The bank's internal communications chief, Ray O'Rourke , has a background in crisis PR from his days as an executive at Burson-Marsteller, where he represented Pan Am Airlines in the Lockerbie air disaster and Perrier in its more recent benzene fiasco.

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Take Tom Cruise, who was beset in a PR crisis before Suri entered the world.

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Though coolly saying it will appeal the verdict and expected to win, it's clear that Morgan Stanley (nyse: MWD - news - people ) is bunkering down in crisis PR mode.

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While I can respect that such communications are not, typically, for public consumption, Ari finds himself in a position where his crisis management firm is in need of some crisis management and, as any PR executive will tell you, the best crisis management usually involves simply telling the truth as quickly as possible.

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Sure, you could try to solve your crisis by firing your ad and PR agencies, in the hopes that a new buzz campaign would bring you radically different results.

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During the initial reaction to a PR crisis, it is vitally important to ensure that, although it is a challenge in the Internet age to exert any control over the general discourse, communications within your sphere of influence are tightly controlled.

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