The original story was best summed up by PR Daily “With a single tweet, Lance Armstrong’s PR machine blunts ’60 Minutes’ segment“. Armstrong, pre-empting a 60 Minutes expose alledging he took performance-enhancing drugs during his career issued one small, but perfectly formed soundbite via his Twitter account.
“20+ year career. 500 drug controls worldwide, in and out of competition. Never a failed test. I rest my case.”
With nearly 3 million followers the message was quickly disseminated across the web to fans and news outlets alike. The move was admired as an outstanding use of social media to bypass mainstream media and tell your own story direct to audiences everywhere.
Facts4Lance.com removed
The tweet was followed up by a website called Facts4Lance.com covering a range of topics including
- HAMILTON IS NOT CREDIBLE & ANDREU IS NOT CREDIBLE (referring to the former team mates who contributed to the story)
- WASTED TAXPAYER $$$
- JOURNALISTIC ETHICS
But, as I and other sites noticed last week, Facts4Lance.com has now been taken offline. Why? Cycling News has a quote (I’m not sure of their source) from Armstrong’s lawyers stating
“Now that the heart of the “60 Minutes” story has been completely debunked by subsequent revelations, there’s no need for the CBS-focused site any longer,” said Armstrong’s lawyer, Mark Fabiani.
This seems contrary to reputation management online best practice. With many Search results still indexing the ‘did he or didn’t he?’ question from May’s CBS feature surely it would make sense to have kept the site online and grown authority over time to out rank the rumour stories online as well as any future allegations if claims resurfaced. Or is there more legal wrangling at play behind the scenes that we’re not privy to?
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