What you need to know about answering media questions
Companies and organisations still need to keep media communication channels open. That way they get to tell their story. At the same time investors, business partners, employees and customers stay informed.
Sure, these days they can use more direct channels to reach these groups. They can control messages in direct channels.
That’s not always the best way to tell stories and it doesn’t necessarily have as much credibility as when that message is filtered through an independent outlet.
When news comes to you
And there are times when the media comes knocking on the company’s door.
You might think you don’t need to worry about any of this because your job puts you in a back room role you don’t need to worry about communications. You may work for a company that thinks it has watertight external communications strategies. Or that the company employs professionals to do all the communication heavy lifting.
Yet even if your employer has access to the brightest and best communications experts, you can still find yourself acting as spokesperson.
A credible, knowledgeable voice is powerful communications
Let’s redo that last sentence: If your employer uses the best communications experts, you are even more likely to find yourself in the media front line.
That’s because experienced journalists see through the platitudes and feel-good nonsense spouted by corporate spin-doctors.
Journalists may not immediately be able to dig deep enough to find the real story behind a smokescreen, yet they know what a smokescreen smells like.
Putting genuine, but trained and fully briefed, voices in front of the media works to a company’s advantage.
The best storyteller
A communications professional is not always the best spokesperson. There will be times when someone with deeper knowledge or experience is a better storyteller.
In extreme cases you can be forced to speak to the media even if your employer prefers you to stay in the background.
All of this means that being able to articulate a company’s position is a key skill.
Crisis management
Dealing with communications when things go wrong is known as crisis management. Smart firms put crisis management plans in place long before any problems, anticipated or not, arrive. This saves valuable time when troubles appear.
Developing a crisis management plan is best left for another time. The key elements are establishing lines of communications and putting the right people in place who can articulate a company’s point of view to the media.
Which means it is a good idea to give all senior managers media training.
Let’s assume for now you don’t have media training, there are no well-developed lines of communications and you know nothing of any crisis management plans. Things have gone badly wrong and you are in the thick of it.
What should you do if a journalist quizzes you about a potentially damaging news story?
Good stories, not good news
Before we go any further, I have skin in this game. I am a journalist, I cover business and technology, I write news. I like to write good stories.
Good doesn’t necessarily mean positive from the company or organisation’s point of view. The news media likes stories with reader interest – from your point of view that might be anything but good.
I prefer to go straight to the most obvious news source – the man or woman in the department dealing with the matter – and ask direct questions.
Getting to the bottom of the story
The idea isn’t to catch someone out or make someone look stupid[^Ok. We all know there are some journalists who do operate this way. Dealing with them needs another post.] – the goal is to get to the bottom of the story, find facts and cut through the spin.
This was how it always worked when I was a young journalist. We would keep extensive (paper) contact books of key names in organisations to call when a story broke and to call every so often when canvassing for potential stories.
These days most employers expect employees to take one of two courses of action. They might prefer it if the employee said nothing, refuses to speak and blocks all questions.
Or they might expect an employee to tell outright lies. More likely this is never explicitly asked of employees, but people working in companies tend to know by osmosis if they work for bosses who expect them to lie.
Both courses of action are equally damaging, both to the company and to the employee.
Telling lies is dumb
Aside from any ethical considerations, telling lies is just plain stupid.
Sooner or later the truth will emerge and you will be on the record as a liar. Your employer won’t look any better.
You might get away with this. A future employer will not know, not care or may even be impressed you lied to cover your previous employer’s backside.
Maybe.
Other people will remember your lies. And that will harm your reputation over the long-term, maybe even your business.
Liar, liar
More to the point the journalists you lied to will know you are a liar. And their colleagues do. Journalists move around between companies, pretty soon most people in the media will know you are a liar.
At any point a rival might remember those lies and make them public. Your lie might be legally actionable. But even if it is not, it gives your competitors powerful ammunition the next time you want to say anything in public.
Blockheads
Blocking questions can make things sound worse than they are.
It can mean you or your employer don’t get an opportunity to put the record straight at the earliest opportunity.
There are worse possibilities.
Suppose you were to read in a newspaper, ‘company X refused to comment on claims that it was trading while bankrupt’? What does this make you think about the company?
Over the years I’ve come up against more advanced forms of blocking, but they all amount to the same thing. ‘The executive responsible for the exploding television monitors could not be contacted yesterday’ does not make the company sound innocent.
What to do when the media calls
Rules number one, two and three are do not tell lies.
Don’t even consider it. It is better to say nothing.
If you don’t want to answer questions or are not authorised to speak, find someone else who can.
There’s nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you aren’t able to help with enquiries but your immediate boss can. Make a joke and tell them is above your pay grade. That’s acceptable so long as someone higher up the tree does speak to the press.
Pushing the pause button
There’s also nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you, or whoever can speak, is busy but will call back shortly – when you do this, calling back quickly is important. Keep their deadlines in mind.
This approach can buy you time to think about exactly what to say, check facts, workshop ideas with colleagues or warn the boss. Then take a deep breath and calm those nerves before calling back.
At this point you might even want to take advice from a communications professional. It’s not unusual for a journalist to call an executive with a question, get a pause, then hear back from a PR manager or someone in a similar role. It’s not as good as getting information from the horses’ mouth, but it’ll do.