To help inform your Crisis Plan here are a few Media Rules of the Game that will provide detail for your plan. For instance, which journalists will you contact? How will you respond if you are door stopped leaving your building? Who will talk and when?

The 10 Commandments for Media Crisis Management

• Be as open and cooperative as you can to journalists
• Personalise your brand and organisation. Always use an amiable spokesperson, front up in person, do not hide behind anonymous press releases.
• Develop media contacts. Cultivate personal relationships with reporters and editors who cover your field of industry so that you and they know who they are dealing with when a crisis occurs.
• Take good news stories to the media so as to cultivate those relationships so that when a crisis happens they know and, hopefully, trust you.
• When under attack in the media respond quickly once you know the facts. Do not delay and allow your opponents to entrench their own position. Even better, get in first if you know you are going to come under attack.
• Never say “No Comment”. It enhances the perception you have something to hide. If you genuinely can’t answer, explain why (I’m sorry this is an employment issue and currently before the courts”) but then go on to add your positive messages (“But I can tell you, XYZ Ltd and I are committed to fixing the problem ….”).
• It is OK to say, “I don’t know”. Followed by the words, “But I’ll find out as soon as possible and let you know the answer to that.”
• If you have screwed up, admit it, shown concern and remorse, tell what you are doing to put the situation right, and try and give some perspective on what has occurred.
• The Big Dump. Dump all the bad news in your organisation at once, don’t prolong the pain, you will sustain more damage over a longer period as the bad news trickles out.
• Swot. Learn all the relevant facts you can about the crisis. Work out several key positive messages and keep using them.

* * * Next Steps * * *

These exercises are designed to give you a framework but it won’t be perfect. Media crises (real ones) are messy, complicated things. But knowing you have A Plan and know what The Rules of the Game are should take you some way through what can be an extremely stressful process.

Most of all, forgive yourself your mistakes, admit them and move on.