It’s easy to see irony in the stiff sentence recently handed down to public relations exec Douglas Dowie.
He may have hurt himself with some really bad PR.
The former executive at Fleishman-Hillard received a 42-month federal prison sentence on Jan. 29 for defrauding the City of Los Angeles out of $325,000. By contrast, the other executive sentenced in the case, John Stodder, got 15 months after accepting responsibility. The third conspirator, Steve Sugerman, was sentenced to probation and community service in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors.
The prosecution saw Dowie as “the big fish,” and as the top executive, his role in the crime was more significant than that of his associates. But there was another difference. He steadfastly some would say arrogantly proclaimed his innocence from the beginning of the trial and has continued to do so. He went so far as to deny any guilt in an exclusive L.A. Daily News story following his conviction, and at the sentencing hearing, he said “I am innocent, and I will appeal.”
Whether it is righteousness or arrogance may be irrelevant.
When accused of a crime, “you don’t say something in public until you’ve fully analyzed what the consequences might be,” counseled Michael Mallow, an attorney at the firm Loeb & Loeb in Los Angeles. “One thing you would expect from a PR professional is to understand all the positives and negatives, but I’m not sure the negatives were contemplated in this case.”
Federal crimes have sentencing guidelines, but a judge can deviate from them. One frequent rationale for a reduced sentence is contrition and acceptance of responsibility, Mallow explained.
Instead, Dowie insisted on his innocence so completely that Judge Gary Feess at one point said the executive had “lost his moral compass.”
“I might have recommended that he try and deflect some of the initial public disdain by positioning this as a possible error and announce that he was looking into any errors,” said Torin Roher of Roher Public Relations in Woodland Hills. “By taking this position, he appears far less arrogant and more human. It’s possible, depending upon the evidence, that he might have faced lesser charges if he’d ‘looked into’ the charges and then announced that there had been an unfortunate error.”
But in a high profile and political case such as this one, defendants often play to another constituency than the judge and jury, and that may have been a factor with Dowie.
“The public relations industry doesn’t want to hear from Doug Dowie that he is guilty,” said Robb Hecht, a marketing consultant and adjunct professor with the City University of New York. “Perhaps in private Doug Dowie admits guilt; but in public and for the record, he is forever not guilty. In this sense, to hold to one’s word and not flip-flop can be a very powerful technique.”
If Dowie, 58, expects to re-enter the business where he made his living, perhaps he made the best long-term decision. But attorney Mallow believes he could have split the difference between innocence and acceptance of responsibility.
“You can say that at the time, you believed your actions were lawful. But since people who reviewed the facts think otherwise, you accept their decision,” said Mallow. “That’s how you walk the fence that you didn’t knowingly do something wrong, but now that the jury has deemed it wrong, you take responsibility for it.”
Dowie’s contention of innocence will likely play better in Hollywood, as well. While waiting to surrender to authorities on March 30, Dowie penned a screenplay. The City Hall thriller, “Anonymous Sources,” has been optioned by John Sanger.
Lakers, Dodgers Defined
Time Warner Cable and CBS Corp.’s KCAL-TV (Channel 9) have launched KCAL 9 HD, a new high-definition channel available on cable systems in the L.A. market.
Located at channel 409 on the Time Warner system, KCAL 9 HD debuted with the Feb. 2 Los Angeles Lakers game.
All of KCAL’s 2006-07 regular season Lakers games, plus any Lakers playoff games on KCAL, will be produced in high definition. In addition, the station plans to deliver all of its 2007 Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games in high def.
Also, KCAL 9 HD and sister station CBS 2 HD will begin producing 11 hours of live local newscasts each weekday beginning this spring when the stations move into a state-of-the art broadcast facility in Studio City.
The stations join KNBC-TV (Channel 404), KABC-TV (407), KTTV-TV (411) and KCET-TV (412) on the local HD cable lineup.
“It’s the dawn of an exciting new era in local sports broadcasting,” said Don Corsini, President of KCAL 9 and CBS 2. If you don’t have a high-definition TV, of course, the dawn won’t be streaming through your window.
News & Notes
JMPR in Woodlands Hills has won the Bentley Motors Inc. account. JMPR will work on new product introductions, auto shows, concours events and sports sponsorships. Headquartered in Auburn Hills, Mich., Bentley is owned by Volkswagen. The L.A. office of 5W Public Relations has won two new clients: Emak Worldwide and Davidandgoliath Advertising. The publicly traded Emak is a trio of marketing agencies. Davidandgoliath is an advertising agency for clients Kia Motors America Inc., Universal Hollywood, Outback Steakhouse, DishTV and Re/Max. Pollack PR Marketing Group has landed a contract with the USC Keston Institute for Public Finance & Infrastructure Policy. PPMG will implement a regional and national media relations campaign focused on infrastructural problems facing California and the federal government.
Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at
[email protected]
, or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.
