Any incident that is newsworthy will no doubt attract a combination in varying degree of print, TV and radio media interest.

Reputations take years to create but only a few moments to destroy. If the incident is serious, involves public interest, injuries, fatalities or serious environmental damage the media will take an interest.

This is a short checklist of what to consider before and during the incident.

Before the Incident - Planning

Actually do some planning, don't leave it to the last minute or assume you won't be newsworthy.

Create a media action plan with key roles, personnel and procedures etc.

Create and maintain a list of newsrooms and media contacts etc.

Have some ready-made press releases and statements in addition to background information on your organisation including pictures, videos and relevant documents. The media will not only be interested in the incident but what the organisation does, its locations and other information. They will find this information anyway; you might as well make the journalists lives easier and have some control over the information.

Whist it would be unfeasible to maintain a library of relevant information for every incident scenario know where information can be found and make sure it is accessible to the incident management team.

Create and maintain a list of key staff with contact details, deputies etc.

Designate a media contact person and if possible make sure they receive some media training.

Remind all staff that any enquiries from the media should be directed to the incident management team, spell out that unguarded comments can cause havoc and there is no such thing as an off the record conversation.

Try to understand the different requirements, schedules and behaviour of the different types of media. Even minor items like communications facilities, power and refreshments for the media can make a significant difference.

Create and test a means of communicating to the media that does not complex IT systems or systems that may be caught up in the incident. If the incident is a company-wide email outage maintain some offline non internal accounts for example.

During the Incident - Doing

Find your nominated media representatives.

Log all and any contact with and responses to any media enquiries.

Don't be scared of getting in front of the camera/microphone. The media are not your enemy, they have a job to do and with skilful handling can assist with the incident. With or without you, the media will get their story. If you are cooperative, open and proactive the media will tend to believe you.

Rumours are your enemy, get information out and get it out fast.

Remind all staff that media enquiries should come through the incident management team.

Even if there is no positive news, don't stay silent. The very fact that you are communicating that something is in fact being done is better than saying nothing.

Ensure key stakeholders know about important information before the media, there is nothing worse than hearing bad news from the media that directly affects you.

Ensure that any release in the early stages of an incident includes a schedule or interval for future releases and keep to that schedule.

As the incident progresses adapt the means of communicating with the media.

NEVER EVER LIE

The basic requirements of a media enquiry will be what happened, how it happened and what are you doing about it.

The basic response that can be tailored depending on the situation is as follows.

Document author: Harvey Fawcett

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed