You’re only as good as your worst quote

A passenger ferry collides with a cargo ship and a number of people get hurt or die; an oil spill occurs, negatively affecting the livelihood of the affected towns; or a whistleblower talks about taxpayers’ money being squandered by a greedy few, driving people to march in protest and anger. The situations are all too familiar. Bad news breaks or a crisis occurs, and a spokesperson is thrown in the limelight to face a probing media. He is asked a hard question and he stutters, murmurs a shabby retort or, worse, delivers a preposterous spiel. You can see the anxiety in his countenance. The media faceoff stands on shaky ground.

Crisis communications guru and former reporter Jeff Ansell deals with moments like these in a new book called When the Headline is You: An Insider’s Guide to Handling the Media. In truth, most people react in varying ways when confronted with a potentially damaging question. “They hold their breath, stop listening, feverishly think of what to say, turn negative and defensive, and have an out-of-body experience,” Ansell says. He quickly adds, “To answer a potentially damaging question effectively and with honesty, spokespersons should first of all breathe, ask themselves how they want to come across — honest, trustworthy and accountable — and learn the media techniques to help them find the right words.”

In the tome, the author shares his value-based communications module for working with journalists: understanding how the media works, how to communicate a message effectively, how to build a positive reputation, and how to sail through a crisis while keeping away from repeatedly encountered drawbacks. There are many things communicators can pick up from the book — case stories and media messaging guidelines, among others, but here are key talking points that can be useful in your next meet-up with media:

• Today’s public talks to each other and doesn’t need mainstream media to tell them what or how to think. The practice of traditional public relations imposes messages on stakeholders and counsels spokespeople to ignore questions reporters ask and simply deliver “key messages.” With the advent of social media, those days are through. Instead of talking at stakeholders, corporations now have to listen more than they speak.

• Social media represents a game changer for PR, a whole new playing field. With social media, anyone wearing sweatpants in their basement can become a journalist. American political commentator Matt Drudge avers, “We’re all newsmen now.” Bloggers answer to no one, they’re not accountable to any rules, and there are no checks and balances for blogged stories. It’s tougher for companies because they not only need to be mindful of traditional media like they always have been, but now social media as well, and they must consistently monitor what’s being said in the online world.

• Consumers of news have shorter attention spans now and are less interested in thoughtful reporting on public policy discourse. Meaningful journalism has been pushed aside in favor of stories about starlets. Cutbacks in newsrooms have contributed to the dumbing down of news as well. Reporters, who are stretched to the limit, now have to do more with less. Journalism has also become more intrusive. In the past, there was a line that journalists wouldn’t cross when it came to reporting the personal lives of people in the news. Now, anything goes.

• When opening your mouth, make sure you won’t regret what comes out of it.  Everything a person says before or after a media interview is fair game to be reported. Interviewees need to see their words as toothpaste. Once you squeeze the words out, you can’t put them back in.

• It’s not a matter of reporters twisting your words. They can report them just as you say them and cut you off at the knees. You can control the policy and the communications, and how you get the message across, but you can’t control the media — what the reporter will ask, or how media will frame a story.

• Trust is a spokesperson’s currency. To build trust, especially when the news is bad, spokespeople must be honest, accessible and demonstrate that they care about those affected by the situation at hand.

• Public-speaking training helps craft stronger media messages. Like it or not, the actual words you use in your messaging are often overshadowed by the style in which the message is delivered. People respond best to what they see and hear and a message delivered flatly can have as much impact as the sound of one hand clapping. That is not to suggest spokespeople need to be slick and polished. People do not trust slick and polished. A good speaker and, in turn, a good spokesperson, is one who looks and sounds like they mean what they’re talking about. An approach to public-speaking training that encourages authenticity can only help.

• The first step when confronted with bad news is to ask, “What are we made of?” To that end, Ansell suggests creating what he calls a “value compass.” This includes “words that you want to convey in a bad news situation.” Your value compass can cover the language of honesty, trustworthiness, transparency, integrity, security, safety and other transformative thoughts. Allow these principles steer your crisis messaging — not the other way around.

• The victim, the villain, the hero, experts, witnesses, and the village idiot. From the perspective of the media, using this cast of characters is the best way to frame a controversial news story. Thus, you have to understand how the media develops these characters in their stories. Ideally, you want your company to be the hero in any news story. But more often than not, in a crisis, “PR can become the villain and the village idiot.” One way that PR can move away from the villain role is to use what Ansell calls a “problem-solution formula.” He advises spokespeople to admit the problem in the first part of their sentence and then offer solutions in the second part.

• News is made up of drama, conflict, controversy, emotion and irony. Reporters stereotype and cast characters to tell the story. To illustrate the preceding point, if you look at a story like the British Petroleum oil spill, it’s easy to assign the roles mentioned above. You have the victims — the people affected as well as the environment. The villain was the oil company; the hero could be the media, the regulators, or anyone trying to bring out the truth. There are the witnesses — those who saw the situation unfolding and warned of the dangers. There’s the expert, who describes how things should be handled or repaired. Then there’s the “village idiot,” who constantly buggers things up and makes an even bigger mess, and that was Tony Hayward, the company CEO who took a defensive and argumentative position. A lot of CEOs like Hayward are not used to being talked to in the manner that a reporter will talk to them. In his organization, no one would speak to Hayward like a reporter would — the people he knows and works with tiptoe around him in conversation. A reporter’s approach throws a lot of CEOs who aren’t used to it.

• Skillful PR messaging can’t always smooth out a tough crisis situation.  It’s not a matter of PR messaging smoothing out a situation, but their words should reflect a genuine, heartfelt concern for the situation. People don’t trust smooth messaging, so PR people must reflect a genuineness and authenticity. The last thing consumers want to see is a rehearsed, insincere message.

• Delivering stand-alone statements can help you avoid getting quoted out of context.  Keep your messaging simple and don’t weave sentences together, because you don’t know which one is going to get used in the story.

• Apologizing to gain trust is the way to go. As Ansell observes, “Lawyers often counsel clients about the hazards of apologizing, but it’s often the right thing to do.” When lawyers control the message, it does little to establish trust in the court of public opinion.

• Being most upset when bad news breaks is good strategy. Amplifying your emotion and concern enhances your credibility. “Know that fact will never win over emotion, and acknowledge the concerns of others,” he declares. For example, when the Catholic Church sex scandal broke out, Ansell relates the story of how one high-ranking Church official from Boston came out and said, “I wouldn’t trust a priest right now either.” While this may seem counter-intuitive, Ansell says that acknowledging the concerns about priests and the Church was the right thing to do.

• It can be particularly difficult to respond when you’re put on the spot without much notice. Take it in stride. To this end, Ansell suggests three final take-home tips: “Remember to breathe. Remember your value compass. And remember that your stakeholders need to know how much you care.”

• Walking off the set can be as bad as saying the wrong thing. The book describes when Steve Jobs appeared on cable news and asked the interviewer not to ask him about Apple’s CEO hunt at the time, and then stormed off the set while on the air when the reporter brought it up. The case wasn’t a matter of Jobs being naïve, although that was certainly part of it; it comes back to him thinking, “I’m Steve Jobs and when I talk, you listen.” A reporter has no obligation to respect that. He waved a red flag and invited the topic by asking the reporter not to bring it up. Jobs could have just said, “We’re committed to finding the right person,” but he got so put off by the reporter’s audacity that he couldn’t process it.

• Saying “no comment” has always been the equivalent of blood in the water for the media sharks.  “No comment” never works. It’s used so often because people see it in the movies and on TV. Only guilty people on 60 Minutes say “no comment,” usually with sweat running down their foreheads. If you can’t answer a question, just say why — it’s proprietary information, there’s a legal issue that forbids you to discuss it, etc. “No comment” is a tacit admission of guilt and makes you look like you’re trying to hide something, and that’s never good.

• If you want your comments to be off the record, don’t spill your guts first and ask for those comments to be off the record afterwards. Don’t say anything off the record that you wouldn’t say on the record. “As a reporter, I had many relationships where off-the-record comments were used,” Ansell recalls. “But those sources knew me and knew I could be trusted. If you’re ever not sure about the relationship, the rule is simple — when in doubt, leave it out.”

• Body language has to be congruent with the message being delivered. When someone says something, 55 percent of the way it’s interpreted comes through visually, and 38 percent comes from how it sounds. I think the words have to be bang on, but the real goal is to get the visual, vocal and verbal elements on the same page. If you want to look like you mean what you say, your body language and tone of voice have to match what you’re saying.

Even the most articulate spokespeople say things they don’t mean when the headline becomes them or they’re put on the spot. What’s worse, Ansell emphasizes, is that “spokespeople are only as good as their worst quote.”

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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_oosorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.