Mike Marn of the blog Marn’s Market sent me this story about Exxon working hard to keep a major oil discovery in the Gulf secret until it was forced to reveal it.
The PR News website quotes PR professor Judith Tenney as saying:
They are not open and transparent, and we consumers let them get away with it because they keep making buckets of money. We just have to wait for the next crisis to see what happens,” says Tenney, who adds that even if another Valdez disaster occurs, don’t expect any major PR changes from Exxon.
BTW, PR News has a good Twitter feed if you’re interested in industry news.
Note that it’s not consumers necessarily being hurt here, it’s Exxon’s own stockholders.