BASIC DOs and DON’Ts to follow when responding to reporter questions during a crisis or controversy.

Unfortunately, bad things sometimes happen to good people or threaten to happen. When a potentially troublesome issue appears on the horizon or lands in your backyard, the best thing is to be prepared to respond to media inquiries.
Preparation can help you minimize the negative effects on your business and even turn around a negative story.

DO’s

· Gather all the facts.
· Appoint a single spokesperson to handle all reporter calls.
· Respond quickly, dealing only in the facts and providing as much detail as possible to prevent suspicion and rumors. Avoid descriptive adjectives or exaggerations.
· Stick to your core messages.
· For radio and television, train yourself to think about speaking in quotable sound bites – the broadcast equivalent of a direct quote in a newspaper or magazine. Include the most important information at the beginning of a sentence to increase the likelihood of that information making the final editing cut.
· Try to tell the whole story at once, rather than keeping it alive in the media while additional facts are being announced or uncovered. Several small negative stories are worse than one big negative one.
· Be accessible to the media so they won’t go to other sources for news.
· Report your own bad news. If media have to dig it out, you will appear guilty until proven innocent and will have lost control of your own story.
· Provide sufficient evidence of statements, enlisting credible third-party sources when possible and appropriate.
· Inquire whether the reporter has interviewed other sources. Suggest other resources the reporter might contact.
· Try to contain the crisis to a limited geographic area, keeping the "media story" a local one when possible and appropriate.
· Maintain relationships with key media under normal circumstances to increase chances of fair and accurate coverage during a crisis.


DON’Ts
· Avoid saying "no comment." If you can’t discuss something, explain why. If you don’t know the answer, reply that you will gather the information and supply it as soon as possible.
· Don’t attempt to place blame. First address the problem at hand and express concern for everyone involved. When the facts are available on the cause of a crisis, then release them.
· Don’t speculate or give personal observation on anything; release only confirmed facts.
· Don’t make "off the record" comments. During a crisis, there is no such thing. Tell reporters that, as a matter of policy, you don’t respond to questions regarding rumors or speculation.
· Don’t repeat negative or inflammatory words. It might end up as part of your quote or be attributed to you.
· Don’t use business jargon that is understood only by people within your industry and no one else.
· Don’t cherry-pick reporters. Return all phone calls.
· Don’t release information about people injured in a crisis. This information, if released at all, should come from the police or medical authorities. Source : Internet