An acquaintance pointed out at dinner last night that the public release of the Aldridge Commission’s final report will take place as preparations for the late President Reagan’s funeral approach their climax, and thus is in danger of being ignored. The day of the release and press conference, Thursday, is the same day Reagan’s body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda; the funeral will take place on Friday, with the federal government closing for the day. It would appear that most of the media’s bandwidth Thursday will be taken up with those events, with the closing of the G-8 summit absorbing most of the rest.
Although there’s no indication that the commission plans to delay the release of their report, it might be prudent from a public relations standpoint for them to wait until the following Monday, June 14. While the aerospace trade media, as well as those few reporters whose beat is primarily space, will be available to cover its release, the broader media will likely devote little attention to it; what coverage they can offer will be drowned out by other events. (A counterpoint is that its quite possible the broader media would give the commission’s report little coverage in any event.) NASA had planned to deliver a response to the report on Friday, which will almost certainly be delayed given the funeral and government closure that day.
One scenario would be to have the commission release its report Monday morning, and have NASA deliver its response that afternoon. This assumes that NASA would get a copy of the report in advance of its (delayed) public release. This might also provide some momentum and additional interest in the Centennial Challenges workshop Tuesday and Wednesday, particularly if the commission comes out as strongly in favor of prizes as has been rumored…
Update 3:30 pm June 7: According to both SPACE.com and the commission’s web site, the release of the report has been delayed until some time next week.
http://www.space.com/news/commission_delay_040607.html
How the PR is handled is no small thing here. Remember the commission on the future of the aerospace industry?? No? Neither did anyone else.
(Not the right thing to say for this crowd, I know; but, you understand…). When that report was released, even though it dealt with the ‘crown jewel’ industry of America…the Washington Post didn’t even carry it on the front page. Assuming that the press is going to act responsibly is not wise; it certainly won’t on a day/week when just about anything else happens, with the heard mentality there seems to be today. So I hope they work to get the PR..and its timing..right, so one way or another, it will mean something.
Certainly PR is important, but there are also a number of factors that will affect the publicity that are beyond their control:
-the perception among the press as to the importance of this report. (One thing that hurt the Aerospace committee was the perception that it was not an important group, no matter how important the subject.)
-the perception among the press of the importance of the report relevant to the overall implementation of the policy. There seems to be a growing perception in the press that the Vision on Space Exploration is in a holding pattern at least until the election.
-what else happens in the week. If it is a slow news week, this will get more play. How likely is it to be a slow news week? (Remember Iraq?)
It was hinted many months ago in the press that when the report was ultimately released the president would be involved somehow. That apparently seems unlikely and there have been no rumors of Bush giving a speech upon reception of the report. That diminishes its importance in the eyes of the press, but is not really within the control of the commission itself. Lots of people compete for the president’s time and attention.
I thought that there had been an announcement a few weeks ago that the president *will* be making a space speech this month (in the wake of the report release).
There is a danger of it being lost in the Reagan media frenzy, though, just as the Paine report was ignored because it had the bad luck to come out in the midst of the Challenger loss.
On May 10 this article appeared:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040510-125812-6719r
The article claimed that the Aldridge report would be released in July and that Bush would make a speech at that time. But the report is being released now and no word of a Bush speech has been mentioned associated with the release. So if Bush does give a speech on this, it will be sometime in the future.