Test Your Media Communications Strategies Before You Need Them
After more than a week of intensive regional and national scrutiny, accompanied by collective questions from shocked and saddened residents that may never receive fully satisfactory answers, among my observations stemming from this month’s local mass crisis event is this: A genuine public emergency is not the time to field test your media communications strategies.
Last week, I shared the sobering news with you all that a mass shooter had murdered four people in a neighboring community and was still at large. After a massive weeklong manhunt that saw the FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals, and numerous other state and federal teams converge on the outskirts of Anaconda, Mont., we can finally confirm that the alleged gunman has been arrested. As the story develops, we’re finding and following multiple entangled narrative threads: the alleged shooter’s history within the surrounding community and at that bar, the open frustration of his family about the perceived lack of state or federal mental health help for him, the pain of surviving family and friends, the economic fallout of a mass shooting in a tourist town during summer season, and the ethical dilemma of a property owner who spotted the fugitive but didn’t want to spark a deadly, panicked encounter. Public access to emergency communications, timely updates, and accurate public safety information was a noticeable problem throughout this mass shooting incident, as previously discussed.
Above all else, we recognize that this crime was a horrific and senseless tragedy that brutally ended four lives and permanently changed countless others. Our neighbors here in western Montana are strong, proud people–grieving hard, but strong–who have repeatedly expressed both an appreciation for joint law enforcement efforts to bring Michael Brown in without further bloodshed and a desire for justice above vengeance in this situation. We are thankful that Brown is safe and alive, the public threat has been neutralized, and this is over for the moment.
That shift now also gives us the opportunity to step back and reassess what we should learn from this tragedy and others. There’s a lot, starting with the fact that outdated images of Brown with a full beard and then with a dramatic mustache were released first, along with a description of the alleged shooter in a lurid tie-dyed getup. What they were actually searching for, according to camera imagery released later, was an emaciated-looking stubble-faced man who had stripped to his underpants and removed his shoes in the immediate aftermath, but the public wouldn’t receive that critical information for a good 24 hours. These kinds of media communications misses are part of what enabled Brown to slip away and evade capture for so long in the first place. Although the posted search area went up into the rugged terrain of nearby Garrity Mountain, based on what’s come out so far, it appears Brown never did make it nearly as far out of town as the experts believed. As Montanans, we are so grateful for the dogged pursuit that the officers and agents on the Brown manhunt displayed, and that no one else was hurt before Brown was captured; however, we also understand that with that kind of lead time and continued proximity to town, things easily could have gone much, much worse.
Crisis reporting emerges in real time. It takes considerable news judgment to quickly sort fact from probable fiction, especially if you aren’t locally connected or you’re dealing with traumatized, shocked people. Not surprising, then, that when journalists rush to be the first to share the details of a chaotically evolving situation, the risk of misreporting is ever-present, even with otherwise professional skills and good intentions. One of the best ways to ensure that your organization’s information stays accurate, especially if you’re also trying to preserve someone’s legal rights or maintain the integrity of a case, is to make sure that someone who represents your operation is actually coached on key points and assigned to deal with the press. If there’s a perceived leadership communication vacuum, media attention will move elsewhere, and that opens the door for other sources–who may or may not be equally credible–to be platformed.
This is why agencies, businesses, and nonprofits all need to build their media communications strategies directly into their operations. The time to work on those issues internally is when things at your organization are calm, not in the middle of an extreme, once-in-a-lifetime crisis scenario.
That doesn’t have to mean buying expensive tech or hiring an employee to work as a full-time media liaison. Those are both useful, if there’s a demonstrable organizational need and budget space, but they’re optional. There’s also no need to anxiously over-plan for a catastrophic or tragic event that may never–and that I fervently hope will never–occur. What is important, though, is having an advance plan in place for who, what, and where. Figure out now how your organization will handle official outgoing media communications at scale. If your organization is public facing in any capacity, the public deserves that much consideration from you.
