Eric Starkman is president and founder of Starkman & Associates. Before becoming a PR guru, he was a reporter and editor, working for The Wall Street Journal, The Toronto Star and The Montreal Gazette. Before starting S&A, he oversaw the corporate communications practices for Morgen-Walke Associates. We talk about Olsen twins, boycotts and playing chicken with lawsuits.

When a headline-making personal or corporate crisis hits, there's a tendency with lawyers to circle the wagons and maintain radio silence. What does involving legal teams do?

Lawyers are responsible for ensuring their clients are legally protected and from a legal point of view, maintaining radio silence is often the easiest and safest route to go. However, attorneys experienced with high-profile crises know that a client's media coverage can have a material impact on their legal proceedings and work to develop a thoughtful strategy that protects their clients on both the legal and PR fronts.

Does silence ever work?

There are circumstances when maintaining silence is the best strategy, particularly in a highly controversial situation where someone has been accused of wrongdoing. Also, during times of tragedy and loss, speaking to reporters could be misconstrued by the public as undignified and opportunistic.

Is it ethical for PR firms to band together and threaten to collectively boycott a medium simply because they don't like the content? Rumor has it that's what happened in the entertainment field when some shows were planning to show footage of Heath Ledger at a drug party.

Although I'm not privy to what led to the collective boycott, I suspect — indeed I hope — it had to do with the exploitative nature of the footage. Mr. Ledger's death was a tragedy and showing footage of him using drugs is distasteful and ghoulish. It serves no purpose other than to be sensationalistic. Entertainers and their PR firms have as much right, individually and collectively, as John or Jane Q. Public to voice their dissent when they disapprove of proposed TV programming.

What is the downside to a tactic like that?

While there can be downsides to taking the moral high ground (which is what I believe the PR firms in question were doing), the upside, by definition, will always vastly outweigh them. That said, there is safety in numbers, so doing it en masse was a smart way for the PR firms to show their unity and diminish the risk of any significant repercussions for the firms and their current and future clients (such as being blacklisted by the boycotted outlet’s affiliates).

Lawyers and PR people often make threats against the media. Often the threat takes the form of litigation or a promise to deny access to clients in the future. You criticized Mary-Kate Olsen's attorney recently for doing it. Is there ever a time you think that that strategy would work?

While the specifics of the crisis will always dictate the best course of action, legal threats can be a powerful tool when justified. Corporations, particularly those that are publicly traded, can successfully sue reporters if they write erroneous stories that damage their businesses or reputations. A strongly worded letter from a company's corporate counsel outlining his or her concerns about the substance of a story in advance of it being published can be quite compelling and persuasive.

Ms. Olsen’s attorney came off rather heavy-handed with his threat. Given that the story was about the NYPD not questioning his client because of her "high-powered" attorneys, the threat of a lawsuit only reinforced the premise of the Post's story. It is a lot more difficult for a celebrity — particularly one who makes regular appearances in the gossip columns — to sue for damages than a corporation. So, if your "case" is weak, threatening a newspaper editor usually serves to simply fire them up. Truthfully, when I was a reporter and someone threatened me with a lawsuit, I considered it a badge of honor.