Media rate companies and their spokespersons

Published  2004

Being a company spokesperson is a challenge.  On the one hand how effective you can be depends on your organisation’s policy on dealing with the media - and often the spokesperson doesn’t have control over this. On the other hand it takes a great deal of personal skill to handle media, especially for an organisation in the media spotlight.

A recent (May 2004) survey of 321 Canadian journalists is worthwhile reading for anyone in a spokesperson role.  While practices in Canada may be different to Australia, and the statistics may not be strictly comparable, many of the attributed comments - and gripes - from Canadian journalists could have come straight from the mouths of Australian media.

The survey was undertaken by Porter Novelli Canada and Canada Newswire.

In the survey, companies did get acknowledgement for their media policies and practices in several areas eg:

• Over half believe that Canadian businesses have a satisfactory or good understanding of the media and way reporters work.
  
• Over half believe that companies provide good access to executives for interviews or comment.
  
• Nearly two-thirds believe that the corporate information provided is satisfactory or very good.

But there’s also a disturbingly strong minority of media - around about a third of those who responded - who appear to have ‘a gripe’ with how companies and their spokespeople perform:

• They are unhappy with the access being provided to executives.
  
• They are unhappy with the honesty being displayed by company representatives to the media.
  
• They rate the quality of media releases they receive as being unsatisfactory.
  
• They say that businesses don’t respect their deadlines.

And here are 10 quotes from the journalists who responded to the survey that demonstrate that there’s still a gulf between business and media:

1. “They make the assumption that we are obligated to write about them, cover their event, if they tell us about it.” 
   
2. “They don't understand time constraints, in regards to how timely they need to respond to journalist phone calls, as well as how much time their viewpoints will be allotted in a television newscast.”
   
3. “(They) will not answer any questions outside of their well-prepared, agenda-based response. They fail to understand we're not there to write stories that purely promote their businesses. It's our job to cover both sides of the story, not write advertorials.” 
   
4. “(They fail) to provide access to senior executives who could actually aid in getting a company's story out there. Instead of training executives to deal with the press, they allow or encourage senior management to hide behind their corporate spokespeople.”
   
5. “Press releases sent out often focus on what a company thinks is important rather than what the viewer thinks is important, and therefore gets ignored. Officials and representatives from companies aren't as appealing to television producers as personal angles.” 
   
6.  ‘Plain English, please . . . ditch the marketing pitch - nobody takes it seriously anyway. I don’t care if you’re ‘an emerging leader’ or ‘leveraging competitive advantage.’ And please find another word for ‘solution.’ ”
   
7. “The biggest mistake spokespeople make is not understanding the urgency of deadlines. They assume deadlines can be extended, without understanding the urgency of press deadlines.”
   
8. “It often takes days to get fairly simple questions answered, and weeks, not days, to get a chance for a phone interview with the right person within the company.”
   
9. “It can be tiresome and time-wasting talking with spokespeople who unfailingly say 'I don't know' to questions on the story of the day but who also will not or cannot direct me to someone who does know those answers.”
   
10. “[Spokespeople] assume we are hostile and ignorant. We are neither. We’re only trying to ask the questions we think any person interested in that company or business would want to ask.”

Note: The author of this article is a senior Sydney-based independent corporate PR consultant who advises, coaches and mentors PR Managers and undertakes PR audits of PR Department structures and programs as well as helping review or select PR agencies.  In addition he also provides specialist corporate PR and communications advice where issues or change are impacting on an organisation. He also blogs regularly on PR and communications topics similar to those in this article.