NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
What’s your reaction when you see a news story and a source says, “no comment”? ... you probably think they might as well have said “guilty as charged.”
If they’re not at least meeting our expectations, they’re not invited back. Sally has worked with us for 10 years.” By using purely objective information, you’ve painted a picture of Sally as a satisfactory employee without using any subjective descriptions. Keep your rationale logical. The import- ant thing to remember about Cans and Can’ts is that your rationale for not ad- dressing a given set of questions must be logical and must make sense to the reporter. The reporter may not like it, but that’s their problem, not yours. Further, they may go ahead and ask an off-the-table question anyway, but you can simply remind them that the question is one you can’t answer, and remind them of the reason. You shouldn’t use Cans and Can’ts just because a given line of questions makes you uncomfortable; uncomfortable questions are likely after a bad event. That calls for a second tactic.
MAP IT OUT IN ADVANCE
touches different groups of people. I call them “stakeholder groups.” In our hypothetical, some of the stakeholder groups should be obvious. First, there’s the injured employee and the employ- ee’s family and friends. Then, there’s other members of your team. Beyond that, there are regulatory bodies, law enforcement, competitors and peers in the industry, trade associations, social media followers, chambers of commerce/tourism bureaus, and so on. Finally, we have the general public, which loves to cluck its tongue. Each stakeholder group may have different reasons for being interested in the story. So, before going into inter-
One of the core elements of in-depth media training is learning how to antic- ipate questions before they’re asked. When I’m training spokespeople, we spend a lot of time developing this skill (My media training process is a mini- mum of eight hours per trainee.). That level of training and practice is be- yond our scope here, but you can—and should—have a pretty good under- standing of what you’ll be asked prior to starting an interview. Here’s a way to think about it:
Who’s the audience? Every incident
Full Line of fall protection equipment Including Full Body Harnesses • Lanyards & Runners Course Builder & Rescue Equipment
GEAR UP!
Adrenalingear
FrenchCreek Fall Safety 100 N. 13th St. • Franklin PA, 16323 877.228.9327 • adrenalingearusa.com
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator