“I’m just trying to understand …”
With these five words, reporters will crush through the Q&As you spent hours meticulously crafting in order to make the perfect series of non-answers. On paper, your non-answers may look great, despite their lack of substance or information. In practice, you’ve provided no substance, background, context or understanding.
And that’s our job! To promote understanding! Understanding gets our organizations resources, authorities, approvals and support. Understanding makes our members and families feel proud, and connected to the mission. Understanding builds momentum in the good times, and keeps us afloat in crises.
Non-answers do not promote understanding, and reporters know better than to accept them. The good reporters aren’t calling you to collect and accept any answer to their questions; they’re calling with questions because there’s something they need to understand … and then they build that understanding into reports to wide audiences. They’re putting together a puzzle, not just gathering disparate pieces.
Way Ahead: Make it real. Write Public Affairs plans and take actions that support understanding. Put the time and research into crafting Q&As that answer questions and offer context; not creative ways to not answer the question. Think like a reporter: if you had to write the story, what would you need to understand and what sound bites would lend to that understanding? Provide background and context, even off the record, for reporters who need it. What conclusions are you making because of your understanding that the reporter doesn’t have? Give them that understanding so they can make the same conclusions.
This is a long game. You will work with these journalists again. When you do, you’ll want to start from the last point of cooperative understanding.
(Photo by my old friend Lt. Col. John Hall, DVIDS)
