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- <text id=91TT2047>
- <title>
- Sep. 16, 1991: Business Notes:Corporate Image
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Sep. 16, 1991 Can This Man Save Our Schools?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 49
- Business Notes
- CORPORATE IMAGE
- On Second Thought...</hdr><body>
- <p> Maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. Procter & Gamble
- brass thought they had a right, based on an obscure Ohio law, to
- use local authorities in their hunt for corporate leaks. What
- they didn't foresee was that the company would come out looking
- so bad. After two insider-sourced stories saying P&G's food
- division was troubled appeared in the Wall Street Journal last
- June, P&G complained to Cincinnati police, who examined hundreds
- of thousands of local phone records to see who called the home
- and office of Alecia Swasy, who wrote the articles.
- </p>
- <p> No one was prosecuted, but P&G found itself buried under
- a barrage of negative publicity--so much so that last week P&G
- chairman Edwin Artzt circulated a letter to employees calling
- the situation an "embarrassing experience." P&G, he admitted,
- had "made an error in judgment" in pursuing police assistance
- and "triggered reactions that reflected negatively on the
- company." Said Artzt: "We created a problem larger than the one
- we were trying to solve." Still, he stressed the need to protect
- company information and asked employees to be "more diligent"
- in doing so.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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