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ChineseWhy Denise Tyrrell did the right thing
Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell being consoled by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky Friday after the Chatsworth train collision. Photo Mel Melcon, Los Angeles Times.
Aside from the focus on the victims of this horrible tragedy, attention has been turned to the travails of Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell. After breaking down during a press conference Friday night, she stated the results of the preliminary investigation: that Metrolink was responsible for the incident due to the engineer failing to stop at a red signal. That triggered a firestorm of coverage, from angry denounciations by the union, to a backdoor backstabbing from the chair of the Metrolink board: – all while the CEO remained curiously silent, until Monday morning when he belatedly defended Tyrrell, but only after she resigned in disgust. Others have called the announcement ill-timed, while others have claimed a power struggle between the NTSB and Metrolink staff. Lots of comments on the matter, too, including the most comments I’ve ever seen to the Bottleneck Blog.
But I think she did the right thing here. As she stated in the statement (which for whatever reason I can’t find online), Metrolink is a family. I’ve talked to Board members, staff, and passengers, and there is a unique bond between the passengers and the staff, which has survived previous incidents, annual fare increases, and other issues. And sometimes, you have to face up to the reality of what happened, and try to start the healing process. The odds of the story changing are very slim, probably slimmer than the chance of the collision happening in the first place.
After an incident, there is a lot of speculation. Could it be the Union Pacific’s fault? A case of terrorism? (After all, almost simultaneously to when she made the statement, a special Board meeting was held regarding a potential threat to public safety.) Tyrrell needed to reassure commuters by telling all of the facts she knew. NTSB investigations usually take over a year and at the end they tell everyone what they already know. Meanwhile, a lot of goodwill is lost. Should she have kept her mouth shut because of the liability? I mentioned that in my original comment, but some experts state that, buy quickly admitting responsiblity, they can insulate themselves from additional punitive damages.
Local transit activist Dana Gabbard notes the insularity of the Metrolink Board, which you can take a glimpse at by reading the minutes. Metrolink management made the right call to go with what they knew at the time.
And Tyrrell made the right call to resign. In an interview with CBS, she chose to resign rather than backtrack over something that she knew – and was told by Metrolink CEO Solow – was not true. The Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics stresses the need to advocate informed debate, to be honest with the public, and to be loyal to the CEO, David Solow, to whom she works for. Unfortunately, many public relations professionals don’t care about “free flow of information”, “disclosure of information”, or “enhancing the profession”. But Ms. Tyrrell did, and for that, I, and many other Southern Californians who ride the rails, are grateful for it. Let’s hope the other public relations professionals at Metrolink can keep the dialogue open with the public about the changes that need to be made after the incident.
Discussion
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You can find Denise Tyrrell’s statement in a video link in an LA Times article on September 16, headlined “Metrolink spokeswoman resigns amid criticism over blaming engineer for crash”.
I agree with you about Tyrrell’s statement. It should go down in “good communication” history alongside the Tylenol CEO owning responsibility after the Tylenol poisonings.
When you look at her statement carefully, it does not appear that she is “blaming” the engineer. Perhaps she should have fine-tuned the statement to make that even more clear. But what she did say lines up exactly with the statements of the NTSB official Ms. Higgins, also emphasized as preliminary.
I think Denise Tyrrell is a hero. I found it incredibly refreshing that, in the wake of this tragic accident, she stepped up, and told the plain, unvarnished truth. We need to see more behavior like that in the PR profession. It’s disappointing that she had to resign – I don’t blame her one bit. Metrolink should have been proud of her, and given her full support. Sure, the NTSB wants to complete their investigation before making a definative statement, and they should. However, the survivors, the families and friends of the victims, and the general public benefit greatly from clear, open communication about the event. There was nothing about her statement that compromised the NTSB investigation, and I thought she made it quite clear that the investigation might turn up other evidence, leading to a better understanding of what happened.
First the snarky comment, please dismiss after reading: See what telling the truth about transit gets you?
Okay, now Ms. Tyrell is indeed a hero. People need the truth and transparency and honesty and information. When service resumes I may make a “useless” round trip to show solidarity with those principals.
Watching the video again I have to wonder if the goal of Saturday’s press event was to accept the blame. I still find it odd that nearly everyone who covered the event took the angle that Metrolink was trying to blame the private contractor. I wasn’t in LA at the time, but when people where I was found out where I was from and what I did they wanted to talk about the crash and ALL of them thought it was weird the agency was trying to blame the engineer.
If I’m wrong, sorry Denise and Metrolink.
I really don’t understand the perspective that “blaming the contractor” is different than “blaming Metrolink”. Isn’t Metrolink responsible for hiring contractors and making sure they do their job right? If in my job I hire a contractor and that contractor fucks up, I am not somehow absolved from blame just because another individual caused the fuck up. Personally, I would feel guilty and worthy of the blame because I made a mistake in hiring the contractor.
Look, she’s a media relations professional. I watch the press conference (which I hadn’t been able to do when I had written the post at Streetsblog) and I get it. But if she didn’t get that she was setting the agency up to look bad by not coming out and saying “this is our fault” then she made a mistake. If she did know that and didn’t say it, then she also made a mistake.
A lot of the shitstorm that hit Metrolink this weekend came from the International and National press (once the press smells blood in the water…) and it was all because they watched that press conference and thought Metrolink was trying to shift the blame. That there were literally hundreds of articles that all expressed that opinion has to fall on the person who led the event.
PS – Hi, Fred! My email to you is bouncing, could you drop me a line sometime?
I understand what you’re saying in that she, as a media relations professional, made a mistake because clearly the media, eager for blood as you said, took the “blame the engineer” angle to mean “Metrolink is not to blame” which, as described in my last comment, I don’t buy.
What I mean is that if she said, “you can blame Metrolink” that would mean nothing to me personally, because it was clear that it was Metrolink’s fault regardless. Either Metrolink’s subcontractor or equipment had failed, she simply specified that it wasn’t the equipment. I mean, if she had said “this accident happened because of a broken signal” would that have been Metrolink attempting to shift the blame from themselves to an inanimate light bulb?
Anyways, hi Damien, I will hit you up with an email soon.
It doesn’t really matter what she said. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
“No comment.” = Metrolink is hiding something.
“Engineer ran the red.” = Trying to BLAME A DEAD MAN
No matter what happened, Metrolink is screwed either way. Let’s say the dude had a heart attack. Who could have predicted that? Metrolink still sued. What do they do, give all their engineers angiograms?
However, there are ways of handling a press conferences that let’s the media and everyone know that they are cooperating with the NTSB, Union Pacific and victims of the killed families without putting blame on yourself without the full investigation.
A classic example with the airlines happended with AA Flight 191 in 1979 (thankfully my Cousin cancelled that flight). When it first occured the Manufacturer of the DC-10 took the partial blame publically for the accident because of a press conference by the NTSB suggesting that a broken bolt on the engine caused the plane to crash.
However as the investigation lingered on it turned out that it wasn’t the Manufacturer’s fault at all rather faulty and questionable maintenance practices that caused that bolt to be broken and it led to the crash. By the time it was revealled the public and business outcry for Douglas was too late to rebound from.
The moral of this story is don’t jump to conclusions too soon without enough facts, just present what you know to the public and the investigation thus far and get that info out as quickly as possible.
Jerard just said what I wanted to better than I did.
It wasn’t the timing of the event, it might not have been the intent of the event, but it was the delivery of the information and what info was delivered that was the problem.
We now know that Metrolink has been opposed to mandating for railroads safety devices that would have prevented the crash. The timing of the engineer blaming, before the NTSB was even close to finishing their investigation screams of trying to get ahead of the news. If that wasn’t their intent, again, I’m sorry, but based on what information I have I see, at best, a bungled pr attempt.
[...] has posted an opinion piece in support of Tyrrell which also serves as a thoughtful reflection on the nature of Metrolink as an organization that is [...]
Denise Tyrrell is an awesome individual. She did the right thing, PERIOD.
We NEED more people like her DESPERATELY in today’s day and age. America seems horribly short of individuals of such character and honesty.
As for the media, they’ve done a relatively piss poor job of covering the incident. It took me 2 days before I actually read the engineer wasn’t an Amtrak Contractor, most reports I read was the engineer was either a MetroLink employee or an Amtrak employee. Then after reading dozens of news articles someone finally mentioned he worked for some 3rd party contractor.
In addition to that they didn’t even report the location right initially, not sure who it was, I should have kept track of the reports.
The two things I know for sure, is because of Denise MetroLink handled this in a very honest and honorable way. UP also was relieved of responsibility and the engineers fortunately made it out. Now if honesty can be maintained we can get appropriate funding for PTC on those tracks and elsewhere. The only dishonesty I’ve seen so far is the attempt to noose the freight railroads up for paying for the PTC after this. The public that demands the commuter rail and the funding mechanisms as such should cover most of that cost. As far as I’m concerned that is some pretty misdirected “solutions” by the Govenrment. Hopefully, whatever is done in the future, doesn’t harm the commuter or freight railroads too much, and we can get the solutions in place in an efficient and timely manner.
Fact checker: denise for mayor- an honest person who speaks the truth
I would agree that Denise did the right thing, however her execution on that was very poor and that is why all the hot water.
The other reason why one should never editorialize information as part of an investigation is because the very safe guards that need to be implimented and funded can be bargained here so that this accident based off of operating blindly doesn’t happen again so that the victims deaths won’t be in vain but used for a greater purpose.
As I’m writing new information is circulating on the very scheduling and work hours that the Engineer was working on that was approved by Federal Standards. That little bit of info is a key reason why Denise’s execution of relaying the info is harming us because there’s an opportunity to not place the blame but further safeguards to add a public layer of accountability on the federal level and allow for a fast track – with federal funding – ways to reduce this potential error.
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