Celebrity chef Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa -- Food Network mega-star, bestselling cookbook author and posh convenience products maven -- has cooked up a real PR disaster for herself.

Last Friday, we learned she’d declined three years’ worth of requests by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to meet with Enzo, a six-year-old battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia who became a huge fan while watching her show during treatment. 

Enzo’s mother, who writes an alternately heartbreaking and inspiring blog about his struggle, posted the news.  It got picked up first by TMZ, then by other media and … well ... flambéed from there.

Initially, Garten’s rep said definitively that the chef had passed because her schedule was too busy (apparently, for three full years), she gets too many requests and did other charity work....

Last week, Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan each treated us to fresh iterations of one of the industry’s most enduring traditions:  the Hollywood Smoke Signal.

Whether hand-planted in a favored media outlet or made available to the masses, the HSS is a highly-produced, seemingly-spontaneous publicity opportunity for a celebrity or executive to send a message.

One HSS we witnessed last week is not what everyone assumes.  The other raises ethical, policy and potential legal problems.

When Lohan showed up February 9 for her arraignment on grand theft felony charges, she was wearing a Spanx-tight, thigh-high bright white dress that was universally criticized.  Some said she hadn’t learned anything in rehab and that the dress was more appropriate for Bar Marmont than LA County’s Airport Courthouse.

...

Lots of questions are being asked in light of the Keith Olbermann drama. Among them, whether news organizations should break their longtime, universal taboo and permit journalists to make political contributions. Or whether those in newsrooms who publicly advocate one political POV deserve a new job category and set of rules.

I’ve got a question that no one’s raised: Why are TV journalists so stupid?

This is not to imply that their print and digital siblings are dramatically smarter; they’re just generally lower-profile. But when a TV anchor, correspondent, analyst, commentator or host does something dumb, media critics and bloggers happily find themselves handed several days’ good copy.

In the last week, Olbermann handed out lots of copy. But set aside the philosophical debate over whether he should have the right to make such...

Sometimes the most effective PR is the smallest and least expected.

Two great examples of this theory occurred recently within CNN: the exit of Rick Sanchez and the grace of Don Lemon.

Sanchez’s Sept. 30 comments and CNN’s presumptive termination of him the following day are old news. But some normally perceptive media critics are now complaining that CNN didn’t use the occasion to issue a substantive statement excoriating the anchorman and decrying his remarks alleging bigotry within his own company and the media industry.

Instead, CNN’s comment was terse:  “Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well."

These...