The Biggest Blunders to Avoid

Complete Media Training Master Class - Confidence on Camera Crisis Media Training for the Aviation Industry
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Transcript

So what are the most common blunders people make when it comes to dealing with crisis in the media? There are four main categories I want to go over. The first is simply not being available. If you're not available to the media when they want you or you say something like no comment, that's a form of being unavailable. Huge, huge blunder. We'll go over that in more detail in a moment, the next giving answers that are overly complex, because then your enemies detractors can pull one part of it and make you look awful.

The next category of big, big blunders related to that one is reusing the negative words that the reporter has in his or her question, and putting that back into your answer. So you set yourself up in a very negative defensive way. The fourth and final big category of blunders being optimistic. I know that sounds odd, but if you're optimistic in an interview, and you make predictions, About when some problem is solved when the crisis is over. Big, big problem, you do want to avoid that. So let's look at all four now in more detail.

For starters, you have to be available when there is a crisis and the media wants you these days. If there's an explosion at your plant or your office, reporters could be there in 20 minutes. You cannot say, well, we are working on a statement come by tomorrow or you have to wait for our lawyers to approve this. You've got to be available now. Not next week, not tomorrow, not even an hour. You have to be available now.

Because reporters are going on the air. They're going to be broadcasting, they're going to be blogging, that radio broadcast is going out. Now. That reporter on the scene, even if it's their Skype video is going to be telling the world what's happening. It's either going to have your perspective. Or it's going to have the perspective of people who want to say you were wrong.

You were guilty. You were culpable. So you need to have somebody available now. And having somebody available can't simply be we have no comment at this time. It can't be No comment. It can't be on the advice of our lawyers.

We cannot comment because that's what people associate with guilty criminals who are afraid of incriminating themselves. You have to say something, not the reporter. It says, well, are these terrorists and you don't know there's nothing wrong with saying, we don't know our number one priority now is trying to protect our students, and make sure they're completely safe. And that's why we've contacted the local police, the state police and the FBI. Don't be afraid to say you don't know but then bridge to what you do know. Do not ever say no comment, or I can't comment.

Even if you can't comment on that particular subject raised by the reporter. You can always say something in the positive like, I'll be happy to come on that one. Once we get more information right now our focus is. So that's the first big blunder not being available at all. And they're just showing your front fence or a closed door or saying No comment. The second big blunder giving a statement, an answer to a question that's overly complex.

There's just too many details in there. And that allows the reporter editors, your enemies to pull one part out to make you look foolish or awful or insensitive. You do not want to do that. So for example, Tony Hayward, who was then chairman of BP was asked, How do you feel about this whole crisis? And he said, Well, I feel awful about what's happened in the Gulf, and I feel awful for the families who lost loved ones. I feel awful for the businesses.

The fisherman though tells that had been hard. Everything he said was great. It was perfectly fine. It was sensitive. It was showing compassion. It was a message BP wanted.

It was the same message they were putting out on their social media videos and their TV ads. Here's the problem. He didn't just stop there. At the end of all this stuff, which made him sound perfectly compassionate, he said, And hey, nobody wants their light bag more than I do. I want my life back. Boom.

That was the quote that reporters could use to make him look awful. Because they could say, here's this chairman of BP. people's lives were lost in the Gulf when this explosion happened. fishermen who were making a mere $19,000 a year now seen their income go to zero. hotels are almost going out of business. And here's this guy worth hundreds of millions of dollars who likes to go around on his yacht, saying he wants his life back It made him look awful.

And the problem wasn't necessarily what he said if you saw the whole press conference was that he gave an overly complex answer. If you just stopped with the first part and not gone on and on, he would have been completely fine. The next big category of longer the third category of blunders is using the reporter's words and being too literal in your responses. Again, back to the example of Tony Hayward in BP, he was asked, what about the lawsuits? What are you gonna do about the lawsuits at the time, fisherman hotels, people involved in tourism on the Gulf Coast, were suing BP for damages as they certainly had the right to do and is many of them eventually got large payments. He said all the right things.

He said, We have great sympathy for anyone with economically harm. We want to compensate anyone and everyone we've economically heart We know We've heard fishermen. We know that we've heard hotel owners, we want to make them whole again. Everything he said was right on the money. It was compassionate. It's what was approved from his legal department.

It's what they planned, it was compliant. Everyone was happy with it. But then the reporter had a follow up question. Yeah, but what about all the frivolous lawsuits? And Tony Hayward said, hey, it's America. Of course, there'll be frivolous lawsuits, but I just want to remind people, we want to compensate people fairly, we note back onto his message.

Well, guess what the only quote was out of the story, guess what the headlines were? tone a British Petroleum Chairman Tony Hayward says quote, it's America. Of course, there'll be frivolous lawsuits. So anyone looking at that, looking at the headline Looking at the quote says, here's a guy from another part of the world who's dumped billions of billions of gallons of oil into the Gulf off the US Coast. And he seems to be saying the biggest problem is our legal system frivolous lawsuits, people have lost their money, livelihood income, and he's saying it's frivolous. Again, if you looked at the whole press conference, he actually seemed very, very sympathetic.

He certainly wasn't implying that all lawsuits were frivolous. He was asked a very specific question. But you cannot during a crisis, beat that literal. Now, I'm not suggesting you dodge questions, but you cannot use the words of the reporter. So let's rewind and go back to that same question with reporters that Yeah, yeah. But Mr. Hayward What about all the frivolous lawsuits, his response could have been simply we will look at everything Single lawsuit and give it serious attention.

Our goal is to compensate anyone who's been harmed. Nothing there that jumps out at people as insensitive, there wouldn't have been anything quoted from that. That would have been consistent with his messages. Now, that's not dodging the question. It's simply answering it on your own terms. Now, that's always a good idea to do it, any media interview.

But it's absolutely positively essential during a crisis of this magnitude because Tony Hayward can tell you one slip and it can blow up and be in a million headlines every day for days, and can eventually lead to your ouster in that position. The fourth big blunder many people make during a crisis is to be overly optimistic. Now in most aspects of life being optimistic is good. We like to optimistic spouses and friends and family members and colleagues, no one wants to sort of walk around hearing somebody complain and whine all the time. But here's the problem in a crisis, if you're optimistic, it can really set you up to look like a liar, a fool, a deceiver. So for example, if a reporter says, well, when is this oil leak going to be shot?

And the problem solved? If you say, well, it's going to be solved in two days, well, two and a half days from now, the only thing any reporter is going to be talking about anywhere in the world is how you lied. You promised it would be shut down in two days. And now it's still leaking. You didn't fulfill your promise you broke your promise. It may be because you're wildly incompetent, or you're a liar.

Those are the two choices the media is going to fixate on now, is this the media's fault? No, it's your fault. You've got to have the discipline to stick to the facts as you know them. When you are talking to the media during a crisis, it is no time to guess. So trying to be hopeful sometime to put a good spin on things. Focus on the exact facts as you know them.

Mr. Walker, currently you have four employees missing, Are they dead? Now, the human nature, tendency is to be optimistic. We certainly think they're all alive and we're doing everything we can to recover them. Maybe they're not. Don't be afraid to say, I don't know. The only thing we're focusing on right now is a recovery mission to find every one of our employees.

Focus on the facts as you know them. Focus on exactly what you are doing, to try to make the crisis better. That's all you can do in immediate Interview in the early stages of crisis, so you've got to avoid the tendency to try to be optimistic and positive and putting a good spin on things because it will come back to haunt you. And median. We certainly saw that with a BP case when they were time after time, when predictions were made about when the crisis would be over when the leak would be plugged. They weren't mad every time the media made it look as though again, BP was either lying or incompetent.

Stick to the facts as you know them. Those are the four main wonders if you can just avoid those forming things. You're going to be way ahead of the pack when it comes to how you deal with your crisis.

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