Misdirection has long been a short-term cure for crisis.

Over 100 years ago, while then-President Teddy Roosevelt sought to bust the Standard Oil trust, its chair, John D. Rockefeller, handed dimes to chidren from the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.  In more recent days, art has imitated such life in movies like “Wag the Dog,” where a fake war helped a damaged politician limp to victory.

Ultimately, the root cause of the crisis is adressed or it symptoms — a loss of confidence, market share and standing — reassert themselves in more virulent form.  The lesson to be learned is that admitting the problem, making the changes necessary to meet it and moving on in more transparent fashion may be a hit to the bottom line and the ego, but is far less expensive than sweeping it under the rug.  Witness Enron and Arthur Andersen.

Too many executives of the companies they lead and of the public relations agencies they employ continue to think of this as less of an immutable law than an unfortunate anecdote.  How else can you explain how Burson Marsteller created a crisis when it  mis-handled its assignment for Facebook even though it has a history of working through such crises?

It is a good thing that executives don’t have to go it alone in fixing the problem.  As the world — and each of us in it — becomes more fluent in the social media, there is no rug to cover what otherwise might be swept under it.  It is essential to align a company’s actions with its stated intention.

Which gets us back to misdirection.  As the word suggests, it is the wrong way to go.