Nothing is Gone Forever

The past few months our news and tabloids have been filled with celebrities and sports stars making racial comments or defending themselves from allegations of racial comments. Yesterday January Jones became the next victim to these allegations and quickly made a move to correct it.

January Jones participated in the highly popular hashtag on Instagram, Throwback Thursday, by posting a picture of one of her first modeling gigs. In the photo she was modeling a sweater and standing next to two young African Americans. Though the picture or title had no racial slurs or comments whatsoever, Jones received comments of criticism for the post being racial. Jones quickly removed the photo and replaced it with a solo shot of her modeling with this caption, "I had to swap my #tbt pics because I was receiving to many negative comments and assumptions. This forum should be a happy and fun place I had no patience for hate."

I thought that Jones handled this very well. It's clear that she never intended to make a racial statement but she didn't sit there and argue about that, instead she made a move to remove the photo and state her intentions. It was smart of her to quickly act on this and also make her intentions clear for all of her posts on Instagram.

When I read this, I was reminded of another lesson that we will learn again and again. Nothing is ever really deleted. Even though Jones acted quickly and removed the picture, we can still see that picture and it's out there. As a PR professional it's important to remember that because there maybe things that come back from the past that we will have to deal with for our client and that nothing is ever gone forever. We need to handle it well from the beginning and hopefully we won't have to worry about it again but if we do it will help the second time we have to deal with it.

Here's the article