At the darkest hour of his darkest night, his dazzling career disappearing as inevitably as air from a punctured balloon, Michael Bryant, or someone acting on his behalf, turned to a rogue assembly of political spinners to resuscitate his image.
Navigator Ltd., suddenly Toronto's highest-profile crisis-communications team, is at the sharp end of reputation management. They have a 24-hour hotline; their rates of roughly $600 an hour approach those at the top Bay Street law firms; and with the dramatic shift in the public perception of Mr. Bryant's case they are seen, for good or ill, as geniuses of media messaging.
But for the 48 hours at the peak of the crisis, their involvement did little to help Mr. Bryant, and may have hurt him slightly.
Several leading PR experts said they assumed that the story's changing tone was due at least in part to tips and sources provided to reporters by Navigator. They thought Navigator had encouraged reporters to ask about the movements of victim Darcy Allan Sheppard on the night he died, or pointed them in the direction of his 61 criminal charges, or raised doubts about who was the aggressor in reporters' minds.
That doesn't seem to be the case, however. Police spokesman Mark Pugash said no one from Navigator contacted police. Officers handled the media inquiries the way they would in any other case, he said. The journalists who worked on the story say they were never contacted by Navigator during their reporting. The salient facts – the victim's checkered history, his earlier confrontation with police and the investigators' focus on whether Mr. Sheppard tried to grab the wheel – were all uncovered by old-fashioned reporting, according to the journalists who worked the story.
“The police let the story out and it changed the complexion of the coverage thereafter,” said a rival PR executive.
“The Bryant thing is typical of Navigator. If you look at the stories in the early days they all seemed to be about how smart Navigator was … That's how they are. It's all about them.”
Many PR experts are critical of the way Navigator inserted themselves so conspicuously in the case, handing out press releases and generally letting it be known that they were now in charge of Mr. Bryant's communications. Most PR executives strive for invisibility at a time of crisis, they said.
“People are always suspicious they're being played or manipulated, so it's probably not a good idea to confirm it for them,” said one senior PR expert.
Daniel Tisch, president of Argyle Communications, said Navigator's conspicuousness helped fuel a predictable controversy, one that reinforced a narrative of haves and have-nots – the rich former attorney-general with high-priced PR juxtaposed with a poor, dead victim with no voice at all.
“You always want good PR, but you never want your PR to become the issue,” he said.
Navigator is led by conservative strategist Jaime Watt, who made his name as an architect of Mike Harris's Common Sense Revolution. He is also a convicted fraudster whose criminal past, which he did not disclose, forced him to resign from the Harris government in 1995. Since then, he has managed a number of Conservative campaigns.
The firm's other senior partner is Robin Sears, a former top back-room operative in the NDP and deputy secretary of the Socialist International who was nicknamed Vlad the Impaler when he was chief of staff in Bob Rae's government. He handled public relations for Brian Mulroney during the Oliphant inquiry.
Patrick Gossage, who runs Media Profile, another rival PR firm, said Navigator takes a criminal lawyer's view of public relations, that everyone deserves a robust defence.
“I think the rest of the PR fraternity respects that. They're very gutsy,” he said. “It's very difficult to judge how important they are in turning public opinion around. I think they've done a pretty workmanlike job.”
