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Why Sony 'black eye' won't go away: Crisis manager

Damage control at Sony
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Damage control at Sony

The November hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment and subsequent release of private emails that have rocked Hollywood won't be a knockout blow for the studio, a leading crisis manager told CNBC on Monday.

"It's a black eye" for Sony, Eric Dezenhall, co-founder of Dezenhall Resources, said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "People simply enjoy talking about it. It's a lot of fun to see a big shot go down and get a poke in the eye."

There's little that Sony can do to calm the media frenzy as long as there's a "drip, drip of allegations," he said. "There's something that makes people exuberant to see the inner workings and the humanity and the flaws and the pettiness of a big enterprise. And that's why you can't make it disappear."

Sony is trying, demanding that several news organizations, including The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, stop reporting information contained in the data that hackers stole.

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But the anonymous blast on the Internet of private emails, along with personal data of Sony employees and contractors and yet-to-be released films and movie scripts, is a sign of the times, said Dezenhall. "The old type of crisis were product defects and product recalls. Now it's all about seeing how the ugly sausage gets made."

Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal attend the Sony Pictures Classic Annual Golden Globe Awards Party held at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, 2011.
Jean Baptiste Lacroix | WireImage | Getty Images

While the company won't be hurt too badly by the fallout, he said, it's a different story for Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal. She has issued an apology for remarks made about President Barack Obama via email with producer Scott Rudin, who has also apologized. In a racially tinged exchange, they speculated on the president's imagined movie preferences.

Read MoreSony to the media: Stop reporting on our leaks!

"Racially tinged comments tend to be the cyanide pill of scandal. There's really not a great history of people recovering from have made racially tinged comments," said Dezenhall, but added he does not believe Pascal should be fired. "The idea that firing is the solution to everything is something that needs to be revisited."

"In this day and age none of us could survive the kind of scrutiny that she's going through," he argued. "There's nobody in the world that hasn't sent a stupid email of some kind. And that's what makes this the new crisis of our of age. It's not just big companies that are vulnerable. We're all vulnerable."

Disclosure: Dezenhall told CNBC that he does not and has never represented Sony. He said he's had entertainment-related clients in the past, but he said his business is not active in that space. He said he has "no conflict" in talking about the situation facing Sony.