“First, admit you’ve made a mistake.”
This is one of the axioms that crisis management hawks, magpies, peacocks and parrots typically offer when capitalizing on the latest crisis du jour. Often, these pundits flock to broadcast media to provide requisite talking-head “expert opinion” that helps to legitimize a common media storyline – that a company is bungling its crisis management response by resisting a public apology and acknowledging a mistake.
The irony here is thick, because much of broadcast media itself does not live up to that axiom.
Check out this excellent article in The New York Times, where David Carr deftly draws a distinction between correction approaches of print vs. broadcast media that distort or misreport a story. Although print media does a slightly better job of correcting the record, his report acknowledges significantly heavier headwinds when broadcast media misrepresents the facts during a crisis situation.
Why? Here’s a key callout:
Continue reading Headwinds: Correcting the Record on Broadcast News
