Who Had the Worse Week?

First, a reminder that I avoid political gaffes when it comes to my lists of the biggest PR mistakes. If I didn’t, there wouldn’t have been room for anything else over the past 10 years (this week alone would have been Joe Biden, Greg Abbott, Tina Peters, Andrew Cuomo, John Cox, the State of Alabama, Dan Patrick, Gavin Newsom, Lauren Boebert, Gettr, Michelle Fiscus and a dozen others). Not to mention everyone views whether political issues qualify as PR gaffes through their own partisan lens. Now, on to the this week’s list:

• A 9Wants to Know investigation found that Colorado’s Exposure App that is designed to alert residents when someone in close proximity to them tests positive for COVID-19 only worked 8% of the time. While the app was free from the Association of Public Health Laboratories, the state spent $875,000 to market and maintain the service.
• Hassan Moustafa, the president of the International Handball Federation, said new rules were “very likely” after the federation was heavily criticized for requiring female players to wear bikinis in official play. Adding attention to the issue, the singer Pink offered to pay a 1,500 euro fine the federation levied against Norway’s women’s beach handball team for wearing shorts instead of bikini bottoms in a recent tournament.
• Snopes, the gold standard of separating fact from fiction in our Internetified world, “has retracted 60 articles after a BuzzFeed News investigation found that the site’s co-founder plagiarized from news outlets as part of a strategy intended to scoop up web traffic.”
• Detroit Tigers TV analyst Jack Morris has been suspended indefinitely after he used a mocking and racist Asian accent on air to talk about L.A. Angels star pitcher/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani.
• An apology for disparaging statements about women, Jewish people and Haiti by newly announced Jeopardy host Mike Richards shows why you shouldn’t let the person in charge of vetting candidates pick himself.
• Data breaches have become so common that they rarely make big headlines these days, but T-Mobile’s latest one involving customer data for 40 million past and current customers managed to do just that.
• The US Open tennis tournament begins in a little more than a week, and already some of the biggest draws such as Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and 2020 winner Dominic Thiem have withdrawn due to injuries. Combine that with women’s stars Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka having trouble advancing deep in tournaments recently, and it could be a dud of a tournament this year.

So, who won the week?

• Denver Broncos QB Drew Lock had the game of his life last weekend, potentially heading off a likely career-ending challenge by Teddy Bridgewater. We’ll see if he can keep it up this weekend.
• The Paralympic Games begin Tuesday in Tokyo, and Colorado Public Radio profiles 11 competitors who are from Colorado. If you haven’t watched the Paralympics before, do yourself a favor and tune in. NBC is broadcasting 1,200 hours, and it is even more inspiring than the Olympics.
• Zaidy’s, a legendary Denver Jewish deli that closed during the pandemic, has re-opened thanks to support from the Appel family (the founders of the OxiClean empire).