The Bonner Business Series – Media Relations. Allan Bonner

wary of it. Indeed, news organizations are often accused of ignoring the good to concentrate on the bad, even if the bad makes up a very small part of the whole.

      Well, yes. Who, after all, is going to rush out and buy a newspaper or tune into a radio or TV program to learn that everything worked the way it should that day? Reporters and news outlets focus on things that break down, crash or fail through accident or design — because that is what people are interested in. It sells newspapers and swells audiences.

      However, interspersed with all the bad stuff there’s also a range of other material. Some of this material is good, some contentious and some of interest only to certain people. This is the “news” area that provides most of the public relations opportunities for people and organizations to tell others about their goals, their products or their beliefs. Unfortunately it also contains pitfalls for the unwary.

      A company may be delighted to attract the attention of a major news outlet because it uses a revolutionary production technique only to find the story that appears is about the preponderance of women on the shop floor and the preponderance of men in the board room. Could this have been prevented?

      There are no guarantees that organizations and people will always get positive news coverage. Even Mother Theresa had some critics. But it is possible to influence the balance of coverage by:

      •Analyzing your situation: identifying weak spots as well as the strong

      •Arming yourself with plenty of positive information

      •Being prepared to answer difficult questions as well as easy ones

      •Knowing something about the news people you are talking to

      Your Situation

      Draw up a balance sheet of your strong points and weak points. Be honest. If yours is a small company with private homes and a school nearby, put yourself in the shoes of a neighbour or parent and see if you’d have any concerns about your operations.

      You can get a good idea of the concerns the community may have about you by reviewing the regulatory and licensing requirements of your operations.

      If your enterprise is part of a sector that has made news elsewhere because something went wrong, you may be asked what you are doing to change your operations to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen in your locality.

      Look at your strong points. Do they contain something that would interest others, either the community at large or others like you? How would you go about telling them?

      Being Positive

      Most organizations and enterprises these days have mission statements and/or vision statements. But our experience is that few people have the ability to state simply and clearly what they or their organizations do. It seems so obvious to them they never consider that it may not be so obvious to others. This results in a lot of lost opportunities to make a positive impression.

      The solution is to arm yourself with as many positive statements as possible about yourself and your activities and watch for opportunities to use them.

      Questions

      We ask questions of others to elicit information, imply criticism, display our knowledge or, sometimes, just to keep the conversation going. But we seldom analyze why others are asking questions of us. If we find the questions difficult, we can get upset; if irrelevant we can be dismissive. But in both instances we are missing opportunities to communicate something positive about ourselves or our organizations.

      News Media

      Study the news organizations you are most likely to come into contact with — or want to contact. Are they local, national, trade or professionally oriented?

      In the days of the Soviet Union, you would hear the people of Eastern Europe joke “Visit Russia — before it visits you!” If you think you may be visited by a news organization in the future, visit it first.

      Find out what kind of news the organization is interested in and what it is about you that may interest its reporters. Better still, try to get some background information about you and/or your organization into the hands of a reporter or editor who may have an interest in the same field even if not the same specific subject matter.

      Media Relations

      The most challenging aspect for any organization’s public affairs department is the media relations function. These titles for the Department in which communicators work have changed over time and are different in different organizations. Just as the Personnel Department became the Human Resources Department, the term Public Relations has changed into Public Affairs or Communication. Public Affairs implies that the organization is involved in issues of interest and importance to members of the public. Communication implies a variety of technical activities designed to move information from person to person and place to place. This might include advertising and direct mail. Some of my clients still use the old fashioned sounding term “press office.” I prefer Public Affairs.

      There’s a similar debate about the terms stakeholder and public. Some Public Affairs professionals refer to their “publics.” This means customers, neighbours, suppliers, workers and others. Stakeholders can mean any who have a legitimate stake in what the organization is doing, including bankers, regulators, legislators and others. I’ve always felt that “public” implies that the issue is of known, public importance, and this would include neighbours, media, customers and politicians. It may also include regulators. Stakeholders seems to imply a more private relationship, including bankers, workers and perhaps regulators. But you can easily see how issues can move from being private to public, depending on the type of organization. For many practical purposes, these terms are interchangeable.

      Effective media relations can save an organization’s reputation and commercial viability when something goes tragically wrong, as in the Tylenol poisoning case (Fall of 1982), the Coors appearance on 60 Minutes during a reputation management issue (April 1982), and Lee Iacocca’s forthright dealing with an odometer spinning controversy at Chrysler (July 1987). Despite serious and often true charges against him, President Bill Clinton seemed to be able to repeatedly use the media to salvage his reputation.

      Poor media relations can have the opposite effect as in the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania which irrevocably tarnished the nuclear industry’s safety image; the chemical release in Bhopal, India (December 1984) and the Exxon Valdez oil spill (March 1989). More recently, the negative news stories about accounting procedures and their effect on stock prices seem to get worse as a result of poor communication.

      Although all of the above examples cite large organizations with large professional public affairs and media relations departments, size isn’t a factor. Attitude is.

      Some organizations feel they can be silent when information is sought by reporters and will attempt to “tough it out.” Experience shows this is not advisable since it merely creates an information vacuum into which others will step, and those others usually have their own agendas. Thus, it is important for an organization to attempt to be the most accurate and reliable source of information about its own activities. Spokespeople must be available and the organization must be seen to be cooperative and active.

      The power of the news media is often misunderstood. While the news media has its failings, there’s no doubt that it helps shape and direct public opinion. Much of its power depends on its ability to disseminate information extremely quickly. It takes very few key people to decide that an event is big enough to be broadcast live around the world, where it will be watched by billions of people. That’s power.

      At the same time we know the media can be ineffective in separating fact from perception and correcting misconceptions or inaccuracies. George Bernard Shaw once dismissed the media for being “unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.”