Part of an on-going effort to encourage those speaking with reporters to avoid the dreaded “no comment”
COVID-19, the specific strain of coronavirus causing global concern and as the disease hit Florida the response was bumpy, to say the least.
February 28 — Friday: A man is tested at Doctor’s Hospital in Sarasota, FL. He was believed to have pneumonia.
February 29 — Saturday: The test came back positive as COVID-19.
March 1 — Sunday: A letter from Doctors Hospital detailing the positive test goes viral on social media — this was the first confirmed case in the state.
The public, and media on their behalf, spent Sunday attempting to confirm the authenticity of the letter and its contents. The hospital referred calls to the Centers for Disease Control and the Sarasota County Health Dept.
An after hours call into the health department Sunday night yielded this response: “We’re not answering any questions on this.”
Yikes.
Couple notes here:
- This is a good reminder that part of any crisis communications plan has to include an element of internal communications and instructions. We don’t know who answered the phone on Sunday. It could have been a communications person. It could have been a doctor or a nurse. It could have been a receptionist. Regardless, that person should have been prepared for a media call with more than “no comment.”
- There are different categories of crisis. A lawsuit might require crisis communications that happens slowly and over a long period. The communicators are usually well-informed and “no comments” arising from such a category of crisis are usually strategic (a bad strategy, but a strategy nonetheless).
Other crises require responses why the situation is still happening. In this case the communicators often lean on a lack of information for their “no comment.” Another bad strategy — no comment is still no comment.
Traditional and social media don’t shut down while a crisis is actively taking place, awaiting perspective. Traditional and social media fill that vacuum with speculation and hysteria.
And when the crisis is the first reported case of a global pandemic in a state with a large at-risk population, “no comment” undermines — from the very beginning — the entire response.
The person who answered the phone after hours at the health department had many options. Pass the reporter on to a communications specialist who was ready to answer questions. Promise an update at a pre-determined time (a press conference Monday morning, perhaps). Share important safety and health tips for the community. Each of these options, and many others, could have calmed the viral hysteria. Each would have satisfied the media in the short term. And each would have reinforced trust in the system to respond to the on-going crisis.
