By Michael Crutcher
The nature of business means that most organisations will eventually feature in media coverage that isn’t positive.
That’s unavoidable when dealing with customers, clients, spectators or passengers, especially in an age of social media.
But how do you know when negative media coverage really matters?
Journalists have plenty of stories of people under pressure playing right into their hands including:
· A media statement that didn’t need to be published, giving a dead story another blast of air;
· An email to clients that wasn’t needed, alerting a bunch of people who knew nothing about a trivial story;
· Or the opposite – a business buries its head when it really should be addressing a problem, sparking further criticism.
There are so many options when negative media coverage occurs but they’re best dealt with a cool head, a deep breath and the right information. Try some of these benchmarks:
· What do audiences think of the story?
Just because media publishes a story doesn’t mean it damages an organisation. For instance, a story can be seen as so trivial or nasty that it will serve to rally the supporters of an organisation. And those supporters will become the spear-carriers for that organisation. Those stories often don’t require any official response. Stay silent and let the spear-carriers do your work.
Conversely, a serious story that creates questions for an organisation must be addressed. But how to address it? A media statement? An email to customers that becomes a quasi-media release? It’s difficult to give blanket advice on that but staying silent in serious times will draw its own criticism.
· Just because it’s atop the most-read list doesn’t mean it’s a concern
Many news websites show lists of their most-read stories. The lists can be misleading – maybe they’re taken over a long period or perhaps they’re based on questionable metrics. There is one key metric that is important but not easy to gauge: how long are audiences staying on the story? That engagement time is crucial to knowing if audiences really care. I’ve got data from my time as an editor that shows the most viewed story on a website had an average engagement time of 22 seconds. That means audiences didn’t care much for the story. They click on and leave quickly. Another story on the same list had one-third of the traffic but an average engagement time of more than three minutes. That meant audiences were very interested in the story. And that presented a major problem for the organisation at the centre of that item.
· How long is the story likely to run?
This can be difficult to determine from outside a newsroom. I was once publicly criticised by a politician for making too much of an issue when I was an editor. That issue started slowly but ran for many months and led to a politician being jailed. The government of the day gambled on it being a short-term story because they had no idea of the investigative work already done by journalists. It was a poor decision. On the flipside, making a long-winded comment on a story that may only run for a day can prove unwise. Seasoned media operators usually have a good nose for these moments.
Just remember that negative media coverage is part of life for most organisations. The smart organisations are always careful to ensure they don’t make matters worse through their responses.