Scooping A Reporter's Scoop
Here's a scenario to consider: You know that a newspaper story revealing facts damaging to your organization will soon be published. You learned about the upcoming story from the newspaper reporter working on it, who just spoke with you and gave you several days to answer a list of questions. No one else has the story. The reporter has a scoop.
What do you do?
Should you bring together other reporters and brief them about the upcoming story in order to "get the facts out" from your perspective?
That's what public affairs officers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center did when Washington Post reporter Dana Priest asked them to reply within six days to 30 questions about poor conditions at the center, according to media columnist Howard Kurtz in today's Washington Post.
By breaking the news to the wider press, the Army tried to get in front of the story and preempt the bad news. They wanted to appear in control of the situation and assure that their message was heard.
Pretty shrewd, except for one thing: Reporters -- and not only from the Washington Post -- will now be less trusting of these public affairs officers.
"When journalists seek a response from a government agency on a pending story, there is generally an understanding that the information will not be shared with rival news outlets before publication," writes Kurtz.
It is hard to believe that these Army public affairs officers did not know this or did not instinctively realize that revealing a reporter's pending story to rival journalists was not a good idea.
According to Kurtz, Priest told an Army public affairs officer: "How do you think this is going to affect our relationship? Do you think I'm going to be willing next time to give you that much time to respond, if you're going to turn around and tell my competitors?"
Learn from the Army's lesson.
Technorati Tags: media relations, media relations, public relations
