Transcript: Handling the media in a crisis with Chris Tucker and journalist Simon Read

Chris Tucker: Welcome Simon. Thank you.

Simon Reed: Thank you so much Chris, and you’re right, I have known you for a number of years and through those years we’ve seen a lot of different PR crises, isn’t it? It’s crises not crises. I find fascinating, If I was working in PR, I think crises PR would be where I want to work because that’s the biggest challenges and you can get the biggest results. Some of the best things come out of bad experiences. We all learn from mistakes, and crisis PR I think is great. When you’re just being proactive trying to flog whatever it is you’re trying to flog, that’s hard work. But actually dealing with the crisis when you have to get your hands dirty and you come out, which you can, smelling of roses, I think that takes a great more effort, a great more talent, and is, I would think, the greatest challenge for any PR professional.

Chris Tucker: Yeah no, absolutely. We have a saying Simon, in PR, that when it comes to crisis PR that’s when you earn your stripes as it were. That’s when the senior leadership team all of a sudden start thinking about PR and reputation if they haven’t done so before, they start thinking about it and taking it much more seriously. So it is all to play for and, of course, you can make a real difference to people’s lives as well, people who are caught up in crisis who need to know what’s happening, what they need to do, how they should respond, how to protect themselves and their families and so on. So, it is it is a fabulous opportunity. So, thank you so much to agreeing to join us today and take our questions.

I’ve got a couple of slides and, as I was saying to Sarah, they’re really jumping off point slides as it were, so if you have questions and I’m sure lots of you will please do pop them in the chat box. I’m going to try and keep an eye on it and the PR A-Team, PR Academy team will do so as well because it might get busy. I just thought I would kick off, just to get you thinking and get you thinking about the questions you might want to put to Simon. I thought I would just ask, really Simon, why do we need to worry about the media in a crisis? It sounds like quite a basic question really, but I know from personal experience you face the senior leadership team and they want to get this done and they want to do that, and they think about their people they’re thinking about their customers and we have to constantly say: you need to also think about the media as a stakeholder group. So why am I right to say that, as it were.

Simon Reed: Here’s the thing, when a company has a crisis, sometimes it’s unavoidable. Things go wrong, all sorts of things can happen. We know that when companies, whether it be a sex and drugs scandal at the top, it could be a data breach, it could be anything that goes wrong and something that needs to be dealt with. Now the big battle a company has is managing their communications, its workers, the staff, its customers, everyone else. In fact, the media should be a big friend of that. The media are the way to get a message across to millions of people in one easy go. If a company is in crisis using the media to spread the message, to tell people, tell customers what they’re doing is the quickest way to get it across. Social media helps of course. In this day and age, it’s not just about the mainstream media but getting the media on side and on message and helping you can actually help the crisis. You can’t avoid a crisis, you can’t avert it, but you can help manage it in a proper way so that it helps everyone. The big thing I always think about in crisis is, for me the crisis is there’s no tubes. What am I going to do? What I want to know is when there is going to be tube coming along, and its communication that helps me. If I know that the tubes going to be ten minutes away, I think great, I’ll sit and I’ll read the paper. It’s that vacuum of knowledge that makes a crisis worse always in my view.

Chris Tucker: You make a couple of really interesting points there, and your use of the word vacuum is interesting because that’s one of the words I use when I’m teaching the crisis comms course and when talking about when a crisis hits, there is a vacuum of information, and one of our jobs is to fill that with the right information, the useful of information exactly as you describe, so people know what to do, where to go, how to respond. So, we should think of the media as being a communication channel in the same way as we might think about social media, and our website and everything else that we use in a crisis situation. Just thinking about, that you are a channel obviously, but you’re a very different kind of channel, and some people are quite nervous of speaking to the media in a crisis. There’s often a feeling that the media are out to get us, as it were, in a crisis situation. Are we right to feel that? Can you give us some comfort that that’s not always the case or maybe not the case at all?

Simon Reed: It’s not actually the case at all. The media doesn’t sit there thinking, great here’s a crisis let’s have a go at the company, let’s have a go at the individuals. The media is just there to report what’s happening. Now if it’s a crisis that affects millions of people, that’s a big news story and we want to tell the story, but in a helpful way. It’s not helpful just to say ABC Industries has done something bad, millions of people are affected. We want to say, okay this is what they’ve done, this is what they’re doing about it, this is how you’re affected, this is what you need to do. Journalism is about writing the news, it is about informing people, helping them as well. So as soon as the crisis strikes what we want to know is what’s happening, what are you doing about it, what do people do? Now if a company says, actually we’re not saying anything, which I have to tell you most companies go into defence mode right away, and they say we’re not going to comment on this, we’re not going to talk about it. That means we fill the vacuum with whatever information we can find, and that will invariably be the wrong information. Because if the company doesn’t tell us the right things to tell their customers, to tell their workers, we don’t have to make it up, but we have to surmise that this problem may be bigger than they’re saying. Maybe it’s not just two million, maybe it’s ten million, maybe it’s something else. So, without adequate communication the media will fill the story with whatever they can make. So, it can seem at times that the press, that the media, the TV, radio is getting on the back, but they just want information. And if you refuse to supply information by no comment then you’re creating even more problems.

Chris Tucker: And of course, this world moves so much more quickly now. You mentioned social media, and you’re a prolific user of social media and most known journalists are, so is that where you’re going to go, as it were, to fill that vacuum in?

Simon Reed: If something happens and I’m trying to find out what’s going on, I would go to social media, I’ll use Twitter, use Facebook, whatever means are available to me, and I will be able to talk to workers affected, customers affected, and they will tell me what they know. Now invariably, right at the start of the crisis, what they know is nothing. So, they’re frightened, they’re scared, so they will lash out, but that’s just natural for people to do that. So quite often in the first hours of a corporate crisis the first stories are I’m frightened, I’ve lost out, I’ve been misled. And these are really negative stories. Now they can be all be got rid of by actually telling the truth, actually telling the tale, actually communicating what’s going on. And I know it’s not always easy for companies, particularly with technology that goes wrong or the data breach, they don’t always know what’s going on. Well, it’s being honest about that as well. So rather than allowing us to say well this business has ten million customers, they could all be affected, they need to find out straight away how many people are affected, what people need to do and then give us that information, so we’ve got something positive to write.

Chris Tucker: It’s being your own story isn’t it really? And crisis communication is establishing the organisation as the key Port of Call for information. That is your one of your key objectives. Simon has just asked a question here in the chat box. If there was a mantra or three principles for handling a crisis what would those things be except, for example, be proactive? So, from a journalist point of view, what would the principles be? What could an organisation do that would make you think, actually they’re not on top of the situation because they may not know, but what makes you think, actually they’re doing okay from the communications point of view? What do you look for?

Simon Reed: It’s communicating and it’s being honest. I’ve had lots of conversations with different PR’s chief executives over the years when things have gone wrong, and do you know what, you can tell when people are not really telling you the truth. So, they have to communicate the truth. Now there’s nothing wrong with saying, we don’t know yet, we’re trying to find out, we’re investigating. But then you have to set a deadline. We hope to be able to tell you by 5:00, It takes 24 hours to investigate this. So that it feels like there’s an ending, there’s something happening, but really, it’s the honesty. It’s not always possible to be totally honest. Now in the case of say a data breach where maybe there’s crooks involved, you don’t want to tell people what’s happened because you don’t want to impede whatever investigation is going on, but then you have to say that. Now I would say to any PR, a good PR makes contact and knows the journalists they can trust so they can say, look we think this and that has happened but please don’t print this yet because we’re trying to find out. Now that helps me as a journalist because I will write a better story, but I will also trust that you’re telling me the truth, you’re trying to find the answer so we can get rid of these speculative stories. I don’t want to write a story that misleads readers, but if there’s no information out there, I’ve got to try and find it from somewhere, and sometimes it will be a disaffected member of staff or a fed-up customer and that’ll be the story I write. That’s not the best story at all. The best story is one that tells the truth, that tells what’s happening and tells what’s been done about it, and that only comes from successful communication. So, it’s communicating straight away and being as honest as you can. They’re the two main things.

Chris Tucker: And it it’s absolutely fine to say, here’s what we do know but there’s a lot more that we don’t know, we will find that out and we will come back to you as soon as we can. And keep that dialogue going. It’s also sounding as if you’re talking about journalists you know and trust. A lot of this work has to be done up front as well, doesn’t it Simon, in building those relationships with media.

Simon Reed: The best way to deal with the crisis is to actually reveal it yourself before the media stumble across it. Because if I find out, on Twitter for instance, that a bank has lost loads of money and customers are telling me, and then I have to go to the bank to find out, I’m going to write a fairly negative story that they tried to keep it secret. If the bank realises there’s been these mistakes for whatever reason, and then compiles… this happened a few years ago… and they compiled a report: Okay hands up, we made a mistake, it’s affected twenty thousand people, this is what happened, this is what we’re doing about it, and we thought we’d better tell you now before it comes up. So, then the story is we write are much more positive. It would be ABC Bank admitted they’ve done this; this is what they’re doing about it rather than here’s one hundred people who are fed up and the banks not telling us why things have gone wrong.

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. That’s some good advice. I hope Simon, that that will have helped you and answered your question. Gia on the line just made the point that the big issue is so often the legal team during a crisis and made the point I’m down to write a blog about that. I am because I did have the opportunity to talk to some QCs about this issue, and I think it is a big issue, and the legal guys get involved. But I think the tide is changing and that the legal representatives I talk to are much more geared up on reputation management. But there’s a point to talking to the legal team before, I think, and in building relationships in the legal team before the crisis. Do you ever get that kind of response, or the legal team have said we can’t say anything, or do you ever suspect that that’s what’s going on?

Simon Reed: It’s always going on. The companies are told, of course they talk to their lawyers, and their lawyers say don’t admit anything, don’t do this. Don’t do that. Lawyers don’t want them to do anything which is… fine don’t admit mistakes, maybe because it might come to a court case later, but actually tell as much of the truth as you can. What I think should always happen at any business, no matter how big or small, is you should plan for a crisis or for a disaster and think of the worst thing that happens. It’s not a lot of fun this process, but actually think of the worst things that can happen, whether it’s the death of a chief executive, whether it’s a fire at a facility, whatever it is, and then think about what you need to do about it. Have a plan. This should involve the legal people. You should involve the workers affected and think about how quickly you can deal with it, and from that should flow an exemplary communications programme. Who do you need to tell and what do you need to do about it? There are some unexpected things I think, but most things you can plan for and you can anticipate so that when it happens, you can pull out of your desk, here’s our book of what we need to do in the case of this fire, in the case of this death, in the case of this data breach. It should have been planned or pre-agreed with the legal people who agreed with the accountants and everyone else so that actually you do a best practise. And if you start from that, then the crisis isn’t going to be made worse because of your communication, it’s going to be just part of the overall managing of that crisis.

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. I talk about three stages, Stakeholders: who do you need to talk to?, Messages: what can you say to them and as you say, you do your scenario planning you could even begin to have some proto messages, and then Channels: How are you going to get those messages out? Of course, the media being, as you said earlier on, right at the start one of those really important channels that we can use. Joanna just made the point about; well, it was more a comment than a question. She says we live in a compensation culture and sadly that influences the level of information which companies are permitted to divulge. So again compensation, legal, exactly as you say Simon, these are issues that you need to have discussed and thrashed out, as it were, upfront when you do your scenario planning. Gia says don’t wait till your next crisis, start now on your scenario planning. Absolutely, some good points there, and yes and I will write the blog on legal. Do we as communicators have to do things differently if there are two sides briefing in contrast to one another? Oh, this is an interesting question, Simon. I work for Network Rail, so I guess that’s at the back of my question. What’s it like being a journalist in between two sides like this? I mean we have a rail crisis at the moment, it’s impacting on people really severely, and we have the unions and of course we have network rail and obviously somewhere we have the government. A lot of people talking about the government there. What’s it like being a journalist in the middle of that in a crisis?

Simon Reed: It’s slightly amusing, but it’s also fascinating, and it helps us do our jobs. So, Network Rail says look the unions are this and that and something else. Then the unions tell us the opposite. We’ve got to use our judgement as to who we think is telling the truth. It does mean that often the parties tell us secrets, if you like, to expose the mistruths. And it tends to be the bigger corporates that that tell lies, they’re protecting themselves, whereas of course the unions have a stake, and you have to take what they say with a big pinch of salt. In a very general sense, they try and tell the truth, they’re trying to help and protect their workers, whereas the big corporations are trying to protect their reputations, their shareholders, their stakeholders, and it doesn’t actually always engender itself to honesty. So, in a very general sense, particularly this time dispute, I’ll probably tend to side more with the story I was getting from the Union, tend to trust it more, tend to think it’s got more integrity than the line that I’m getting. And it’s a line, I know it’s a PR line, the corporates are not telling the truth. So, it’s interesting. It’s awful often when there’s two sides, one side will tell you something and you take it to the other side and they say, oh it’s not true when is true. I hate to think that PR’s ever lie, and in general sense I know they don’t, but they do withhold things sometimes often for very good reasons. But when I put a direct thing to them, when I say I hear that a hundred people have been locked out of your training in Doncaster, is that true, and they say no it’s not true. And then I can say I’ve got pictures; I’ve got an inch of you. And often it’s actually not the PR that’s lying, it’s the PR that didn’t know or haven’t been informed. So, the simple thing then is just say I don’t know, I haven’t heard this, let me check it out for you. It’s far better to do that than just say it’s not true because you haven’t heard it, because it will damage the relationship and it will mean that whatever you tell me in the next few days or weeks, however long the crisis goes on, I just won’t believe you. I’ll just assume it’s more spin, that you’re trying to get me to write your story rather than the actual story.

Chris Tucker: That’s such an important point. It just made me think about this issue here but, it is about that honesty and integrity exactly as you said Simon. If you don’t know, check never assume, never dismiss something that you can’t be absolutely sure of, and make sure you do have all the information that your management team are really bringing you in the room. I think that’s absolutely crucial. It did make me think of one of the case studies we said we would talk about when we were chatting beforehand, is P&O Ferries. We know we’ve got a lot of people from overseas, obviously the UK is an island, we rely on ferries to a great degree to bring people and goods to and from the UK. There are only two ferry companies Simon, it’s not many ferry companies, and one of the biggest, P&O then decided to sack all 800 of its workers overnight and replaced them with agency staff. And they sacked them all by Zoom in a few minutes recorded zoom call and then they sought to escort people off the premises. Simon, I know you did cover the story, you certainly were commenting on the story. What would be your comment on how P&O handled this particular crisis?

Simon Reed: I think it’s the greatest example of mishandling a crisis I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just about the PR, they’ve mishandled it in every single way they could. What they did was illegal in British Law, so they went ahead anyway. In a Select Committee, in giving evidence to the government in a few weeks after, they said we knew we were breaking the law. If we had told anyone you wouldn’t have allowed us to do it. yet. Basically, they showed contempt, obviously for their staff, for the laws, for everything. All that action was wrong. They never told the truth, and I remember the morning we got calls, I was working at BBC, we got calls to say workers have been told they’re not allowed back onto the ship and something’s happening. So, the first rumour that went round was that maybe there’s a takeover. P&O’s owned by a foreign overseas business, maybe it’s being sold. There had been rumours last year so that makes sense. They’re locking up the ships and they’re going to announce this, and then suddenly there were people appearing on the dock side with black bags and all their belongings, and they’ve just seen this Zoom video where a senior member of staff had said it hurts me to do this. Throwing people off the ship, manhandling them, treating them like criminals, throwing their belongings in a plastic bag. It’s a humanitarian disaster you know. And then they refused to confirm this for hours while we all had evidence, we had interviews with people.

Chris Tucker: You could actually see it. You had interviews. You could see what was happening. They still denied it was happening.

Simon Reed: Yeah, and they denied it’s happening and just saying no we’re doing this, and then over the coming days they just continued to, if you like, braise out. It’s like they just didn’t care you. And clearly, they shouldn’t have done it in the first place. They should have gone through the normal process which would have been: Look we’re in a financial state, we can’t afford to keep our business going the way it’s going at the moment, we’re going to have to get rid of all our staff and replace them with cheaper agency overseas staff. So we’re going to have to negotiate the unions, taking months, and they would have lost more money in that time, and it still would have been a poor a story to read about, but at least they would be trying to do the best thing they can rather than riding rough shod over the law over their reputation. Now I think no one, I spoke to lots of people about this, they just said I’m not going to go with P&O, I don’t trust them. When you get on any ship you’re putting your personal care into them, you want them to look after you. They can’t look after their staff. Even when they did get some of the staff in, they then weren’t trained, for weeks they weren’t allowed to take the ferries out because the agency staff didn’t have the right training to do it. It was ill thought out from start to finish and their reputation damage has just been incredibly high.

 

 

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. I mean these crises are often called, you know PR failure, but I’ve got a quote there it’s not a PR failure it’s a failure of humanity. I mean clearly their communication has compounded the dreadful situation that they managed to get themselves in, but they made these decisions as a business to do something that was egregious and is beginning to look, I think as it’s been judged to be, illegal. This isn’t just about Comms, and I wonder if there were any comms people in the room when the decisions were taken, or if they were I can’t believe their advice was listened to. So, it’s a serious one, as you said. What do you think will be the long-term impact on their on their brand, do you think they can recover from this?

Simon Reed: Up to a point of course they will, because as you said they haven’t got monopoly, but there’s only a few ferries you can get across to Islands, to France, so they will do that. It wouldn’t surprise me, there’s another company called P&O Cruises which is actually nothing to do with P&O Ferries. Owned by different people, they were together years ago, but they split up, and it’s them that I would suggest they should change their name. Because people look at them and think there’s that nasty company who don’t care, when they’re not actually, they’re completely innocent of any of this current disaster, this current crisis. And so, I would change their name. P&O ferries they don’t care, they will just carry on braising out. Maybe once things have settled down in a couple years, they might change their name to, I don’t know…

Chris Tucker: I don’t know, I’m not a branding person, but I do agree. They actually did take out full-page ads didn’t they, saying we’re not the same company but yes. That’s a really tough one for them. It’s a good question from Joel on spokes people that I want to come onto in a moment, but I’m looking at Rachel here: I’m head of marketing and communications for a charity and people do need to be aware that sometimes journalists do lie. We had a contact who contacted us saying they wanted to come to our event and talk to local people about volunteering. We said OK but when they turned up, they wanted to talk about Boris Johnson. Luckily, they left with no footage. So, Simon, sometimes are journalists a little bit economical with the actuality, as somebody once said? What’s your view on that?

Simon Reed: Of course they do. I’m not going to defend the practises of bad journalists. I think that’s terrible journalism. I only ever want to write stories that are true. I want to inform my readers. I don’t want to scandalise them with some half-baked lies. I don’t think much of the mainstream media, and by that, I mean the traditional media, the BBC, Telegraph, the big newspapers will do that. There are plenty of outliers who will do anything for hits, who will lie to get into this, to try and expose that, and who have an agenda. Now whatever you think about journalists, most journalists like me, we do not go into a story with an agenda. So, the current rail strike, even though I was talking earlier about how I might trust what I hear from the unions because I trust their integrity. It doesn’t mean I will sit down and think right I’m going to write a story slagging off the rail companies. What I want to do is to inform readers. So, what did the rail companies say, what did the unions say, and how does it affect you, and listen to both sides. Now it sort of comes back to what I said earlier about getting to know journalists. So, if someone rings you up out the blue and says oh look, I’m a journalist and I want to come and visit your shop, your factory, your this that and the other, and you don’t know them, you can just say no. You don’t have to lie down and let these people ride rough shod over you. They need to prove they are who they are. I do hear lots of stories from people who claim, Oh I’m working for this business or that business and they’re not, and they use it as a way to try and get something and to confirm whatever story they’re doing, and that’s not helpful and that’s not journalism. That’s something else, that’s something that’s sprung up on the internet where people can go and video stuff and can write whatever they like. I can’t write anything about any company without a lawyer having a look at it. I’m not going to write something that might not be true because the lawyer will say, well is this true, and I’ll have to say I don’t know, so it will have to come out of the story. So, I have to write and keep to what I know. I can quote someone else saying, Oh the rail delivery service is this or that, claimed John Smith or Betty Drover or something. It has to come from somewhere else. Everything has to be researched properly, has to be sourced. These online journalists who, just think of some very well-known names, particularly the (unclear) ones who just turn up with the video camera and start filming, and it’s not journalism by any stretch of the imagination.

Chris Tucker: It’s interesting that you mentioned that because clearly there are processes aren’t there, in that journalists well, you have your code, the way the publication actually works, or the channel actually works. What is the process that you say there are? There are legal people there in the background and keeping an eye on you Simon when you’re writing for the BBC or the Sun or whatever. Is that how it works?

Simon Reed: Everything that goes into the paper and when I’m working at The Sun, everything that goes into the paper is lawyered. It means someone who is a lawyer sits and reads every single word. And so, for my page, I work for a daily newspaper, I file all stories by 5pm, so after that a lawyer is reading through it. So often at six I’ll get a message from a lawyer that saying, you’ve said this about Shell, where does this come from? And I say, actually Boris Johnson said it or it’s from their accounts. And they question it because, sometimes I’m writing a little story, there’s not room to put in the sources and everything else. So, they just want to know that it is legitimate, a fact, it’s not just made-up. And it’s helpful because sometimes, even someone who is as experienced as me, sometimes you forget. You’ve heard rumours about people, about businesses, and when you’re on deadline and you’re trying to write a story, sometimes those rumours can get you thinking, so I might say something about Shell which suddenly comes to my mind and I put a line in which is just not true. It was a rumour maybe a month or two back. And it’s the second line who are the lawyers who would say, is this true, and I say oh God no that’s not right. So, anything you read in the mainstream press has gone through a process, it has had second eyes on it, it’s been checked by lawyers and sub editors. Often sub editors who rewrite all my copy and correct things, change things, check all the figures. So, everything you read in the mainstream media has been through a very diligent process.

Chris Tucker: That’s really interesting, really interesting. Loads of questions coming. I just wanted to pick up Joel’s point a little while ago. He wanted to talk a little bit about BP Deepwater Horizon, and I’m sure wherever you are in the world it’s probably a crisis that you have heard of even though it dates back to 2010. Explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s oil rig. Sadly 11 people lost their lives, and we had one of the biggest oil spills that we’ve ever seen which affected the coast and affected people’s livelihoods, and it led to one of the biggest ever payouts in terms of compensation. But it’s particularly famous as well for Tony Hayward who was the chief executive at the time. Simon, were you covering Deepwater Horizon at the time? Do you remember any of that?

Simon Reed: I wasn’t, no. At the time I was working with Independent covering personal finance so I didn’t actually cover this story, but I was aware of it like everyone else. It was a terrible disaster, and BP was comfortable and eventually they had to pay. The way they managed it, it wasn’t all bad, but it was hard for them. I did feel for Tony Haywood, he was running his business, and he was not equipped to deal with this crisis. Every day he was having to face tough questions, and these are questions that journalists had to ask because of the deaths, this corporate manslaughter, whatever he called it. you know. He was just someone trying to do his job and unfortunately, he failed miserably. That quote after, what was it two weeks on, when he reached the end of his tether and he said, look I’m just trying to get my life back, when these people died. It was a crass comment from someone who’s struggling. I don’t blame him for that, I blame his advisors or whatever is the comms term. You’ve dealt with this every day, stand back a bit, get someone else to do it, let’s manage this carefully. All along on that they were running to try and catch up with the story, they were never prepared for such a disaster. They obviously tried to downplay it to begin with, and then as it unfolded and got worse and worse and worse, they promised this, and they couldn’t deliver. What I was saying earlier about preparing for a disaster, maybe they couldn’t even anticipate the scale of this disaster. But that’s what you have to do, you have to think about what is the absolute worst thing that can happen. People died, our workers died because of what we did wrong, and you’ve got to think about how you deal with it, and they didn’t. That poor bloke really was running on nerves, trying to deal with things, and he shouldn’t have been put in that position really. He lost his job, obviously his credibility. I mean I can’t feel much sympathy for him because he still earned a lot of money.

Chris Tucker: I’m sure he walked away with a fair few Bob Simon but…

Simon Reed: He didn’t die out of the crisis, as some people did, and that’s at the heart of this story. People died and it was a corporate that was responsible and had to pay for it.

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. It’s interesting you make those points about Tony Hayward. I’m sure many of you will remember, you may have even seen the clip from the interview where he said no one cares about this more than me, I want my life back. That comment came to determine how the crisis has been viewed, I think, ever since. But I do agree with Simon’s point that he was very much overused Simon, he gave literally hundreds of interviews, and it was far too many, I think, for someone who was also trying to actually solve the crisis from an operations point of view as well. We have to give him a tick for stepping into the breach because Joel’s question, and I wonder what you think about this Simon, because we do face this. How do we persuade a chief executive that it is the right time to step forward and take questions on the crisis? They might be very nervous, probably are very nervous. How do we convince them that actually they need to do it, not every day in the way that Tony Hayward was doing, but there are points when it’s really necessary. What should we say to them?

Simon Reed: Well, we have to point out it’s their responsibility. But I would also think that they don’t have to… If you think back to the pandemic in Britain, we had our Prime Minister every day talking about what’s happening, but he had experts alongside him. Now that’s what I would do. The chief executive is not going to know the nuts and bolts of everything. So, you bring your finance director, or you bring your operations director, or you bring whoever is actually knee deep in trying to find out what’s going on and get them involved. So that helps. It takes all of the or part of the stress off the chief executive but also gives the impression, which is probably the true impression, that there’s loads of people working on this. Here’s an expert who can tell you what we’re doing. We know as journalists largely, when people are ************ us. So, if the chief executive starts talking about oil or this that and the other, and doesn’t really know what they’re saying, then we can see through it and it makes them look shallow, it makes a company look wrong. If an oil expert, a drilling expert, whatever it is, comes on and starts speaking in language you don’t understand then we can ask them to explain it and get a better story. While it is the boss’s responsibility, they shouldn’t bear it alone, and it’s not about running away from facing the media, it’s about what’s the best option here, who’s going to give the best message to the media. And by message I’m talking about the honest message. So, you’re right, when the chief executive is trying to deal with the crisis, maybe they’re not always the right person to be facing the media all the time. They can’t run away from it, they’ve got to be able to make statements, but sometimes it’s better to get someone else to say, look Tony’s busy sorting this out, he will make a statement at 5:00 PM while we investigate this. In the meantime, here is what we have for you. And managing it that way.

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. I think that’s really good advice. It’s about choosing the right times to put the CEO forward, making sure they’ve got the brief, making sure they’re given the right support in the way you describe. But then leaving to go back to doing what it is that they need to do. Really good advice there. Question here from Andrea: I have a question please, if the company lost a lawsuit, think about the lawsuit that BP suffered from, if the company lost a lawsuit and had several millions to pay in damages but the company intends to appeal the decision, is that a good message to the media if you’re appealing a legal decision? I guess it’s going to be public knowledge, isn’t it Simon, as the court cases are.

Simon Reed: What does that suggest to you? That you’re trying to weasel out of the money? Or is it that you’re trying to establish best practise? If there is going to be an appeal you’ve got to be clear about why it’s happening. If it’s simply a delaying tactic because so we can get another couple of years before we pay the money, then that is awful especially if you’re getting compensation to victims or to victims’ families and you’re trying to delay paying out. That’s a really bad look. If it’s a case of, look we think that the problem here was something else other than what has been suggested, maybe, and if it’s of a very technical nature maybe there are grounds for appeal, but you have to explain what those grounds are and what it means. And if it was a case of compensation, I would always say to any company suck it up and pay it out. Be seen to be being caring, not just protecting your shareholders. Protecting your customers, protecting your workers, actually caring about them can count for a lot.

 

 

Chris Tucker: That’s a good point because your reputation, your brand is valuable as well. I mean you write at the Sun Fifty page at the moment, so you know how valuable brands and are for large companies, so you need to weigh up the impact on the brand as well. A messaged here from Rajendra. Hi Simon, I’d be curious to know what you think. How would you handle difficult or rude media officers and at what point would you say I’m just not speaking to them? Do you come across that Simon. Are they ever rude to you Simon.

Simon Reed: Oh yeah, all the time. To be honest, journalists can be abrupt. If I’m on deadline, so for instance right now at The Sun I need to file my stories at 5:00 PM. Quarter to five a story breaks, I want the information right now. So, I will ring up PR and say, look this that and something else. I don’t mean to be rude; I’m just being abrupt because I’m under pressure. I try not to do that because it does create conflict but, PRs need to understand. When I hear with the most sensible ones, are you on deadline right now, and I say yes, and they say, okay look I don’t think we’re going to be able to get that information to you but listen here’s a statement or here’s something which then gives me something for my story and it controls the thing. It’s that expectation. I never mind a PR saying to me we haven’t got the information yet, we’re trying to find it, when do you need, when’s your deadline? If I say look my deadline is 10 minutes and then they say well we can’t possibly get the information, I say fair enough. But when they say oh, we’ll try and do it and then 10 minutes later they still haven’t got it, then I start getting a bit angry. The way to deal with angry journalists is just to be calm when you say, what is it you want? And often they’re angry because, if it’s a story about banks for instance, I might ring up four or five banks and got shapeshifting answers and nonsense and by the time I come to you I’m fed up. Maybe that’s an example for you to calm me down and actually get something good out of it for yourselves. It’s hardly ever personal, it’s the nature of it. I’ve got the news desk shouting at me saying, where that story, we need it now, particularly online where the pressure is to get things up right away. So that’s why I’m being abrupt, and don’t mean to be rude, but it’s just the nature of the game and understanding that helps you be able to deal with it.

Chris Tucker: Actually, it does come down to those relationships. I remember, and I won’t go into too much detail, one crisis I was handling, and we took quite a serious reputational hit at Barclays. And I remember a very famous journalist ringing me the next day and saying I’m really sorry Chris but what did you expect, are you okay? It was quite a lovely thing to do, and I said, yeah, I did expect it, I know why you did it, it is what it is. And so, you got to try and build up those relationships haven’t you, because it really does make a big difference. It’s all that trust isn’t it, understanding the pressure you’re under and understanding the pressure the PR is under as well.

Simon Reed: In a story I wrote about four years ago, it was about energy prices, and a trader put out a statement about 5:00 PM to say that the big energy companies in the UK were rigging prices and so therefore customers were paying the price for some dodgy gambling. So I rang all the major energy suppliers, they all came up with a comment and all their comments were this is not true we’ve never done this, apart from one company which I got through to at I remember quarter to six and the PR said you can’t possibly expect me to answer that now. I said Well I do; I’m writing the story, it’s going to go in tomorrow’s paper, can you give us a response. They said no we’re not going to respond; you’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning. So, in this story, I think there were six big energy suppliers at the time, it was here’s these claims, five companies denied it, one company refused to comment which you can draw your own conclusions. And they weren’t guilty of doing anything, but because they refused to comment and were really quite rude; how dare I ring at 5:45 when they were just about to go home? I didn’t say they were guilty of anything, but I left it open for the readers to draw their own conclusions.

Chris Tucker: As you say they refused to comment. Here’s an interesting question here in Q&A from Michelle. Simon would you be happy with a written statement or do you normally expect to speak to the representative of a company in a crisis?

Simon Reed: It does depend on the story. Normally a written statement is better from my point of view because then it’s on the record. If you put me through to the chief executive and I can mishear, and so the story can go in the wrong direction because of that. It’s better to put the boss up so that she or he can explain to me. I always feel I tend to write better stories when I’ve talked to someone in charge because I could say, hang on a minute I don’t understand, why is this? They can say, oh well that’s because of this. So, then my story’s better, it’s probably less critical because it’s slightly better informed. But a written statement in a lot of cases is probably the best especially in a breaking story: This is what we know, this is what we’re going to say. And actually, often companies will accompany the written statement with some background and that’s always helpful. And the background might be, well listen a year ago this happened or that happened or something else and you’d think most journalists would know but… I write about ten stories a day, so I don’t always remember the background and having that given to me is always helpful. That helps inform my story and it helps to inform a better-balanced story as well. Now the background isn’t for quote, and yet be careful about going into background, but normally it’s; here’s some information that you need to know for your story. You know? So it might be that this person who’s told you this was sacked by this company, and therefore maybe they’re saying that. That kind of stuff is germane to the story. I never betray as I think off the record, that’s a very dangerous thing to do. You can only do off the record with journalists that you trust. I never betray an off the record. I want to know; I want the information. So, for instance, if I hear a rumour about ABC Industries are going to put in a bid for DEF industries, I don’t want to write a story, I want to know if there is any truth in this. Now if ABC Industries refused to comment then I write a story saying it’s true. If they say, no it’s not true. On the record we can’t say anything because of market additions and stuff. Off the record, there’s no truth in this, then that helps me not publish a nonsensical story.

Chris Tucker: That’s interesting actually because I wanted to ask you about that because there’s always a lot of interest in on and off the record and background briefing and so on. And I think it is really handled with care, isn’t it Simon? And from my point of view, I would only do it with journalists that I know I have a good relationship with, a two way relationship that’s endured over time and that will continue to be useful to us, and within that context then I think you can do the off the record. And you need to think about the reason why you’re doing it, and it should really be as much for the journalist’s point of view to protect them from getting it wrong than it is from the organisation point of view.

Simon Reed: That’s exactly what it’s for, not to try and mislead journalism, just trying to steer them to what the facts are. It’s not something I would recommend people try and do very often, you have to know you have a personal relationship with journalists. You have to know them for I’d say years really, not even weeks or months, years and know the stuff they write and know that this will help their story, and they won’t betray whatever trust you’re putting in them.

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. Lots of people commenting a little while back about how well the RNLI handled a recent crisis when, if you remember Nigel Farage accused them of being a taxi service for immigrants and some people did get on the back of that comment. Obviously for the RNLI, it would have been quite a difficult moment for them, but they did seem to handle it really well didn’t they Simon? I don’t know whether you followed that at all.

Simon Reed: They handled it well as they should do. They had nothing to defend. They’re just an organisation trying to save people’s lives and that’s what they said. Keep it simple. They could have tried to slag off Nigel Farage or some of these other dodgy folks. They refrained from that and said look we’re just trying to save lives. As a consequence of that I think they got loads more money from people who said you’ve done a great job, we love what you’re doing. That quite important, not to get drawn into other aspects, just keep to they’re fantastic organisation, they do great work with volunteers. They’ve got a million wonderful stories about the lives they’ve saved, the volunteers they use, and that’s what they’re focused on. They didn’t get drawn into a stupid political debate because that’s not their business.

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. I think well there was a figure on how much their donations had gone up as a result. So, I think they handled it really well. I’m just scrolling through here, we’ve still got 79 unread posts, and if there’s anything I’ve missed that you think we really should address, do let me know because we wanted to make it as two way as possible so we’re not just show and tell it. Lots of questions here on off the record so we were right to spend some time on that one Simon.

Speaker: One I got that I thought was quite good here is what does Simon think prolongs coverage of a crisis? When does he decide to move on? Which I think Is quite a good one.

Chris Tucker: That is a good question. Yes, great one.

Speaker: So that was good, also what about correcting inaccurate reporting, and also, I think people were really interested earlier on in having an example of a crisis well managed.

Chris Tucker: Well, we’ve got a good one coming up in actual fact but let’s take some of those. So, what keeps it going, remember Alister Campbell, didn’t he say if it’s made it into two weekends worth of news then you’re toast. What does keep the crisis in the news? What keeps it prolonged and on your agenda?

Simon Reed: If the story isn’t resolved. So, I will mention one, it’s now going back about 5 or 6 years it might be, it was TSP, okay? British owned British bank and the Spanish owner decided to move all their customers, it’s a few million customers, over to a new data thing. The bank told us on the Friday, listen you might hear from some customers this weekend that they can’t access their account. This is because we’re moving them all to a new data tool to align with our owners, and it’s bound to produce some problems but just so you know, and this is what’s happening you. So, when the problem started coming through on the Sunday, we thought oh well TSP told us about this, and then when it became hundreds of problems, I remember contacting the bank and them saying actually it’s just a few 100 people. By the close of Sunday they said to me it actually might be tens of thousands of people. By the Monday it was hundreds of thousands of people. And that crisis went on for about a month because they never actually admitted what’s happening. The chief executive of that company refused to talk to the media for three days. So, all that meant was you created that vacuum, that he’s running away from it. Now I don’t know whether he had been advised not to talk to the media or whatever. And then when it did emerge, he put out he put out a tweet saying, really sorry you haven’t been able to get a hold of me, I’ve been busy trying to sort things out. It’s just complete ******** and it’s clearly ********. He’d been running scared. He didn’t know how to cope. He was fired eventually. I mean obviously because he was not the right man to do that job. Now I feel a little bit of sympathy for him because again, this crisis happened around them. They tried to prepare for it, but they just couldn’t cope with what went wrong. And every day there were new figures emerging, every day the bank said oh we sorted this out. Even after three days, they said it was all sorted now, and then no, there’s more problems. And after a week, oh it was all sorted, there are more problems. They completely mismanaged that whole crisis which meant it was front page news for weeks rather than, here’s the big crisis it’s gone wrong, we’re trying to work it out, and it’s a dribble of news as we lose interest and well, we know that’s still going on. I can compare it to another bank, Santander. A few years earlier they had a similar crisis, and they’re very upfront. This has happened, it’s going to affect these millions of people, we’re doing what we can. Every day they’re putting out details; we’re trying to sort it out. So, this story, well they’re trying to sort it. People come to us saying well I can’t get hold of my Santander money; you say well they’re trying to sort it. Rather than, oh they told the had sorted it. How come there’s new people emerging?

Chris Tucker: You make a really good point there. Often you will get the senior leadership team saying, we can’t talk to them because we haven’t fixed it yet. No, you talk to them while you’re fixing it. You talk to the press and all your other stakeholders as well. This is where we are, it’s not done yet, we still have to do this, this, and this. But saying, oh we won’t talk at all until everything is sorted is not tenable is it Simon really?

Simon Reed: I’ve noticed some people are putting some questions about Kay Burley and other quite aggressive interviewers. So, my advice to people who think shall we put people in front of Kay Burley or on the Today programme or something else. My advice is don’t. You don’t have to do all this media stuff. You have to put out information, you have to talk to journalists. But doing a live interview with someone who you know is going to be aggressive and trying to catch you out, why put your people through it? It just seems pointless, and I don’t like this aggressive interviewing. I think it’s fine with politicians who try to be evasive and are clearly not telling the truth, they need to be pressed. Chief executives who go on, and they’re accused of all sorts of things sometimes by journalists trying to create controversy, get hits, get stuff on Twitter, I don’t think that’s necessarily good journalism, so I think you don’t have to necessarily put your people up in front of those folks.

Chris Tucker: That’s really good advice. It’s about thinking strategically about it and, yes one of the questions I was going to ask you was do you have to answer every question and take up every opportunity? Well clearly you don’t, so that’s really good advice.

Simon Reed: You have to provide information during a crisis, and sometimes it needs to be daily, sometimes even more frequently, but sometimes it’s perfectly fine to say, I will give an interview – this is what the government does – we’ll just give an interview to The Times or to The Telegram or to the BBC and then you can all share that information. That way you help control, I hate media management, you can choose the journalists. You can also stop the chief executive having to face 9:00 here, 9:15 there, 9:30 there. Just do the one and then get on with the job. It’s not the best way to deal with it but it is a way that’s perfectly acceptable and helps take a bit of the pressure off.

Chris Tucker: Yeah. Naomi says that is interesting. What is the implication of turning down a media appearance with an aggressive interviewer? Well, I think it’s how you do it, isn’t it Simon? I mean you don’t have to do the interview if you give your reasons why you can’t do that particular interview. Is that acceptable?

Simon Reed: Yeah of course it’s acceptable. Look I’m sorry he or she’s in a board meeting, or he or she is doing this and that, not available at that time we’ll try and get some time for you in the future. I wouldn’t ever say to anyone we’re banning him from talking to you because we think you’re aggressive. Because then they’ll find some other way to slag you off. So, you have to maintain good relationships. Sometimes it’s, the chief executive isn’t available can we put someone else up?

Chris Tucker: Absolutely, great advice there. We did get a lot of people that were asking for an example of a good one, a good media interview. And a good example, when we were chatting about this, we both came up with the same one, which you might be surprised to hear we both alighted on Michael O’Leary who is known as probably one of the most abrasive media operators around. But this was a crisis when they basically screwed up their rotas for the pilots, and they realised they had to give a lot of pilots a lot of holidays so they couldn’t fly all the flights that they wanted to fly. And in this in this interview, I’m more tempted to quickly show it to you before we close, he somehow got himself doorstepped in his own office which is interesting in itself. It was posted on Twitter, so I have a little listen of this one and we’re just going to close on this. This is Michael O’Leary being doorstepped by a journalist when he couldn’t fly his planes due to not having enough pilots.

Speaker: Do you have a message to customers who’ve faced an awful lot of disruption.

Michael O’Leary: Yes, we did, and for that we are sincerely apologise and we’re working very hard at the moment to make sure we finalise the list of flight cancellations which will affect less than 2% of our customers and also look after those customers who were disrupted. We will be having a full press briefing back here sometime later this afternoon probably about 4:00 once we finalise the listing.

Speaker: And are you going to compensate those passengers?

Michael O’Leary: Everyone entitled to compensation will receive full compensation, yes. If you come back at 4:00…

Speaker: How much longer is this going to go on for?

Michael O’Leary: Less it’s six weeks. It’s only a period of six weeks.

Speaker: And is that because pilots are quitting?

Michael O’Leary: No, it’s because we’re giving pilots lots of holidays over the next number of months. So, if you come back at 4:00 we’ll deal with in full detail. Okay, I’ve got to go to another meeting now where we try and fix this, thank you.

Speaker: Is it a bit of a mess though?

Michael O’Leary: It is a bit of a mess; it is clearly a mess but in the context of an operation where we operate more than two and a half thousand flights every day it is reasonably small. That was the only way to take away the inconvenience we’ve caused of people whose flights have been cancelled. Okay thank you. We’ll see you at 4:00.

Chris Tucker: Interesting one, I think. It was interesting that we both identified Michael O’Leary as a good example there. Have we still got Simon? Yeah, I think we lost him at the end. Oh well never mind. Anyway, we were coming to an end guys. Just wanted to show that as an example. A lot of you were asking for a good example and, oh there he’s back, and most people wouldn’t think of Michael O’Leary as being a good PR operator. Most people think of him as I said, as being quite abrasive, and rude and not particularly customer friendly, but we both thought that he handled that quite well. He gave a lot of detail; he was certainly on top of the facts, and he didn’t even challenge the fact that the Sky News reporter had somehow made his way to his office. So, Simon, what did you think about the way Mike O’Leary handled that?

Simon Reed: What impressed me is he basically admitted it was complete cockup, he didn’t try and make wild excuses, he admitted look we’re trying to sort it out. He came across as a human person not a corporate robot. He was clearly fed up with the interviewer, but he wasn’t rude to him. He was slightly informed. He gave him the deadline; we would be doing the press conference. That’s what you want, you think okay I trust this person, I trust him to be telling me truth. He’s not trying to lie. He’s not telling me nowhere. One thing I always hate is that no comment, and I do say you don’t have to answer questions but just saying no comment no comment is the worst thing you can do. You have to say, I’m not going to answer that because I don’t know or whatever else, just saying no comment is awful.

Chris Tucker: Absolutely. I mean he could have just said there’s a press conference at 4:00, please come, but he didn’t. He actually took the time and trouble; he sounded in control. We talked about the 5 C’s of handling a crisis. He sounded like he’s in control. He sounds like he was confident and competent. He showed some compassion as well. He took the crisis seriously, and he offered an apology, as well as a lot of detail there. So, there you go guys, an example of surprisingly so, we both alighted on as a good spokesperson in a crisis. Well thank you all so much for joining us and thank you Simon. I really enjoyed chatting with you and we’ve gotten some great feedback on everything that we’ve done today. Lovely to have so many of you on the line. No way could we get to all of the amazing questions and comments. Please do sign up for the PR Academy Crisis comms hub. You can see the web address there to sign up for it and I’m sure Anne will be sending out further details as well. So, thank you all so much for joining us. Don’t forget the next one will be the next quarter. Any ideas for what you would like us to tackle, we know a lot of you wanted us to do media, just let us know. Thank you very much and thank you Simon. Hopefully, I’ll see you again soon. Be nice to see you face to face one day. Hopefully, that will one day take care. OK bye.

Simon Reed: One day.