subtle blunder on Exxon's part was it's indifference about public relations. The official stance Exxon took was that it didn't really care about public relations, because it had more important +wings to do, like cleaning up, making sure such an accident never happened again, and so on. Yet all the while, it was practicing a kind of transparent, ham-fisted public relations effort which only succeeded in further infuriating the press and the public. Exxon offered Alaska Public Radio $32,000 for expenses incurred in covering the spill, a bribe obvious to everyone but the company. It showcased an essentially pristine strip of shoreline where the spillage rolled back into the water on its own, and an Alaskan official watched cleanup crews move around to be present when the media arrived (Yagoda 48-51).
Exxon's posture was one of defensiveness and antagonism, which was the worst it could have chosen. At one point, an Exxon spokesman whined that, "TV showed the same dead bird for two weeks." Exxon chose to show an oddly upbeat film about the spill in which
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