political candidates for other races winning elections.  But now some believe political rhetoric from Sarah Palin is somehow responsible for the Arizona shooting.

In the hours after the shooting, bloggers and social media mavens found a map on Sarah Palin's political website that had gun-sight images over the congressional districts that were targets for the mid-term elections, which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords recently won.

"The way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action," said one person on a Twitter page.

Then, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat, called the map "toxic rhetoric," but stopped short of linking her to the shooting. 

Since then, Sarah Palin, besides posting a few messages on her own social networking websites and a brief statement to Glenn Beck, a colleague at Fox News, has not spoken out about this.  Nor has she managed to squelch the negative talk that somehow blames her for the shooting.

"This rhetoric accusing Sarah Palin is politicizing a tragedy and Sarah Palin needs to say that," says Glenn Selig, founder of the PR firm The Publicity Agency (www.thepublicityagency.com), which specializes in crisis management PR and advises political candidates.  "Sarah Palin never in any way shape or form told anyone to shoot anyone and she needs to make that clear. She also needs to say that the fact that some are suggesting otherwise absolutely disgusts her and should digust anyone regardless of politics."

A CBS poll released today found that 57 percent of those surveyed don’t think that “heated” political rhetoric prompted the shooting in Arizona.

"Sarah Palin I believe needs to passionately defend her right to free speech and that there was nothing wrong with putting symbols on a map--that what she and her political action committee was doing was within the realm of decent and moral and fair within the context of political battles.  She should stick to her guns so to speak and end the nonsense," says Selig.

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SOURCE: The Publicity Agency

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