This week has brought a flurry of news from Madison Wisconsin about a girl who was allegedly (and people are increasingly beginning to suspect that "allegedly" is the right word) kidnapped from her off-campus apartment, then found several days later.
This story also brought to mind the biggest problem with news conferences.
I watched the news conference the evening that Audrey was found. Very little information was available (she'd only been back for a short while), and police were still combing the marsh with automatic weapons at the ready.
The police representative got up, gave a statement, then opened the floor to questions. His statement was understandably incomplete and contained none of the juicy stuff that the reporters wanted to hear, so the reporters immediately did their job, asking questions in lots of different ways to get the answers they sought.
Here's where the problem began. The police PR guy adamantly refused to answer any question that wasn't covered in his statement. Plus any question that was covered in his statement was answered with "as I said before, [quote from the statement], other than that, I have no comment."
Which raises the question - why hold a media conference if you're not going to answer any questions?
|
|
It just makes the press mad, the public frustrated, and it clearly impacts the perception of your degree of cooperation with the media for this and future media interactions.
Why would you want to get that result?
We recommend that
1. Press conferences should be very rarely held, except in crisis situations of keen public interest, and the occasional huge new product launch (though it's better to hold a press event for a launch than a conference.) Our special report The Press Conference: When to Hold It and How to Do It Right gives great information on how to pull a conference together in a way that works for both you and the media.
2. The best way, if you aren't going to answer any questions, is to issue a press statement. That statement can be read to a group of the press (for camera exposure), but you should make it clear in the pre-announcement of the statement, at the start and at the end of the statement that no questions will be taken. Then don't take any questions, period.
3. If you do decide to hold a conference, it's best to be able to answer most every question.
4. If there are valid reasons why questions can't be answered, pre-agree with your counselors (if you're in the midst of a crisis, you need an outside, uninvolved counselor who knows about the media to discuss options and ramifications with) what information, *in addition to* that which will be presented in the traditional statement, that you will reveal in answers to questions. Then carefully rehearse those answers to convey exactly what you want to say. Then, when the right questions are asked, answer them.
So what should the Madison police department have done in this case? Read a statement, and don't accept any questions. Either that, or pursue option #4 above.
Our audio CD, Creative Alternatives to Boring News Conferences discusses the media conference in more detail and provides some great ideas on how to replace a conference with methods that really generate results.
One of the main reasons to hold a news conference is in the case of a crisis of some kind. Find out more information on how to prepare for the crisis that someday IS going to hit your business, how to handle it while you're in the midst of the crisis, and how to come out smelling like a rose in our toolkit Crisis Communication Planning: Organizing and Completing A Plan That Works
Like this article? Then Digg
It
or add it to your Del.icio.us Bookmarks!
Tags:
TrackBack
TrackBack
URL for this entry:
http://101publicrelations.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/47
Public Relations and Publicity Blog
