Freedom Industries

Stephen & Charles

Background
West Virginia is 6th in the nation in chemical manufacturing.
Freedom Industries was a chemical company in a town full of chemical companies.
Freedom Inc. was a “B2B SME” meaning they very rarely communicate with publics. This
means that they rarely communicated, directly or indirectly, with the public, and therefore
lacked the infrastructure to do so effectively.
Being a small to medium-sized enterprise, Freedom Inc. conducts many things differently
than a Fortune 500 company.
ex. Crisis comm strategies, access to resources and management values.
The Story
Around 8:15 am Jan. 9, 2014. Residents of Elk River reported strong smells of
licorice.

Due to negligent, cost cutting safety practices, they dumped thousands of gallons
of toxic sludge into the drinking water.

Their PR response was quite bad.

Radio Silence
After the spill was discovered, and even after the state of emergency was
declared, Freedom Industries waited an entire 24 hours to issue any kind of
statement.

1. What do you think they intended to do by remaining silent? Did they have a
plan at all?
2. What were the actual effects of their lack of communication? How might
their silence affect the disaster response?
The Interview
The day after the spill, Freedom Inc. hired a
PR firm to manage the crisis. Shortly
thereafter, President Gary Southern held a
press conference following the release of a
short statement.
During the interview he seemed distracted, 1. What does this reveal about
and told the audience he was tired, and the media’s role in PR?
tried to leave after five minutes. Also, he
was drinking a bottle of water, which made 2. What could Mr. Southern
the media very angry. have done to make a better
impression?
Freedom Industries President speaks to reporters.

https://youtu.be/hAGixCOj8bg
Abandon Ship

After this apocalyptic interview, Freedom Inc.’s PR group Charles Ryan

Associates dropped them as a client. Freedom Inc. then continued their radio
silence.

1. Did Charles Ryan make the right decision from a business perspective, an
ethical perspective, or both? Or neither?
2. Was Charles Ryan justified in his decision? Was is right from a PR standpoint,
or an ethical standpoint?
3. Had they stayed, what could they have possibly done to salvage Freedom
Inc’s reputation? What about their own?
Epilogue
It goes without saying that they went bankrupt. In the face of over 30 lawsuits
and bearing public image that no one would touch with a barge pole, they went
belly up after repaying only a sliver of the damage they caused.

While their bad response was partly responsible, they were also engaged in
loads of blatant safety violations. Many senior executives had faced legal trouble
before, including jail time.

1. Was there anything that PR workers could have done to prevent this?
Ethically speaking, should they have? Is it even ethical to help a company like
this?
Discussion Questions
1. What was the worst thing that Freedom Inc. did? (they did a lot wrong)
2. What ethical processes could have helped Freedom Inc.’s many PR missteps?
3. Were different ethical frameworks relevant to different parties?
4. Was the journalists’ hostility towards Southern warranted?
5. A lot of the problem came from terrible, easily-circumvented regulation of
MCHM. Would it be ethical for a public relations campaign to have taken the
stance that the EPA and adjacent agencies were at fault, not Freedom Inc.?